Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health Administration) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Acting Deputy President. I will table a copy of the Clerk’s advice of 18 November. I will also table a further piece of advice from the Clerk of 18 November in relation to the specific documents that have been tabled by the government just now. I will read into Hansard the very salient points here, because the government has claimed that it should not release this legal advice because it could prejudice the position of the Commonwealth in future legal proceedings. This is what the Clerk of the Senate has to say about this:

This claim in relation to the advice concerned, however, is clearly misconceived. As I have repeatedly pointed out (and this point has not been disputed, and cannot be disputed), section 53 of the Constitution is non-justiciable. Therefore there cannot be any legal proceedings which might be prejudiced by disclosure of advice to the government on its interpretation of section 53.

This letter and the letter that was tabled by the Attorney-General add nothing to the question of the constitutionality of either our bill or the amendments to the health insurance compliance bill that have been circulated. I quote:

The quotations of authorities in the letter—

that is, from the Attorney-General—

are irrelevant to the question at issue. The question is: is the bill a bill appropriating money within the meaning of section 53 of the Constitution? The Attorney-General’s letter does not deal with that question. The bill clearly does not appropriate any money. The suggestion that it does is based on the kind of distorted interpretation of section 53 dismissed by the High Court in the case to which I have referred. The letter therefore is of no value in this matter.

We have here a situation where a minister has clearly made a bad call. You have a minister who is trying to hurt mostly elderly patients, forcing additional expenses on elderly patients who have paid for their private health insurance for decades. They have put additional resources into the health system for decades, and at the time when they need access to timely and affordable quality health care this cold-hearted government comes and tells them, ‘We don’t want you to have that.’ (Time expired)