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Monday, 21 November 2011
Page: 9094

Senator DI NATALE (Victoria) (21:12): I rise to speak against the coalition amendment to the National Health Reform Amendment (Independent Hospital Pricing Authority) Bill 2011. The Australian Greens certainly understand the reasons for the coalition suggesting that someone of significant standing, experience or knowledge in the provision of services in non-government hospitals be included as a member of the pricing authority. We also accept that the regional and rural health community has been acknowledged as another area of expertise. In fact, there is a requirement for someone with that background to be included as a member of the pricing authority.

We are worried that with this amendment we are starting to become very prescriptive about the make-up of the pricing authority. There are a number of other groups that could potentially be included. We know that there are people with clinical expertise—surgeons, anaesthetists, nurses and so on—who would have a legitimate claim to be included to make sure that we have somebody with clinical experience as part of the pricing authority. We could go further and suggest that somebody who has significant experience in the field of health economics be included as well.

For that reason, we believe that the regional and rural health community, which has already been acknowledged, be the limit to which we prescribe the particular expertise, skills and experience on the pricing authority. It should be restricted to that group only. We certainly understand the reasons for wanting to include additional groups. It is reasonable, when determining the make-up of the authority, that consideration be given to people with experience in the non-government hospital sector, but we do not think it is the role of this bill to list those specific areas. As I said earlier, there are a number of other areas that we would also need to consider if we were going to go down that track. For that reason we have decided that we will not support the coalition's amendment.