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

I wanted to confirm that because that is an issue that has been raised repeatedly with me—whether you would be able to access services while not using your number. I seek leave to move Greens amendments (1) and (2) on sheet 6156 together.

Leave granted.

I move:

(1)    Clause 9, page 7 (line 4), omit “The”, substitute “Subject to section 9A, the”.

(2)    Page 8 (after line 8), after clause 9, insert:

        (1)    A person may apply to the service operator to opt out of the Healthcare Identifier scheme.

        (2)    If a person applies to the service operator in the form prescribed for the purposes of subsection (1):

             (a)    the service operator is not authorised under section 9 to assign a number (a healthcare identifier) to identify the person as a healthcare recipient or for any other purpose connected with this Act or any other Act; and

             (b)    the service operator must ensure that any healthcare identifier previously assigned to identify the person under section 9:

                   (i)    no longer be assigned to identify the person; and

                  (ii)    no longer be used to identify the person as a healthcare recipient or for any other purpose connected with this Act or any other Act.

I will try to keep this brief. These are our opt-out amendments that I talked about in my speech on the second reading. As we understand it, everybody is allocated a number and people feel concerned that even if they choose not to use their number it is still a number in the system against their name, which they then link to the arguments about it being used later as some sort of overall identity number.

There are concerns around that and the preferred approach that has been put to us is that people get the ability to opt out. This does work in the UK. It has a much bigger population than we have and the approach seems to work okay. We thought it would be appropriate to make a similar provision in our legislation and this amendment is about enabling people to opt  out. I understand that the opt-out provision is not used very often in the UK, so it is not as if we are going to get a massive number of people opting out, but it does provide that provision for people who do choose not to be part of that system.