Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move amendments (1) to (5) on sheet 3417 together:

(1) Schedule 2, heading to Part 2, page 107 (line 2), omit "24 months", substitute "12 months".

(2) Schedule 2, item 30, page 107 (line 9), omit "24 months", substitute "12 months".

(3) Schedule 2, item 30, page 108 (line 2), omit "24 months", substitute "12 months".

(4) Schedule 2, item 30, page 108 (line 31), omit "24 months", substitute "12 months".

(5) Schedule 2, item 30, page 109 (line 3), omit "24 months", substitute "12 months".

The amendments that the opposition is proposing on this are to reduce the minister's rulemaking powers from 24 months to 12 months. First of all, when the government sought to give itself 24 months, it was before they decided to put this delay in place. The government's actually given itself additional time anyway. They've got an extra four months in which they can make sure that they have remedied some of the potential issues that have occurred in this legislation. We found out from the primary legislation that there have been 325 separate instances of where this amendment bill will have to come into play in order to affect changes because of mistakes, errors, inconsistencies or omissions in the original bill. We believe that the government doesn't need this heavy handed, Henry VIII power for 24 months. We believe 12 months should be adequate time to make sure that this bill, once it is enacted, is able to be remedied for any unexpected changes that need to be made to it.

The government should have more trust in its own legislation than thinking it requires 24 months to fix up its problems. The government should not be expecting the sector to constantly be responding to continued failures for a period of 24 months. We would suggest to the government, given you're very optimistic commitments about what your legislation is able to do when you're able to get it in place, that you should back yourself in and accept that 12 months is a perfectly adequate length of time to provide yourselves with the kind of power that these particular rulemaking powers give to the minister.