Health Insurance Amendment (Incentive Payments and Other Measures) Bill 2026
Senator RUSTON (South Australia—Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) (13:12): I move opposition amendment (1) on sheet 3944: (1) Schedule 1, item 4, page 30 (after line 32), after Subdivision A, insert: Subdivision AA — Expert advisory committee 68A Expert advisory committee (1) The Minister must, within 6 months of the commencement of this section, establish an expert advisory committee to provide advice, and make recommendations, to the Minister about matters relating to incentive payment programs.
(2) A committee under subsection (1) must be established in writing. (3) The committee may provide advice, or make recommendations, to the Minister on its own initiative or at the request of the Minister. (4) The committee consists of the members appointed by the Minister.
(5) The Minister must, in appointing members to the committee: (a) ensure that the composition of the committee reflects the diversity of the interests in the matter or matters that the committee will be dealing with; and (b) ensure that the members of the committee have suitable qualifications or experience. (6) The Minister must, in writing, determine: (a) the committee's terms of reference; and (b) the terms and conditions of appointment of the members of the committee; and (c) the procedures to be followed by the committee.
(7) An instrument under subsection (1) or (6) is not a legislative instrument. This amendment, which seeks to establish an expert advisory committee, is in direct response to the fact that the government has almost made an art form out of introducing legislation into this place without properly consulting those that are affected by the legislation. So what this particular amendment seeks to do is to say this to the government: if you want to use this piece of legislation, which does give you quite substantial powers, and if you want to make changes, then you have to run it through a group of experts that will actually understand the consequences of the legislation—the changes that you are seeking to make or the powers that you are seeking give yourself under this particular piece of legislation.
As I said, it has been quite incredible that there has been a complaint with just about every piece of legislation of significance that has been brought into this place. The Office of Impact Analysis will often say that a piece of legislation could have benefited from further consultation with stakeholders. We hear it time and time again when we send legislation to committees.
The first thing you hear from stakeholders is, 'We were not consulted about this legislation before it was put into the parliament.' The fact that we have got a government that is failing to even seek the views of people who are going to be impacted by its policies before seeking to shove them through this place is, I think, a very sad indictment on the government.
It's the reason we are constantly, in this place, trying to repair faulty legislation that got pushed through without the benefit of being scrutinised by those people who are experts in the field. This amendment is a reasonably small amendment, but hopefully it will start to restore some sort of confidence in the health sector in that the government will be forced to consult with the sector before making any changes.
If the government were to do that, we'd probably find that legislation introduced into this place would be more fit for purpose and wouldn't require constant amendment after the event.