Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the explanatory memorandum, which does clarify amendments made by the Senate. I would like to thank the Minister for Veterans' Affairs for his cooperation with this. As I have discussed previously, the Veterans' Affairs Legislation Amendment (Digital Readiness and Other Measures) Bill was looked at forensically. In particular, the bill went to the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade. Through the process some concerns were raised, and these concerns continued to be raised during the discussion of this bill.

One particular concern was the removal of human decision-making for those veterans who had a negative claim. Of course we do want to see digitalisation and computer-aided benefits flow to veterans, but there was some concern about those who did not benefit from this process. Consequently, Labor did move an amendment in the Senate to the legislation which would ensure that any claim made by a veteran that was rejected by a computer decision-making process would be automatically sent to a delegate for review. Labor believes that by doing this not only is there still benefit in a more timely claims process but also any claims which are not initially accepted in the computer system can be reviewed. For example, should a veteran make six claims and five of those claims are accepted and one is rejected, the rejected claim would be sent to a delegate for a review, with the other five being accepted by the computer decision-making process.

The additional explanatory memorandum that the minister has tabled makes this very clear, and I would like to thank him again for ensuring that we have a clear process going forward so that we can get the benefits of computer decision-making but do not have the concerns that have come to light in other departments, including the robo-debt debacle, as it is now commonly called. We do not have those concerns for veterans, and I think this is a good amendment and a good explanatory memorandum.

Of course, there is another amendment that the government moved during the Senate process which removed the public disclosure of personal information. We had been working with the government on the rules to ensure that veterans were safeguarded, but, in light of the community concern and confusion there had been around this, we certainly welcome the government's amendments that withdrew that element from the bill.

We are pleased with the outcome of this bill and pleased that the process for the automated computer decision-making process is very clear. I will note that the department does not quite have the computer systems to deliver this yet, but I am sure the minister is working on getting the money for that. But the legislation is very clear about the process and about how this will not only benefit veterans but also protect veterans in ensuring that no mistakes or problems with an automated system do not get picked up by a human person. I commend the explanatory memorandum and the amendments in this bill to the House.