Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

But the issue is that there's great potential here. We know that this can provide significant benefits to those people who have chronic complex illnesses and who are seeing multiple medical practitioners.

But the problem at the heart of this bill is that we're undertaking a major change without due consideration given to many of the concerns that were raised right through the Senate inquiry relating to people being able to control their own information and relating to privacy and anonymity. Many of those concerns I raised back in 2012, when this legislation was being debated. Here we are, six years later, and many of the concerns I raised back then in 2012 have come to light. So here we are right now—at the last minute, with the opt-out period ending tomorrow—rushing legislation through the Senate.

This legislation does represent an improvement to the existing legislation. It's an important start, and that's why we will support the passage of the amendments to the My Health Record that are proposed in this legislation. But we also have other concerns that aren't addressed in the legislation. Let's get to what the bill covers initially.

As I said earlier, permanent deletion of records is critical. Currently, the system operator is required to retain a person's healthcare information for 30 years after the death of the healthcare recipient, or, if the date of death is unknown, for 130 years, even if the person has requested that their My Health Record be cancelled. If someone wants their record cancelled, it should be cancelled. A range of community groups expressed significant concerns about this provision but, again, it's an example of where the legislation was drafted clumsily. So we are going to support that amendment, something that we raised through that committee process to ensure that the system operator must permanently destroy a My Health Record. We will support that part of the legislation and will introduce a further amendment to ensure that this deletion is as complete as possible.

On access to the My Health Record by groups other than the person who intended to access it: of course, one of the other elements that the health minister outlined was that law enforcement agencies wouldn't get access to this information unless they had a warrant, but he was then shown to be wrong. That is a great concern, and so we absolutely want to see access by law enforcement officers only through a court order. We strongly support the introduction of subsection 63(5), which limits the laws that authorise the collection, use and disclosure of My Health Record information. It does mean that entities seeking to access it need a court order to do so. That's very important.

As I said, we do understand that the government will be introducing a number of amendments, and we also understand that Labor and Centre Alliance will also introduce amendments. I'm flagging now that we will support the government's amendments and we will support many of those other amendments put by Labor and the crossbench. We are also introducing an amendment to ensure the privacy of the information of young adults, 14- to 17-year-olds—adolescents who are becoming adults. In order to prevent the parents of 14- to 17-year-olds accessing their child's record without explicit consent, we want to make sure that, given this significant change, young people have control over their own health information. Often, a young person might be going to see a GP and they'll be seeking medication. It might be for a sexually transmitted disease; it might simply be for contraception. That is information that that young person should feel confident will remain within the realm of the treating doctor and the patient.

Currently, for 14- to 17-year-olds, we have something known as competent minors. If you're a young person and a doctor assesses that you're able to make this judgement for yourself, the doctor will respect your privacy and determine that you are able to make that judgement on your own. Under the current legislation, a parent of somebody aged 14 to 17 can access the child's record electronically. It couldn't happen under the current system. You'd have to ring the medical practice. The medical practice would then speak to the person involved. If the person involved said, 'No, I don't want Mum to see it,' the doctor wouldn't accede to that request. Under the current system, you can do that. We want to protect that private information. It's sensitive information. That says to a young person that you should, if you're getting into trouble with drug abuse, if you want to access contraception or if you have a tricky mental health issue—it may be, as I said, a sexually transmitted disease—feel confident to know that you can go and have that conversation with your GP and that that information will be private if you want it to be private. That's the case at the moment, and we should respect that. With this change, we should make sure that young people are afforded those protections.

I know the government have indicated that they understand this is a concern. They've also indicated that there may be problems with making that change. We acknowledge that, but, on benefit, we are planning to introduce an amendment, because we think that protection is absolutely critical. The government have indicated that they are looking at referring this to an inquiry. We will support an inquiry should our amendment fail—we hope it won't—but it is too critical to be left simply to a review, where we don't have a set reporting date and there's no confirmation about what action will take place subsequent to that review. We want the confidence to know that, if you're 14 to 17, your information will be kept private should you wish it to be private. The review can continue and, if there are any other additional changes then we can look at introducing those after that amendment is passed.

We absolutely agree that Labor's call, which is indeed a joint call, to extend the opt-out period is the right call. We think that extending it for a period of 12 months is the right call. Indeed, we put forward a motion to the parliament to do just that. This is a big, big change. People need time to come to grips with this change. They need to understand how this information is managed and then they need to make some decisions about how they want their own personal information to be managed. Some people will feel very comfortable with the minimum, default settings, and they will continue, happily, to trust doctors, the public health community and, indeed, government with that sensitive information. Others won't, and right now there are too many members of the Australian community who are not aware that this change is taking place, who don't have the information at hand.

We do think that Australians have got a right to make an informed choice about this, and they haven't been given that opportunity. Indeed, everything that's happened so far has undermined confidence in the system. The minister's own statements about issuing court orders demonstrate that he himself is not on top of this piece of legislation, so we think that an amendment to extend the opt-out period to force the government to address these concerns and to bring the Australian community with us is absolutely critical, and we will be supporting it.