Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing, Disabilities and Carers) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Temporary Chairman, I seek your indulgence here as to whether Senator Allison and I can have negotiations in this chamber. Senator Allison, you would be aware that your amendment is very similar to Labor amendments (1) and (2) on sheet 5216. The difference is that your amendment refers to ‘friend,’ whereas Labor’s amendment refers to ‘an associate of a person receiving residential care’. I think we are trying to get the same outcome. I wonder which set of words are the most inclusive. By using the word ‘associate of a person’ rather than using ‘friend’ I was trying to be as inclusive as possible. Whistleblower protection should be afforded to a broader group of people.

This issue was raised by the Victorian advocacy group, I think, quite forcefully during the inquiry. As I recall, Ms Lyttle, Chief Executive Officer of Elder Rights Advocacy said that because this legislation had been so rushed and because the advocacy organisations had not been included in the consultation it was only in the last couple of weeks prior to the legislation inquiry that they realised that they were a part of all this. They had not even included the desire to be covered as whistleblowers in their submission because it had not struck them. It really underlines the rushed nature of this legislation. Increasingly, advocacy organisations are going to discussions on behalf of their clients and meeting up with quite well-briefed and expensive legal teams, and Ms Lyttle informed the committee that threats of legal action have been made against them.

So when the minister says that they would have common-law protections—as you did in your concluding remarks, Minister—there is a lot of cost associated with that. Common-law protections for organisations like elder advocacy groups are not a lot of protection for what they do. They are not well funded organisations. They work very hard doing what they are doing, but you risk being threatened with legal action of defamation by aged-care operators if you simply do what you are in fact asked to do—that is, raise matters on behalf of residents. I do not think it is appropriate that they should not be protected by these whistleblower legislation protections.

Protection should be provided to aged-care staff but for advocates in particular not to be afforded protection under this legislation I think is an extremely large oversight. I encourage the government to think this one through. We have Commonwealth funded advocacy organisations doing a job on behalf of our community—advocating on behalf of residents who are vulnerable, many of whom do not have families to support them—yet they will not be protected for doing what we expect them to do. We are putting them at risk in an increasingly litigious society if we do not take this opportunity to include them in the whistleblower protections in this legislation. However, I come back to my earlier point, Senator Allison, and wonder if we could work out which is the most inclusive set of words so that we can make a decision about whether to support yours or whether in fact you might like to support ours.