Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's always a pleasure to follow and listen to the remarks of the member for Macarthur, who brings so much valuable insight into the health issues that our nation faces. That was a wonderful example in his contribution to this bill, the Treasury Laws Amendment (Genetic Testing Protections in Life Insurance and Other Measures) Bill 2025. This legislation, in fact, has four schedules. Schedule 1 limits the use of genetic information by life insurers—that is the matter the member for Macarthur focused on a moment ago, and which I will come back to in my own remarks; Schedule 2 provides licensing exemptions for foreign financial service providers; Schedule 3 modernises and streamlines Australia's participation with multilateral development banks; and schedule 4 repeals stage 2 financial adviser registrations with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.

This is good legislation because it bans life insurance companies from taking into account the results of or information about a person's genetic testing when deciding whether or not they will offer life insurance cover and, if they do, determining the terms and conditions. The ban brings Australia into line with similar approaches in other countries, including the UK and Canada, who banned the practice some time ago. As the member for Macarthur pointed out a moment ago, this is a matter that's had a long history. Indeed, back in 2023 I wrote to the minister for health about this very issue, and it is good to see this legislation now before the parliament.

Once this legislation is enacted, any breaches of the ban will be subject to a criminal offence and civil penalties, with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission being the regulating body. I understand that health insurance providers in Australia are already prevented from using genetic testing to deny cover or increase the cost of premiums. If that is the case—and it is—life insurance should be no different.

This legislation is not simply about stopping discrimination; it is also about saving lives and better managing the health of individuals and the health system of the country. Genetic testing is an effective health management advancement—the member for Macarthur spoke eloquently about that—and it should be encouraged. However, the current use of genetic testing by life insurance companies is a disincentive for people to have genetic health tests. If people make use of genetic testing, they are likely to have a much earlier diagnosis of serious illness and therefore begin earlier, and possibly life-saving, treatment. The ban, however, does not prevent individuals from volunteering genetic test results and the use of these volunteered results in underwriting where this would not adversely impact the life insurance cost and terms.

I also note that this legislation has been the subject of extensive public consultation and public discourse for probably the last decade, if not longer. In 2018, the life insurance industry inquiry of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services recommended a ban on the use of predictive genetic test results in life insurance underwriting be urgently implemented. That was some eight years ago. Today, after so much time, we are finally in a position where legislation has come to this House. Again, as the member for Macarthur did, I acknowledge the work of so many other people, including the members of that committee that I referred to, for their work in bringing this issue before the parliament eight years ago.

But along the way there have been many others. The member for Macarthur mentioned Jane Tiller, whom I have also met with and whom I also congratulate on her commitment to and focus on this work over several years. Jane is from Monash University, and I met with her in my office on a couple of occasions. She, along with her with some of her other colleagues, including Associate Professor Paul Lacaze from Monash University and Professor Margaret Otlowski from the University of Tasmania, have carried out considerable research over the years into genetic testing and life insurance. I want to quote only one section of a paper that they provided to me at the time. It was a briefing paper related to this issue, which talks about Australia's obligations under certain human rights provisions that we are now signatory to. It says:

Australia's international human rights obligations require prohibition of genetic discrimination

Australia's international human rights obligations, including Article 6 of the United Nations Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights (UDHGHR) and Article 25 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) … require a prohibition on discrimination based on genetic characteristics, and …specifically refers to discrimination in the offer of life insurance.

It is very clear and very pointed that genetic testing should not discriminate when it comes to life insurance. That was the basis on which I suspect much of Jane Tiller's work was focused. I've got no doubt that the work she and her colleagues have carried out has been influential in this legislation finally coming to the House.

Other speakers have covered this issue very well, and I don't want to go over everything in detail, but in summary —and this is my view of this legislation—not everyone in Australia has life assurance, and many of those people don't have life assurance because genetic testing puts a barrier in front of them. That is, if they have a genetic test and it shows up certain health issues, then it is likely that they will either pay higher premiums or won't even get life assurance at all. That practice has to stop.

But genetic testing is also good for the nation as a whole. If more people undertake genetic testing, it means that we as a nation have a better understanding of the health issues that that the nation is facing. And if we have a better understanding of the health issues that the nation is facing, our health strategy is much more targeted and much more focused. That, in turn, means that, in the long term, we will have a much more effective health strategy for the nation.

We know that health costs are one of the major costs facing governments of all persuasions, both federal and state. If we're ever going to get on top of managing the health costs of this nation, we need to better understand what the issues are, and we're not going to do that if people are discouraged from doing what now has become a fundamental test—that is, genetic testing—that provides so much insight into a person's health issues. So, when we have a snapshot of that across the nation, it will actually save the nation costs, as well as, as I said earlier, individual costs, not to mention possibly life-saving treatment that would otherwise have been missed because the genetic testing was never carried out.

I thank the minister who's at the table for his role in bringing this to the parliament. I also thank the previous minister, who did a lot of the groundwork on it as well, because, as the member for Macarthur said, this has been an effort of so many people to bring it to the parliament. As the member for Macarthur quite rightly points out, this is important legislation, and I commend it to the House.

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