Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens oppose items 37 to 46 in schedule 1 in the following terms:

(18) Schedule 1, items 37 to 46, page 8 (line 30) to page 9 (line 21), TO BE OPPOSED.

This relates to the impairment tables. As I articulated in my address during the second reading debate, we have very strong concerns about replacing the words ‘medical assessor’ with the word ‘assessor’. While we have broader concerns across many areas of disability we are particularly concerned about issues of mental health.

We believe this is already an issue of concern in the community in terms of how mental health issues are dealt with under the disability provisions and we are deeply concerned that in fact this is going to exacerbate these issues. Concerns around these amendments were raised by a number of community organisations and submitters to the Senate inquiry and we share those concerns and believe, again, that this is a clumsy way of dealing with impairment ratings and urge the government to go back and have another look at this issue. Therefore we are opposing the changes that the government is trying to bring in with this amendment.