Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Health Services and Indigenous Health) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the minister for answering the first of my two questions. She emphasised that there is an effort through amendment (7) to harmonise the data collection and reporting. The second part of my question is: what parts of the work that has been assigned to the authority could not have been done by the existing structures already in place? I go back to the question: can she explicitly explain? This is the basis for the entire legislation and also of course it begs the question: if we need to set up a fifth authority to monitor the other four are we going to be back here again setting up a sixth one to monitor the previous five? What is it with the COAG Reform Council, the AIHW and the Council for Safety and Quality in Health Care that makes them unable to do the very things that have been described in this legislation that are being assigned to the authority? That comes under the scope of the work in amendment (7).

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