Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Hansard source

I do not want to prolong this debate but really let us be clear what this amendment is. It deletes the reference to medical assessors so it is really beyond logic for the government to say that they are not diminishing their role. What is clear is that there is a removal by virtue of this amendment of a presumption in the act that a qualified medical practitioner should conduct certain assessments, particularly the assessment of impairment ratings using impairment tables set out in schedule 1B of the act. That is the purpose of this. So the government can engage in a whole range of sophistry about this but fundamentally they are deleting the reference to ‘medical officer’ in the act. They cannot say that they remain as important.

They then say that the job capacity assessor can have a look at what medical officers say. Let us be clear: we in the Labor Party do not believe that entitlement to disability support pensions should entirely be determined by medical assessors, but we do think that for the purposes of assessing the impairment against the impairment tables that is a function that ought to be undertaken by medical assessors. That is the concern being raised by the disability organisations. The government’s response to that, frankly, does not go to the argument. We do not believe that these amendments should proceed. Again, I remind the chamber of the dissenting report from Labor Party senators in this inquiry that this aspect of the bill should not proceed.