Senator AYRES (New South Wales—Minister for Industry and Innovation and Minister for Science) (12:02): As I indicated the last time I appeared on a Tuesday afternoon in relation to order for production of documents No. 27, the government has complied with that order. I've advised the Senate that the minister made a valid claim of public interest immunity over documents in the scope of the order. That claim was made because they directly related to the deliberations of cabinet. I am in the sober position of reporting to the Senate that that position has not altered in any way. It cannot alter because it would be inconsistent with the approach that this government, previous governments and governments in other Westminster jurisdictions around the world have taken.

Releasing documents that relate to the deliberations of cabinet is prohibited for all of the reasons that have been set out over the centuries in the approach of democratic Westminster governments. Senator Bragg knows that. The senators who voted for this regular appearance know that. Yet it persists because it's just about partisan politics. It's widely accepted that the deliberations of cabinet should be conducted in private to preserve the freedom of deliberation of those bodies.

I understand that the Liberals, the Nationals and One Nation are opposed to the five per cent deposit scheme. I understand that position. You may be opposed to the fact that 270,000 Australians, mostly young Australians, have gotten into homeownership with the support of the Albanese government. I understand that position. I don't think it's a credible position. I don't think it's a position that mainstream Australians would support, but it's one of the many positions that the Liberals, the Nationals and One Nation hold that are out of step with mainstream Australia.

I understand that the Liberals, the Nationals and One Nation are opposed to the government building social and affordable homes. Senator Bragg and his colleagues are opposed to the mechanism that the government is using to finance those positions.

Senator Bragg: We just want the modelling. We want the modelling. It's not a secret document.

Senator AYRES: Senator Bragg sings out that he wants the modelling. I just indicated the modelling, as you well know, drove the cabinet deliberations, and it will not be released, because it should not be released, no matter how many times I have to turn up here to endure these 30 minutes of dishonest propositions about housing.

You can argue the pros and cons of the five per cent deposit scheme with the 270,000 Australian families that now have a home. You can argue it with 50,000 key workers—teachers, nurses, childcare workers, carers, defence personnel, firefighters and police officers—who are now proud homeowners. You can pursue it in estimates hearings, in the media, in the chamber or however you like. We are going to continue with the job of supporting those Australians to find their way into homeownership. We're going to continue with the job of building houses in Australia.

Every renter in the country now has stronger renters' rights, 270,000 Australians now have five per cent deposits, home building is turning around despite pressures on the home-building sector, and our commitment to 55,000 social and affordable homes is gaining pace. There are over 7,000 completed, with over 22,000 in planning and construction. Our approach keeps building and building. Perhaps you ought to pick up a toolbox yourself and have a crack.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Are you finished, Minister?

Senator AYRES: I'm prevented from continuing.

Senator CASH (Western Australia—Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) (12:07): I move:

That the Senate take note of the Minister's explanation.

And what an explanation it was! It doesn't matter what this minister says. He can huff and puff all he likes. He can say, 'Transparency is now apparently partisan politics.' That's right, Australia. The opposition came here on your behalf, asking for modelling in relation to changes that this government has made, and, apparently, our asking for transparency is 'partisan politics'. This is coming from a government that went to the 2022 election saying that, if they were elected, Australians—guess what?—would see transparency like no other.

Guess what? Sadly, Australians are seeing transparency like no other. In other words, they are not seeing any transparency coming out of this government. Produce the documents. How hard is it for this minister to produce documents? I have to say, for those of you who are only tuning in to this debate for the first time, you would think, based on that performance by the minister, that this was the first time that the Senate had actually voted to compel the minister to produce the documents that the Senate had asked for. Well, you'd be wrong, because—guess what?—the Senate actually made this order asking the minister to produce documents over 12 months ago, on 24 July 2025.

All we are asking for on behalf of the Australian people is the Treasury advice relating to Labor's $10 billion housing commitment and its decision to allow first home buyers to purchase with a five per cent deposit. Those first home buyers—the ones purchasing with a five per cent deposit—are also, sadly, the poor people in this country who, on a daily basis, we read, are going into negative equity.

But it doesn't stop there. The minister and this government failed to comply, so what did the Senate do—as we are entitled to? It's not about playing partisan politics. It is about the Senate doing what the Senate is required to do. We voted to compel the minister to come before the Senate and provide an explanation. Guess what? That was in November 2025. Do you know what the minister did? He did produce some documents, and there was almost no part of one document that was not redacted. For those of you who don't know what 'redacted' means, it means you produce a document and then you just cross it all out in black and say: 'There you go. We have complied with the resolution of the Senate.' Again, that is not compliant. What it is is a lack of transparency.

The Senate has since come together and passed further motions to compel this minister to produce the documents: November 2025, March 2026, April 2026, June 2026. Now, because of this government's failure to be transparent and to comply with the will of the Australian Senate, we are in this extraordinary situation where, every Tuesday, this minister has to front the Senate and explain why the Albanese government continues to defy the order of the Senate.

Apparently, though—according to Senator Ayres—it's the opposition who are the problem. This is what he said last week. He called this process—the process of the opposition, on behalf of the Australian people, requiring transparency from the government—'yet another abuse of the Senate's time and the Senate's processes'. Previously, in another explanation, he called it 'a wilful and puerile use of Senate processes'. That's right, Australia. The Albanese government's ministers seem to think that the opposition asking questions on your behalf, and asking them to produce modelling that is actually affecting you, is a 'wilful and puerile' use of Senate processes.

Senator Ayres has also accused senators of having 'no respect for the institution'. Senator Ayres, you probably want to look in the mirror. He told Senator Bragg last time, 'Sit down, son', and he dismissed those scrutinising the policy—I kid you not—as 'spivs'. That's the Albanese government minister responding to the right of opposition senators to demand transparency. Guess what, Australia? The next time we sit on a Tuesday, we'll be back here again and we'll hold this government to account.

Senator BARBARA POCOCK (South Australia) (12:12): I also rise to take note of Minister Ayres's response on behalf of the Minister for Housing. The minister has an order for the production of documents and comes here yet again this morning hiding behind public interest immunity, failing to come clean with the workings which underpin a significant part of Labor's policy—an inadequate policy, an inadequate response to our housing crisis. Last week, last time we were here, we were told it was 'wilful and puerile'. This morning, today, he says he's forced to listen to 'dishonest propositions about housing'.

This is the biggest crisis facing our country. Many thousands of Australians are living in cars or under bridges. They can't get into housing. A third of them rent properties which are unaffordable. They're in deep crisis and unable to pay for the groceries they need, and yet the minister comes here this morning and talks about 'dishonest propositions around housing'. Labor's five per cent deposit scheme deserves to have its full workings put before us so we can understand why and how it came about. We also need to better understand its implications into the future, because we are in a housing crisis like we've never seen before in living memory—no-one can deny it—and we know we need action.

We need action that goes beyond a five per cent deposit scheme that has driven prices up and increased the risk of high levels of debt for people very early in their working lives. We've seen renters across Australia, without the action that we need, hit with a 23 per cent rent increase over the past five years, while real wages under Labor have fallen by five per cent. Renters are being absolutely smashed by unlimited rent increases, and the weekly shop just keeps going up and up. The minister referred to the increased protections for renters that his government has delivered. He has not supported renters. His government has failed renters across our country.

I've talked to renters from Perth to Melbourne—across the nation. They are battling. They are battling levels of rent that place them in really significant crises in their households and in those families. Of those receiving working-age income support payments, 97 per cent renting privately are in housing stress by any definition. This is completely unacceptable. And the minister boasts about his government's achievements for renters. What a bizarre set of statements! More than half of those renters are paying over 50 per cent of their income in rent, significantly above the 30 per cent threshold for housing stress. In a wealthy country like ours, women and kids should not be sleeping in cars because of a failure of government to deliver a decent housing policy and to come clean to this Senate with the workings behind their housing policies.

Our so-called affordable housing system is anything but. 'Affordable housing' is a scam. It has definitions that benefit developers, and they are diverse definitions across our country. When so-called affordable housing is set at the market rate in a housing crisis where housing prices have increased by 400 per cent in the past three decades—that is not affordable by anyone's definition. Tying household affordability to market rates when they're out of control is ridiculous. It is wrong and it's disadvantaging millions of Australians. And, after the 25-year subsidy period ends for those so-called affordable housings, these so-called homes of affordability will transition back to market housing. Fake affordable housing built by private property developers is not going to solve the housing crisis. We need public housing.

Where are the propositions coming forward from Labor? They are not there. Instead, today we celebrate the five-year anniversary of the most massively poorly structured spend in AUKUS, which is going to cost billions of dollars, and we cannot fix a housing crisis for the millions of Australians seeking a roof over their heads. The government's primary funding vehicle for social and affordable housing, the HAFF, is failing. It's too slow. It's too small. It's too complicated. We need real solutions from Labor, and we need our state governments—Labor in Melbourne and in Sydney—to stop knocking down public housing and come forward to this Senate, to this parliament, with solutions that will actually deliver for those many families who are living in serious stress that is shaping the lives of so many kids into the future.

If you haven't got a roof over your head, it's really hard to hold down a job. It's really hard to get access to the health and education that you know you and your family need. We need to see a minister who comes to this chamber and tells us about their policies, shows us the workings and delivers on a policy that really assists those Australians in severe crisis. (Time expired)

Senator BELL (New South Wales—One Nation Whip) (12:17): I rise to take note of the minister's explanation. Let me start off by saying that we're no longer dealing with one housing crisis in this country. We're dealing with four, because Australians are struggling to buy; renters are now being smashed by higher rent; recent buyers are now carrying huge mortgages, and, in growing numbers, they're watching their equity disappear; and now the pipeline of new homes we desperately need is collapsing. Housing Industry Association data released just this morning shows new-home sales in Victoria have fallen 27 per cent. Across Australia, they fell 10 per cent in August and almost 20 per cent over winter, and the HIA says that means fewer homes will be started next year.

So, when the Senate asks for more information in regard to the Labor government's five per cent deposit scheme and continues to get back documents that are heavily redacted and insufficient, then we have every right—in fact, we have an obligation on behalf of the Australian people—to continue to insist that they comply. We need to understand what it is that is at the heart of these terrible failures from this government that is so dramatically hurting the Australian people in the housing market—hurting renters and driving up prices—because that is where the Labor government's housing policy has got us. We're at the point where Labor has managed to fail Australians at every point in the housing market. This is why the documents the Senate has ordered are so important.

Labor's answer to unaffordable housing has been to let first home buyers enter the market with a deposit as small as five per cent. It seems that that is not making houses cheaper. It's not leading to more houses being built. It's simply allowed a buyer to take on a larger mortgage with a much thinner equity buffer. That matters a lot more now than it did when Labor was selling the scheme, because interest rates are going up and they're going to continue to go up. I think we are staring down the barrel of a couple more interest rate rises this year. The pain and suffering that's going to inflict on a lot of people who Labor claim to be helping is, I think, hard to measure at this stage. So we need to see the modelling. We need to see the detail behind this scheme to make sure that, when these problems that do arise are hurtling towards us like a steam train, we know how to deal with them. But Labor continues to hide this information from the Senate.

More analysis, from Cotality this time, shows that around one-third of homes bought since August last year are now valued below their purchase price. Aussie Home Loans say that 20.7 per cent of Australians who bought since July 2023 now have less than 20 per cent equity in their home, and the average mortgage is around $646,000. These are not people sitting on enormous gains built up over decades. These are recent buyers, many of them exactly the sorts of people Labor said they were helping. Well, it doesn't look like you're helping. It looks like you are pushing them towards more pain, more suffering, higher mortgages, less money for the groceries and less money for their future. Some are finding it harder to refinance because they now simply don't have enough equity. They are in what is termed a 'mortgage prison'—that is where the term 'mortgage prison' comes from. If you go into a home with a five per cent deposit, you have very little room for prices to move against you. A modest fall can wipe out that buffer, but the debt is still there and the repayments are still there. What did Treasury tell government about that risk? I think the Senate has every right to know. Did it model falling prices? Did it model refinancing problems for highly leveraged buyers? Did it look at what happens when rising repayments and falling values hit at the same time? If that work was done, why does Labor still refuse to release it?

This scheme goes to the heart of the mistakes that Labor keeps making on housing. It keeps treating a housing shortage as though it's a finance problem. Australian doesn't have too few mortgages. Australia has too few homes and too many migrants, and today's figures show that problem is getting worse. Yet Labor spent years driving demand higher through record migration while failing to get enough homes built. It has pushed more people into the market without fixing the shortages underneath it. Then it tries to paper over the problem—and then, when we ask to see the information behind your decisions, you refuse to hand it over, and now we're seeing the results. People still trying to buy face huge prices, renters are still paying enormous rents, recent buyers are now trapped with large debts and shrinking equity, and the supply pipeline is weakening—four crises all at the same time, and Labor needs to own every one of them.

There are other ways to deal with this. One Nation's approach is to deal with the cause: get migration back to sustainable levels, take pressure off demand and work on getting the cost of building down. But ultimately this government should release the documents and explain exactly what advice it received before encouraging more first home buyers to take on this risk.

Senator BRAGG (New South Wales) (12:22): In taking note of this ridiculous explanation, if you could call it that, I again remind the Senate that the government has actually produced extensive amounts of modelling; it's just that it's been redacted. The Treasury was commissioned by this government as an afterthought—after it announced its radical restructuring of the five per cent deposit scheme, where it abolished the place caps and abolished means testing—to do this modelling, and that basic modelling should be made available to the Australian public for their inspection. It is not a secret cabinet document; it is the modelling which may underpin a cabinet judgement, but it is the modelling which proves that the government knew that there were risks in unbundling this scheme from its means testing and its place caps. For the minister to come in here week in, week out and say, 'We're not going to give you the modelling; we're going to trample over the powers of the Senate,' shows their disdain for democracy and it shows their disdain for the process and operation of this parliament. It is not true to claim that modelling which underpins a cabinet judgement is a cabinet document. It is not true and the minister needs to go back to school and learn a few things.

We are fortunate to live in a country where we can also try and get the information through the FOI process, as established by the Fraser government. The Information Commissioner is currently reviewing this case, and I'm sure when it gets to it—because it's backlogged with all the other cases—it will find that this document should be produced for public inspection. So we won't give up on that, because, if we gave up on the task of trying to get information which is germane to policy judgements, when they go wrong, as they have here, we would be giving up on our jobs as representatives, and we shouldn't waste taxpayer funds to come to this Bush Capital to do that work.

The problem here is that the government is afraid that they will be embarrassed, but they won't be embarrassed, because they will be seen as doing the right thing by the Australian people by being transparent. They campaigned on the promise that they would be transparent, but the Centre for Public Integrity says they are the most secretive government since the Keating government, as judged by their record on responding to Senate orders and by their record on responding to freedom of information requests. I say to the government again that you are adults and that you are responsible people. You've been elected by the Australian people. Do the right thing and provide the information that has been ordered, not by the Liberal Party and not by the National Party but by this crossbench and the opposition. That is a reasonable cross-section of this parliament, which you should pay respect to, not because of who we are but because of who we represent in the Australian society.

The five per cent deposit scheme has been a massive failure, because we know that the modelling that was done, even though it's been covered up, couldn't have been right, because the Prime Minister's claim that it would push up prices by 0.6 per cent over six years was thrown out in the first six months of the scheme's operation, where we saw a 6 per cent increase in entry level house prices. So we know it's wrong, but, of course, this government has got everything wrong in housing. Their Housing Australia Future Fund has had three years, has had 10 billion bucks and has built about 1,000 houses, half of which it has bought, not built. Who could believe the government's housing scheme would buy as many houses as it's actually built itself?

Then we have these taxes, which have made a bad situation much worse. We have a new system of taxation where we have higher rents, fewer first home buyers and fewer houses. For a government which has collapsed housing supply by 30,000 houses each year compared to the last government, should we be surprised that they have a budget which designs deliberately to suppress supply by another 35,000? The answer is no. This government has a deliberate policy to reduce housing supply. Because of that, we now see fewer houses, we see higher rents, and we see fewer home loans. Last week we heard in the Senate committee that the National Australia Bank has seen a 15 per cent reduction in home loans going to owner-occupiers. You have to ask yourself: who wins from these new taxes? It's not renters, it's not homeowners, and it's not investors. It's no-one. No-one wins from high taxes, just like very few people win from the five per cent deposit scheme, which has pushed up prices for people who can least afford it. And you can bet London to a brick that no-one has won from this housing future fund, which has spent 10 billion bucks to build only 1,000 houses over two years. We will never give up on trying to get to the bottom of these things, because you are wasting taxpayer funds, you are wasting public resources, and the Australian people won't stand for it.

Question agreed to.

The CHAIR (12:28): The committee is considering the Wage Justice for Early Childhood Education and Care Workers (Special Account) (Extending Support and Strengthening Safety) Bill 2026 and the deferred division on the amendment moved by Senator O'Sullivan on sheet 4098. The question is the amendment on sheet 4098 be agreed to.

Senator GALLAGHER (Australian Capital Territory—Minister for Finance, Minister for the Public Service, Minister for Women, Minister for Government Services and Manager of Government Business in the Senate) (12:37): I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Senator CAROL BROWN (Tasmania) (12:38): I rise to support the Health Legislation Amendment (Improving Choice and Transparency for Private Health Consumers) Bill 2026. Australians can compare the prices of flights, hotel rooms or household appliances in a matter of minutes, but, when a GP refers someone to a specialist, finding out what that care is likely to cost can be harder. That is not a small problem. In 2024-25, more than 800,000 Australians delayed or missed specialist care because of cost. A 2025 Grattan Institute report found that average out-of-pocket costs for specialist attendance had risen by 73 per cent in real terms since 2010, with the average out-of-pocket costs for those who paid a bill reaching $300 in 2023. When somebody is worried about their health, they should not always have to navigate a system where the price is unclear until the bill arrives. That's what this bill is about—more information, more transparency and more protection for consumers.

Schedule 1 deals with transparency. The Medical Costs Finder was supposed to help Australians understand the likely costs of specialist care, but the voluntary model simply did not work. The former government spent $24 million establishing the website. By the end of 2022, of around 6,300 eligible specialists in the 11 specialist specialities included at the time, just six doctors had chosen to display their fee information. Even three years later, only around 88 doctors were voluntarily displaying their fees. This is not meaningful transparency. This bill fixes that problem by allowing information already held by government through Medicare, hospitals and private health insurers to be published through the Medical Costs Finder. That can include information about individual medical practitioners, the fees they charge, where they practice, relevant Medicare benefits, and the likely out-of-pocket costs for patients. Importantly, medical practitioners will not have to manually upload this information. The system will draw on administrative data already collected. Equally importantly, patient privacy is protected. No patient information will be published.

The principle here is straightforward. If people are expected to make choices about their health care, they need useful information on which to base these choices. Fees can vary significantly between specialists, between practitioners and between locations. For a Tasmanian considering specialist treatment, being able to see where a practitioner works, what they generally charge and what the likely gap might be gives them a clearer indication of the costs before they make that decision. It will not make every specialist consultation cheap, but it gives patients information they have not had before, and that gives them more power to ask questions, compare options and make an informed decision.

Schedule 2 deals with another consumer issue, product phoenixing in private health insurance. Product phoenixing is where an insurer closes an existing product and then opens an identical or very similar product at a higher premium or makes changes that reduce the value of the cover without the normal level of ministerial scrutiny. People who pay for private health insurance are entitled to confidence that the product that they are buying represents fair value and that the rules cannot simply be worked around. This bill closes that loophole. Private health insurers will be required to seek ministerial approval for premiums on proposed new products and, where certain changes are made to existing products that reduce cover, benefits or the value of terms and conditions. In other words, an insurer should not be able to avoid scrutiny simply by giving essentially the same product a new name or reshaping it in a way that leaves consumers worse off. The bill also puts the annual premium approval process on a clearer legislative footing. These measures have been welcomed by consumer organisations, and both the Australian Medical Association and Private Healthcare Australia have supported the broad direction of the legislation. This is another part of the Albanese Labor government's broader work to make health care more affordable, accessible and fair.

For Labor, health is not an optional extra. It's one of the central responsibilities of government. We built Medicare, and we are strengthening it. We have made the biggest investment in Medicare in its history. We have expanded bulk-billing incentives. We have established Medicare urgent care clinics so Australians can receive fully bulk-billed urgent care without having to go to a hospital emergency department. We have also delivered the largest cut to the maximum cost of a general PBS script in the history of the scheme. The maximum price has fallen from $42.50 in 2022 to $25, while the concessional co-payment is frozen at $7.70 until 2030. These things matter because health is also a cost-of-living issue. A family budget does not distinguish between the grocery bills, the power bill, the cost of a prescription and the cost of seeing a doctor or specialist. They all come out of the same household income. That is why our approach to health has been practical: make GP care more affordable, make medicines cheaper, provide more free urgent care, strengthen Medicare, and, through this bill, make sure people have better information about specialist costs and stronger protections when they pay for private health insurance.

Medicare remains the foundation of our health system, but many Australians also use private health insurance and private specialist care, and they deserve a system that is clear and fair. Strengthening Medicare is not only about what happens when somebody walks into a GP clinic. It's also about making the wider health system easier to navigate and ensuring patients are treated with respect when they move between primary care, specialist care, hospitals and private insurance.

This bill delivers two election commitments: it delivers greater transparency on patient medical fees, and it outlaws product phoenixing. Both changes put consumers in a stronger position. Australians should be able to know more about what their care is likely to cost before they receive the bill, they should be able to compare their options, and people paying for private health insurance should know that insurers cannot sidestep the normal scrutiny of premium changes by repackaging products. This is practical health reform. It is about transparency, affordability and fairness. It's another step in the Albanese Labor government's work to strengthen Medicare and make our health system work better for Australians. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Senator RUSTON (South Australia—Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) (12:46): I too rise to speak on the Health Legislation Amendment (Improving Choice and Transparency for Private Health Consumers) Bill 2026. Let me say right from the outset that the coalition absolutely supports transparency in health care. We support it because we believe in it and because we built the very tool this bill is seeking to expand. It was the coalition that established the Medical Costs Finder back in 2019 so Australians could go online and get a sense of what they might pay before they walked into a specialist room. So, when the government says it wants more transparency for patients, it will find no argument from us on that principle. The coalition will not oppose this bill.

But supporting transparency in principle is not the same as accepting that this bill, as drafted, gets it entirely right, because it doesn't. And we are not alone in saying so. The committee heard it, the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills flagged it, and stakeholders have raised it.

Let's be clear about why this matters to ordinary Australians. Out-of-pocket costs in this country have reached record highs. For a visit to a medical specialist, just 28 per cent of services are bulk-billed and the average out-of-pocket cost is more than $123. For anaesthetics, fewer than nine per cent are bulk-billed and the average gap is almost $245.

It gets worse. Research by Redbridge found that around 30 per cent of Australians referred to a specialist over the past three years did not go, because they were worried about what it was going to cost them. Think about that. Almost a third of people told by their own GP that they needed to see a specialist decided that they could not afford to find out what was wrong with them. That is the human cost of a system where prices are hidden and costs keep climbing.

And the variation is extraordinary. Data from Cleanbill shows that, in the very same local area, GP fees can vary by up to 133 per cent and dermatologist fees by up to 93 per cent—the same suburb, the same service and the patient has no way of knowing whether they are paying a fair price or twice the going rate. So, yes, transparency can help but only if it is done properly.

If you're going to put prices in front of patients, those prices have to be accurate, they have to be fair, and they have to actually help someone make the decision. As it stands, this bill falls short on all three of those things. That is why the coalition will move a series of sensible, practical amendments. The first and, to my mind, the most important, goes to whether this website will actually be useful to the person sitting at their kitchen table who is trying to use it. As drafted, the bill could see a single figure published next to a service, but a single number can be incredibly misleading. So the coalition will move to require that Medical Costs Finder displays proper context—the median fee and the typical range of fees for a given service. A patient does not just need to know what one doctor charges. They need to know whether that price is at the low end, the high end or right in the middle. Give people the range, and you give them the power to ask the one question every consumer is entitled to ask: am I being charged a fair price?

The second amendment goes to accuracy and fairness. This website will draw on government billing data and publish information about individual clinicians. Inevitably, some of that information will be wrong. The question is: what happens when the information is wrong? Under this bill, the answer is simply not good enough. The coalition will move to require that, when information about a clinician is disputed and subject to review, it must come down off the website immediately and stay down until that review has been completed, not left up there for weeks or months quietly misleading patients and unfairly tarnishing a doctor's reputation. If the data is under a cloud, it should come down and it should be checked for accuracy. That is basic fairness, and it's exactly what stakeholders, including medical colleges, have been asking for.

The third amendment makes transparency an ongoing commitment, not a one-off press release. The coalition will move to require the minister to publish an annual report on what this data is actually telling us—the trends in the median prices and the variation between regions. Australians have a right to know whether out-of-pocket costs are going up or going down, and they have a right to know whether, in this country, your postcode is deciding what you pay for your healthcare. Sunlight should not be switched off the day after the minister's media release has been written.

My fourth point goes to the second half of the bill, the premiums. The government says it wants to stamp out product phoenixing, where an insurer quietly closes a product and reopens an almost identical one at a higher price. That is a worthy goal, and we support it, but the drafting goes well beyond that. As written, an insurer would need the minister's approval to launch any new product at all, with no cap on the fees that can be charged to apply and no deadline for the minister to actually decide. The coalition will move two practical fixes. First, cap those application fees to the genuine cost of processing them. This is a concern of the scrutiny of bills committee as well. Second, give the minister 30 days to make a decision, with approval deemed to be granted if he sits on his hands and doesn't respond in that timeframe. The last thing Australians need is a fix for phoenixing that becomes a handbrake on choice and yet another cost quietly passed back to them through their premiums.

Let us not pretend that a website is a substitute for action on the cost of healthcare under this government. This is a government that has presided over a private health premium increase of 4.41 per cent, the largest in eight years and above the rate of inflation. This is a government under which Australians are, for the first time in Medicare's history, paying more than $50 on average for out-of-pocket costs just to see their GP. This is the same Labor Party that cut the private health insurance rebate, a decision that continues to push up the cost of cover for millions of families to this very day. It is the same Labor Party whose health minister once said in as many words that she paid for the government's promises by targeting health insurance.

So, as I said, transparency is welcome, but transparency about a rising bill does not make the bill any smaller. Australians do not just want to see the costs. They want a government that actually does something about it. So let me be clear about where the coalition stands. We will not stand in the way of this bill. We support genuine transparency, and we always have. But we will move amendments to make the scheme accurate, fair and genuinely useful for the patient and to make sure a sensible fix on premiums doesn't become just another cost passed on to consumers.

I commend our amendments to the Senate and I urge the government and the crossbench to support them, because Australians deserve nothing less than a transparency scheme that actually works.

Senator ANANDA-RAJAH (Victoria) (12:54): I rise to speak on the Health Legislation Amendment (Improving Choice and Transparency for Private Health Consumers) Bill 2026. Australians have been approaching their medical specialist care with trepidation. They are fearful of bill shock, burnt by highly variable out-of-pocket fees that are declared too late in the patient journey, often once the therapeutic alliance between doctor and patient has been forged. The effect has been an erosion of confidence in the private health system and, worse still, delayed care, because the current financial consent process is not working for them. This is exposing Australians to financial toxicity when they see medical specialists for care. Let's take a knee replacement. Private Healthcare Australia has the median fee for that operation last year at $1,080, but one in 10 patients was charged more than $5,300, nearly five times that price.

So what does that uncertainty actually do? The ABS Patient Experiences survey found that more than 1.9 million Australians delayed or did not see a specialist due to cost in 2024-25. The increase in specialist out-of-pocket costs over recent years has outpaced general price growth. For example, the average out-of-pocket cost for an initial specialist consultation went from around $94 in 2016, 10 years ago, to $158 in 2025, a 67 per cent increase. By comparison, the CPI or inflation rose by 32 per cent over the same time.

Specialists will argue that their costs have increased over time, and they have, due to a number of factors: rent on rooms; consumables; equipment; staff wages; medical indemnity, which tends to track with litigation across the entire medical profession; and income protection—to name a few. They may also argue that the Medicare rebate is insufficient for some procedures, such as complex surgeries that may sometimes take between eight and 10 hours at a time. I can think of several, such as a AAA repair. That is when an aortic aneurysm is repaired. It is very long surgery. Ivor Lewis oesophagectomy is usually surgery for cancer of the oesophagus. It is a major operation. And there are types of reconstructive surgery, such as head and neck, or even other types, to name a few. They are usually for cancer.

The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing released its consultation paper on specialist affordability, and the numbers in it are telling. On six million occasions, Australians were charged between three and five times the benchmark fee to see a specialist. But on 1.24 million occasions last year, Australians were charged more than five times the benchmark fee. Out-of-hospital out-of-pocket costs have jumped by roughly 67 per cent since 2019. I want to be clear that excessive out-of-pocket fees are confined to a very small minority of specialists. The vast majority are doing the right thing. Providers recognise their ethical obligation to ensure the fees they charge are reasonable. This is shared by the AMA, who have stated that they do not support egregious charges—fees that the majority of practitioners would consider unacceptable. However, existing guardrails like professional standards and frameworks and, indeed, peer review and peer pressure for ethical billing are not preventing this behaviour.

The risk here is that excessive out-of-pocket fees can become normalised, driving up fees across the entire market. A Consumers Health Forum survey released in February found consumer fees were the single biggest cost worry when dealing with a new health issue, with 86 per cent of respondents citing it as a concern. Patients with complex chronic health conditions are particularly exposed to the cumulative impact of financial burden. These may be, for example, patients with chronic complex conditions like psychiatric conditions or cancer care. Patients with these conditions will often have limited ability to shop around or to even change providers. Often, once a therapeutic alliance is forged, it is almost impossible to change. When I say that, I mean it's difficult. Patients and doctors—it's a special bond. They become wedded. Patients become wedded to their specialist. They have confidence and so on and so forth, but they're then also, in some cases, exposed to excessive fees, particularly when public services are limited in a region or there is limited competition.

Information asymmetry is another issue, with patients having limited knowledge of what a service should cost. They may have to shop around or rely on their GP, who is also, to some degree, in the dark. The combined effect of limited transparency, the imbalance of power between provider and patient and excessive fees is compromising access to and affordability of specialist services and is undermining confidence in private health insurance. People are questioning whether they are getting value for money from their private health insurance, and this is all occurring in the context of cost-of-living pressures.

When we came to government, we thought this problem had been fixed. The coalition spent around $24 million of taxpayers' money building the Medical Costs Finder, a website whose entire purpose was to tell Australians what their specialist would charge, and then they made it voluntary. By the end of 2022, out of roughly 6,300 eligible specialists across the 11 specialities on that site, six had published their fees—not six per cent but six doctors. Three years after, it was about 88. Again, it was not 88 per cent but 88 individual doctors, or somewhere around 1.4 per cent. On the insurer's side, it was every bit as voluntary and every bit as ignored. Only about three insurers ever bothered to volunteer their data. That's three. That is what happens when you build a website, cut a ribbon and then disappear. This bill finishes the job.

Instead of waiting for specialists to volunteer, the government will now publish the Medicare hospital and insurer billing data it already collects, backed by a $7 million investment in the technical capability to do that. There is no new paperwork for doctors. The data already exists. We are simply going to show it to the people who are paying those bills. What does it look like? Mock-ups were sought at our committee hearing on 7 April, and that's freely available, if anyone wants to have a look at them. The department has provided these to our committee, and these are early drafts, built on years of research and extensive consultation with the colleges, craft groups, consumers and insurers. These stakeholders all participated in multiple meetings helping to co-design this website and co-design this law.

You search by service or by specialists. You put in your postcode and your fund, and what comes back is not one number. It is the typical specialist fee, then what Medicare pays, then what the insurer pays and then what is actually left up to you, with a low, a typical and a high side shown side by side, so there is a bit of a range there. There are filters for distance, for gender, for language spoken and for speciality. There is a 'last updated' date on the page, and there is a tool that lets you compare how often each insurer has a no-gap arrangement in your state. It's a range. It's not just a single figure.

I did ask the department something else during that hearing: alongside the aggregate fee and the range, would there be qualitative information—something the specialists themselves can craft—and how easy would it be for them to update it? There will be a free-text box, limited in size, for the specialist doctor to give context to their published fees. If you see more complex patients, you say so, and the provider portal already exists. It will have information like fellowships, meaning the qualifications, teaching practices, participation in clinical quality registries—all fields built off feedback from the profession itself.

I think this context is actually important. All specialists are not equal. Specialists tend to then subspecialise into very niche areas in medicine. I can give you a couple of examples. For example, there may be only a couple of people in an entire state who will have the expertise to remove pacemakers when they become infected, which is highly dangerous and very risky and can cause, for example, ventricular rupture and occasionally need to be done when pacemakers become infected. These people are not just down the road. They usually work in tertiary hospitals. They might also be in private practice, but there's only a handful of them in an entire state. That's one example.

Another example might be orthopaedic surgeons who specialise in removing infected joints. Again, these don't happen very often, but if a joint becomes infected it is a catastrophe. It is a catastrophe for the patient. It is a catastrophe for the treating surgeon and for the entire treating team, because it can take up to two years to actually gain control of an infection. What often does happen is that that joint needs to be removed and antibiotic-impregnated cement put in, and then the patient is on prolonged courses of antibiotics, which often have some pretty awful side effects. The surgeons who remove those joints, again, are a minority. They are dealing with complex patients and prolonged surgeries. Sometimes these patients need multiple surgeries. Those are only two examples. There is complexity in medicine. Even amongst, say, surgeons, there will be those who have to deal with the more complex of the complex cohort of patients.

This is not all that this bill does. Insurers must currently get ministerial approval before they lift a premium—that is a safeguard—so some funds have simply closed a popular gold or silver product and opened a near-identical one under a new name at a higher price. Loyal members go looking for the cover they have paid into for years and find that it no longer exists. It's called product phoenixing, and it is a rort. This bill calls time on that. From here, funds will need to get approval not just for annual rate rises but for new products and for any change that reduces the value of an existing one.

While only a minority of specialists charge excessive fees, the cost impact on affected patients is significant, and there is the risk that this could become normalised and spread to the whole market. This bill improves fee transparency and gives patients more control over their healthcare choices while also protecting the integrity of doctors and confidence in private health insurance. I commend this bill to the Senate.

Senator LIDDLE (South Australia—Deputy Opposition Whip in the Senate) (13:07): I rise to speak on the Health Legislation Amendment (Improving Choice and Transparency for Private Health Consumers) Bill 2026. The coalition will not stand in the way of this bill passing the Senate. However, we will be moving a series of substantive amendments to address the shortcomings identified through the committee process. While we support the principles behind this bill, principles alone are not enough.

This legislation makes two key changes to Australia's private health system. Firstly, it introduces transparency by default, with amendments allowing the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing to publish information on the medical costs finder about the fees charged by practitioners, including specialists and general practitioners, and the likely out-of-pocket expenses patients will face. It will be welcomed by consumers. Secondly, the bill regulates private health insurance premiums, requiring insurers to seek ministerial approval for new products and for existing products where certain changes are proposed. This change is aimed at addressing the risk of what's known as product phoenixing, where an existing insurance product is closed and a new near-identical new product is opened at a higher premium, deliberately skirting the approval process.

There's no disagreement on greater transparency in healthcare pricing and the need to help consumers make informed choices about their health care. There's no dispute. Australians deserve to know before they walk into a specialist's office roughly what it's going to cost them for that visit. It's not a radical idea; it's actually common sense. But let me be clear about why this matters so much right now.

The Labor Party will tell you that all you need is your Medicare card, but Australians know that that is not true. Just last week, my out-of-pocket expense, paid for with my credit card, was $60. What about those on fixed incomes? What about those on minimum wages, struggling to make ends meet? What about them, Labor? It is those people who are affected the most by rising costs, compounded by your reckless spending, which keeps inflation higher for longer.

Australia's private health system plays a critical role in supporting our public hospitals, with the two systems working hand in hand to ensure all Australians have access to the health care they need. When the private hospital systems and aged-care systems are not functioning correctly, our public hospitals become the waiting room for those who can go nowhere else. The private system relieves pressure on our public hospitals, and right now that could not be more critical. At a time when we are seeing record levels of ambulance ramping and increasing wait times at hospitals right across the country, this is why reforms in this space must be considered carefully. Unintended consequences are very real when you weaken the very system propping up our public hospitals.

Nowhere is the failure of the Labor government in this area to manage the delicate balance more evident than in my home state of South Australia. In my home state, the ramping of ambulances is at record levels—one of the worst performances in the country. So much for the Malinauskas government, which promised it would end ramping. Only last week, it was extraordinary to go to the Royal Adelaide Hospital and see the sea of ambulances just sitting at the front waiting to get in. The Malinauskas government promised to end ramping. In fact, they said, 'Voters, your life will depend on it.' It's now worse than ever. There's another Labor lie for you.

More than 450 older Australians currently remain in hospital despite being medically ready for discharge, leaving our public health system at breaking point. This is the reality of health care under Labor, a system where patients are stranded and hospital resources are diverted from acute care because the broader health and aged-care ecosystem is failing due to lack of care, lack of preparedness and a Labor government that can't fix it. South Australia is home to the current Minister for Foreign Affairs, as well as Labor's Minister for Health and Ageing and Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations—and another in the Minister for Trade and Tourism. There is that sort of representation from South Australia, and a Labor government in South Australia, and it's that much of a right mess.

The coalition recognised that high out-of-pocket costs for specialists are a major concern for Australians, who are struggling with the rising unaffordability of health care under this government. The out-of-pocket cost to see a GP has skyrocketed to more than $50 under this government, the highest level on record. Out-of-pocket costs for specialist appointments are spiralling too. According to the government's own most recent Medicare data, the bulk-billing rate for specialist attendances sits at just 28.2 per cent, with an average out-of-pocket cost of $124. For anaesthetics, the bulk-billing rate is just 8.7 per cent, with an average out-of-pocket cost of $245. These are not costs the average Australian can easily absorb, let alone older Australians living week to week on fixed incomes who have greater need as they age, or young families with multiple children also caught up in Labor's sick health system. This is forcing Australians to make the impossible decision to avoid seeing a doctor altogether because they simply cannot afford to seek medical attention when they need it. They're delaying it. Research conducted last year by Redbridge showed around 30 per cent of people referred to a medical specialist over the past three years did not attend due to health concerns. I'm not making it up; it's actually there. Australian families are now choosing between seeing a doctor and paying the bills. This is a choice no family should ever be forced to make.

And then there is this government's attack on the private health insurance rebate for older Australians, which sits at the heart of everything that's wrong with Labor's approach to health care. The Albanese Labor government is cutting the additional private health insurance rebate that millions of Australians aged over 65 rely on. It's an ugly way to address Labor's spending. Older Australians who did the right thing for decades, scrimping, saving and paying their own way with private health cover, are now being hit with an $11 billion tax under Labor. National Seniors Australia's own research suggests around 55 per cent of the 3.1 million older Australians set to be hit are pensioners—those who can't just take on another job. Labor is punishing those financially exposed older Australians who have worked hard their whole lives and managed their finances very carefully.

I want to put some faces to those numbers because they are not abstract statistics. These are real South Australians, but they could be Australians anywhere. In the Labor electorate of Boothby, Robert and Debra from Glenelg wrote to me and said:

I have had private health insurance ever since I started work at age 16. I am now 75. This means that I have had 59 years of continuous payments.

My wife Debra, age 68, and I are lucky to not have any ongoing health problems but maintain our gold private health insurance for the time when we might need to start claiming.

They both receive a part pension and have a fixed Public Service pension, but they're finding it difficult to make ends meet. Cash flow is a problem.

Then there's Fiona from the suburb of Black Forest—again in the Labor held electorate of Boothby—who said:

I rang Bupa this morning to discuss the rebate. I told them that after a lifetime of being privately covered, I may have to reconsider and clog up the public health system.

I have worked all my life, as a midwife and a teacher, from 17 years of age to retirement, and now as a working grandma.

It's not a made-up story; it's a very real one.

Here's a story of another real South Australian. Disability pensioner Denise's private health insurance helped pay for a hip and two knee replacements, along with other surgeries. Denise called in to ABC radio to tell listeners:

It's like a security blanket. To have that taken away from me, I would be shattered, absolutely shattered.

These are just a few of the stories behind the 3.1 million Australians set to be hit by these changes. While the government hasn't done the modelling, once again, industry research suggests that more than 250,000 older Australians will downgrade or drop their cover altogether. They'll be left with no choice, and it matters enormously, because older Australians disproportionately have gold and silver cover, which are the levels that include joint replacements, cataract surgery and other procedures that older Australians genuinely need.

Older Australians pushed off gold cover do not disappear from the health system. Instead, they end up on our already clogged elective surgery waitlists. That's what they do. Every older Australian forced to drop or downgrade their cover means longer waitlists, more ambulance ramping and worse outcomes for patients right across the board. Add to that Labor's assault on veterans through the $5,000 annual cap on allied health services. This government just sees no boundaries, only opportunities to cut, cut and cut to fill its ever deepening black hole.

The only guarantee for Australians is that Labor is not listening, and, when it runs out of money, it will come after more of yours. These rebate cuts come on top of the largest health insurance premium rebate rise in eight years—a 4.41 per cent average increase in April—impacting 15 million Australians who rely on private health insurance during this enduring cost-of-living crisis. At the worst possible time, Labor is slugging Australians with high premiums while families are already struggling to keep their heads above water. The Prime Minister waved around his Medicare card and told Australians that it would be free to see a doctor. In reality, Australians are now facing the highest out-of-pocket costs on record, and they are predicted to keep rising.

The coalition is focused on ensuring that all Australians have timely and affordable access to health care. Labor, by contrast, is focused on using Medicare as a political prop—always chasing the headline instead of delivering real outcomes for the Australians who most need them. This is not a new pattern. The former coalition government was bringing private health insurance premium increases under control, delivering the lowest annual premium changes in two decades, with increases progressively getting smaller year on year. But, under Labor, that trend has completely reversed. It has changed trajectory entirely. Premiums are now rising at the fastest rate in almost a decade, driven by the same broader economic mismanagement that has seen inflation sit consistently above RBA target bands. Wages fail to keep pace and business operating costs continue to spiral.

I want to bring this back to South Australia now. My home state has the highest proportion of older Australians on the mainland, and they are the ones who will wear the cost of these changes the hardest. State Labor took a promise to fix the ramping crisis to the last election, and, as I said, it has never been worse. The private health rebate exists so that older Australians' increasing healthcare needs do not place additional pressure on a public system already buckling under Labor governments. Right across South Australia, in towns like Victor Harbor, Mount Gambier, Jamestown and Streaky Bay, there are older South Australians. They're a long way from this Canberra bubble, but they will wear the changes most directly, and it will be worse for those in country towns and centres. If visitation drops because older Australians can no longer afford their private health cover, these small regional hospitals will struggle to remain viable, leaving communities with even fewer local healthcare options and more pressure on already stretched public hospitals.

The coalition supports greater transparency in this bill and a strong private health system more broadly. The coalition will not oppose this bill in the Senate, but our support comes with a clear and unambiguous message to this government. It is time for the Prime Minister to stop waving around his Medicare card for the cameras and actually start addressing the rising affordability crisis facing Australian patients, one that his government's own economic mismanagement has directly caused. Older Australians built this country. Army, Air Force and Navy veterans fought for this country. They deserve a government that backs them, not one that taxes them, strips their rebates and leaves them with an impossible choice between their health and their household budget.

In conclusion, this bill is in part about transparency and publishing costs for medical practitioners, but it must be said that the real issue here is that this bill doesn't recognise that consumers are paying so much more under this Labor government, and it is because of their economic vandalism.

Senator McALLISTER (New South Wales—Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) (13:21): I thank senators who have contributed to the debate on the Health Legislation Amendment (Improving Choice and Transparency for Private Health Consumers) Bill 2026. It has, as is so often the case in the Senate, been a wide-ranging debate, and many senators have chosen to put on record their thoughts about Australia's health system. I want to make just a couple of points to that end.

The first is this. This government is making a record investment in Medicare, an $8½ billion investment, and that investment has been necessary because of the disgraceful way that public health was ignored and diminished under the previous Liberal government. When we came to government, in the words of our national medical organisations, bulk-billing was in freefall. As a consequence of the changes we are making, we are seeing bulk-billing rates rise again. That is incredibly important because public health matters. When you wish to see a doctor, the only card you should need is a Medicare card. Our government is unapologetic about that. That is why we are making the investments that we are.

It's also why we are investing in urgent care clinics, clinics that mean that, if you have a cut, a sprain or another injury that falls short of what would require an emergency department, you can see a doctor for free. It's important for the families and individuals that are accessing those services. It's also important for hospitals because it is taking pressure off the emergency rooms in hospitals. Again, the government understands that the cost of medicine is an area where we can intervene and make a difference, so medicines this year on the PBS are $25 per script. The cost of medicine has not been that low since 2004.

So I say to senators that this government, unlike the last one, does in fact understand the importance of health care in the lives of Australians. We as a government consequently understand our obligation to invest in health care for all Australians. This bill is part of improving the structure of healthcare delivery in this country. Schedule 1 makes important changes to support greater transparency in healthcare pricing. It helps Australians make more informed decisions about their private healthcare choices, and it does that by providing consumers with more detailed information on the expected medical fees to be charged and likely out-of-pocket costs for their private healthcare experience.

Right now, consumers have a lot more information about routine goods and services that they purchase than they do about their healthcare choices, but those healthcare choices have a profound impact on their quality of life. Without passage of this schedule, we will continue to see many Australians not knowing what their private healthcare journey will cost and being unable to easily compare the cost of alternative providers and therefore unable to make an informed choice about their health care.

Schedule 2 strengthens ministerial oversight of private health insurance premiums and ensures that consumer interests are better protected. To allow insurers to close an existing product and open an identical or similar new product at a higher premium without ministerial scrutiny presents an unacceptable risk to private health insurance customers that needs to be stopped. This will be achieved by requiring ministerial approval not just for proposed premium changes but also when an insurer proposes to open a new product or reduces the coverage, benefits or terms and conditions of a product. Changes are also being made to formalise and enhance the process for approval of premiums. The arrangements are substantially aligned with how the annual premium round has been managed in recent years.

I very much appreciate work of the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee in scrutinising this bill and the report that they produced, and I thank those senators who participated in those processes and acknowledge the then chair, Senator Dorinda Cox. I also appreciate the stakeholders who have engaged in good faith with the government on this bill, and I can indicate that, when we do come to the committee stage, there is a government amendment that I intend to move.

We continue to more broadly consider reform options to improve the value of private health insurance and support consumers to make informed decisions about their health care, but these reforms before us today are an important step in helping consumers make informed choices about health care and improving confidence in private health insurance.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Senator McALLISTER (New South Wales—Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) (13:26): by leave—I move:

(1) Clause 2, page 2 (table items 2 and 3), omit the table items, substitute:

(2) Schedule 1, item 1, page 5 (after line 3), at the end of section 124ZY, add:

(8) The Secretary may, on the Secretary's own initiative or as a result of a review under a determination under section 124ZYA, correct, update, alter or remove information published under this section.

(3) Schedule 1, item 1, page 5 (lines 4 to 15), omit section 124ZZ, substitute:

124ZYA Review of decision to publish information

(1) The Minister may, by legislative instrument, determine procedures for reviewing decisions to publish information under section 124ZY (including decisions to correct, update, alter or remove such information).

(2) Without limiting subsection (1), the determination may provide for any of the following:

(a) who may, or may not, apply for review of a decision;

(b) kinds of decisions that are, or are not, subject to review;

(c) circumstances in which an application may, or may not, be made;

(d) who is to review a decision.

124ZZ Use and disclosure of information

Use or disclosure to assist Secretary or reviewer

(1) A person may use or disclose information for the purposes of:

(a) assisting the Secretary to publish, correct, update, alter or remove information under either or both of the following provisions (the publication provisions):

(i) section 124ZY;

(ii) section 324-5 of the Private Health Insurance Act 2007; or

(b) assisting a person to carry out a review under a determination (a review determination) under:

(i) section 124ZYA; or

(ii) section 324-7 of the Private Health Insurance Act 2007.

Note: This subsection constitutes an authorisation for the purposes of the Privacy Act 1988 and other laws (including the common law).

(2) To avoid doubt, the reference to using information in subsection (1) includes a reference to linking or matching information.

Disclosure to person about whom information is published

(3) The Secretary may disclose information to a person:

(a) in the course of deciding what information to publish about the person under either or both of the publication provisions; or

(b) in the course of deciding whether to correct, update, alter or remove information published about the person under either or both of the publication provisions; or

(c) in order to inform the person about how information published about the person under either or both of the publication provisions was, or is to be, worked out.

Note: This subsection constitutes an authorisation for the purposes of the Privacy Act 1988 and other laws (including the common law).

Disclosure in the course of review

(4) A person carrying out a review under a review determination may, in the course of carrying out the review, disclose information to the person who applied for the review.

Note: This subsection constitutes an authorisation for the purposes of the Privacy Act 1988 and other laws (including the common law).

Information may relate to other people

(5) To avoid doubt, information disclosed to a person (the disclosee) under subsection (3) or (4) may include information about other people as well as the disclosee, or instead of the disclosee.

(4) Schedule 1, item 2, page 8 (after line 14), after subsection 324-5(7), insert:

(7A) The Secretary of the Department may, on the Secretary's own initiative or as a result of a review under a determination under section 324-7, correct, update, alter or remove information published under this section.

(5) Schedule 1, item 2, page 9 (lines 6 to 17), omit section 324-10, substitute:

324-7 Review of decision to publish information

(1) The Minister may, by legislative instrument, determine procedures for reviewing decisions to publish information under section 324-5 (including decisions to correct, update, alter or remove such information).

(2) Without limiting subsection (1), the determination may provide for any of the following:

(a) who may, or may not, apply for review of a decision;

(b) kinds of decisions that are, or are not, subject to review;

(c) circumstances in which an application may, or may not, be made;

(d) who is to review a decision.

324-10 Use and disclosure of information

Use or disclosure to assist Secretary or reviewer

(1) A person may *use or *disclose information for the purposes of:

(a) assisting the Secretary of the Department to publish, correct, update, alter or remove information under either or both of the following provisions (the publication provisions):

(i) section 324-5;

(ii) section 124ZY of the Health Insurance Act 1973; or

(b) assisting a person to carry out a review under a determination (a review determination) under:

(i) section 324-7; or

(ii) section 124ZYA of the Health Insurance Act 1973.

Note: This subsection constitutes an authorisation for the purposes of the Privacy Act 1988 and other laws (including the common law).

(2) To avoid doubt, the reference to *using information in subsection (1) includes a reference to linking or matching information.

Disclosure to person about whom information is published

(3) The Secretary of the Department may *disclose information to a person:

(a) in the course of deciding what information to publish about the person under either or both of the publication provisions; or

(b) in the course of deciding whether to correct, update, alter or remove information published about the person under either or both of the publication provisions; or

(c) in order to inform the person about how information published about the person under either or both of the publication provisions was, or is to be, worked out.

Note: This subsection constitutes an authorisation for the purposes of the Privacy Act 1988 and other laws (including the common law).

Disclosure in the course of review

(4) A person carrying out a review under a review determination may, in the course of carrying out the review, *disclose information to the person who applied for the review.

Note: This subsection constitutes an authorisation for the purposes of the Privacy Act 1988 and other laws (including the common law).

Information may relate to other people

(5) To avoid doubt, information disclosed to a person (the disclosee) under subsection (3) or (4) may include information about other people as well as the disclosee, or instead of the disclosee.

(6) Schedule 1, page 9 (after line 21), after item 2, insert:

2A Subsection 333-1(1)

Omit "(other than section 66-10)", substitute "(other than a function or power mentioned in subsection (2A))".

2B After subsection 333-1(2)

Insert:

(2A) For the purposes of subsection (1), the Minister must not delegate any of the following functions or powers:

(a) a function or power under section 66-10 (approval of premiums);

(b) the power to make, vary or revoke a legislative instrument under subsection 324-7(1) (review of decision to publish information).

(7) Schedule 1, Part 1, page 9 (after line 27), at the end of the Part, add:

Division 3 — Contingent amendments

Health Insurance Act 1973

3A Subsection 131(1)

Omit all the words after "other than", substitute:

the following powers:

(a) the power of the Minister to make, vary or revoke a legislative instrument under subsection 124ZYA(1) (review of decision to publish information);

(b) this power of delegation.

3B Subsection 131(1)

Omit all the words after "other than", substitute:

the following powers:

(a) a power under Subdivision A of Division 6 of Part V;

(b) the power of the Minister to make, vary or revoke a legislative instrument under subsection 124ZYA(1) (review of decision to publish information);

(c) this power of delegation.

(8) Schedule 2, items 10 and 11, page 27 (lines 1 to 12), omit the items, substitute:

10 Paragraph 333-1(2A)(a)

Repeal the paragraph, substitute:

(a) a function or power under subsection 66-6(2) (*approved application periods for applications under section 66-8 or 66-10);

(aa) a function or power under subsection 66-8(9) or 66-10(9) (tabling reasons for refusing to approve applications under section 66-8 or 66-10);

I also table a supplementary explanatory memorandum relating to the government amendments to this bill.

I'll just make a few remarks about the government amendments. They, of course, seek to strengthen schedule 1 of the bill, and that is the schedule that provides for upgrades to the Medical Costs Finder to give consumers more detailed information about medical fees and out-of-pocket costs. These amendments provide comfort in response to some stakeholder concerns by making certain powers ordinarily associated with publication more explicit. First, they support accountability and transparency by providing a nondelegable ministerial power to establish a statutory review process for decisions to publish information on the website. Secondly, they provide an explicit power to correct, update, alter and remove information published as appropriate. This should reassure stakeholders that information can be amended, removed and kept as current as possible. Third, they provide explicit power to disclose information to people about whom the information is being published, such as specialists. This will help people understand how information about them was worked out, supporting fair publication and review.

Finally, technical amendments will ensure correct sequencing of multiple amendments to delegation of powers that are made in this bill and the Health Insurance Amendment (Incentive Payments and Other Measures) Bill 2026. Correct sequencing of amendments ensures that, if one amendment to delegation powers commences after another, it does not incorrectly override the previous amendment.

Importantly, this bill continues to protect patient privacy by ensuring that no personal information about patients will be published on the website. Overall, these amendments strengthen procedural fairness and quality assurance. They support accurate and effective operation of the fee transparency network while preserving the broader public interest in greater transparency about healthcare costs.

Senator STEELE-JOHN (Western Australia) (13:29): Does the government have further plans in relation to the reduction of specialist fees?

Senator McALLISTER (New South Wales—Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) (13:29): I think that Senator Steele-John said 'reduction'. Minister Butler has spoken about this quite regularly. The government is very concerned about the impact that specialist charges are having on patients experiencing financial stress, and the minister has consistently said that all options are on the table.

The TEMPORARY CHAIR ( Senator Sterle ): I apologise, Minister; as it is 1.30 pm, the committee will report to the Senate.

Progress reported.

Senator KOVACIC (New South Wales) (15:50): At the request of Senator Cadell, I move:

That the following bill be introduced:

A Bill for an Act to amend the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2004, and for related purposes.

Question agreed to.

Senator KOVACIC: I present the bill and move:

That this bill may proceed without formalities and be now read a first time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

Senator KOVACIC (New South Wales) (15:51): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to table an explanatory memorandum relating to the bill.

Leave granted.

Senator KOVACIC: I table the explanatory memorandum. I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

This bill rests on a simple principle—that a Veteran's health care should be determined by clinical need, not by an arbitrary dollar figure.

In the 2026-27 Budget, the Albanese Labor government announced a $5,000 annual monetary limit on Department of Veterans' Affairs funded allied health care from 1 July 2027. DVA's own material called it what it was "a cap". Veterans requiring care above $5,000 would need to apply for additional funding.

After veterans, families, providers and advocates raised the alarm, on the 31st of August, the language changed. The cap was no longer an "annual monetary limit", it had now become a "review threshold". Changing the words does not change the effect.

When a veteran approaches a $5,000 spend on allied health, the Government proposes yet another approval process.

The allied health provider would prepare a treatment request.

The veteran's usual GP would review the proposal.

And then it would be up for DVA to decide whether care above the threshold would be funded.

Our Veterans deserve a guarantee, in law, that they will not be the ones to suffer to fix Labor's budget.

If, as Labor claims, the $5,000 is only an administrative marker with no effect on treatment, there is no reason for it to trigger additional approval. If it is designed to reduce care, or to save money, the Government should say so.

The Budget papers expose this in black and white. The Government is investing $169.7 million over five years to lift allied health provider fees, and this increase is overdue and supported. For too long, inadequate DVA fees have made it harder for practitioners, particularly in regional Australia, to continue treating Veteran Card holders.

Yet the Government paired this investment with savings of $748 million over three years from the "Annual Monetary Limit" or cap, followed by $340.2 million every year on an ongoing basis. Those figures are not the footprint of a harmless administrative check, they show the measure is expected to materially reduce expenditure on Veterans' allied health care.

DVA estimates around one in ten Veteran Card holders may exceed the threshold after provider fees increase. These are not necessarily people receiving inappropriate care. They are Veterans living with complex and chronic service related conditions.

A Veteran may need physiotherapy and psychology, exercise physiology and podiatry, occupational therapy or speech pathology. Everyone understands that many will reach $5,000 quickly, especially once fees rise.

The consequences will be felt especially in regional, rural and remote communities. Veterans outside the capitals already face fewer participating providers, longer travel distances and limited alternatives when a clinician closes their books or stops accepting DVA rates. An extra approval process is not a minor inconvenience when the next suitable provider may be hours away. An interruption in treatment can mean lost mobility, unmanaged pain, deteriorating mental health and a much harder road back to independence.

This bill does not oppose clinical oversight. It does not protect fraud, duplication, unsafe treatment or inappropriate servicing and DVA must be able to act where there is genuine evidence of those things. This bill rejects using expenditure as a proxy for clinical need.

The bill prevents the Veterans' treatment framework from imposing a cap on the total cost of allied health treatment provided over a week, month, year or any other period.

It prevents a Veteran being required to pay a co-contribution or gap.

It also prevents additional review, evidence or paperwork being demanded solely or substantially because aggregate expenditure is approaching, has reached or exceeded, or is likely to reach or exceed a specified amount, and it prevents treatment being delayed, suspended, discontinued or refused for the same expenditure-based reason.

The protections extend across the principal statutory pathways under which Veterans receive treatment or compensation for treatment.

The definition of allied health in this Bill is inclusive so that the protection is not defeated because a recognised profession is omitted from a closed list or because services evolve over time.

The Senate has already demonstrated that this principle commands support as demonstrated by the Senate agreeing to amendments to the Statute Update Bill 2026 protecting Veterans' allied health care from expenditure caps and expenditure-triggered barriers.

This bill is dedicated to providing a durable vehicle to place that protection squarely in the Veterans' treatment framework.

There should be no aggregate monetary cap, and no additional review or evidentiary hurdle triggered solely or substantially by expenditure.

The Government still has time to abandon the measure.

The detailed arrangements have not been finalised and consultation is underway, however this is the right time for the Parliament to establish a statutory guardrail before Veterans and providers are forced to reorganise care around a policy intended to extract hundreds of millions of dollars in savings.

Our nation asks extraordinary things of the men and women who serve it.

When service leaves a person with injury or illness, the Commonwealth's obligation is not discharged when an app or accounting system reaches $5,000.

Veterans should not have to watch a running total and wonder whether their next appointment will trigger another approval process. Their clinicians should not have to plan care around a budget threshold and regional Veterans should not bear an even heavier burden simply because alternatives are scarce.

Clinical need must come first.

I commend the bill.

Senator KOVACIC: I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

Senator KOVACIC (New South Wales) (15:51): At the request of Senator Canavan, I move:

That there be laid on the table by the Minister for Trade and Tourism, by no later than 5 pm on Monday, 12 October 2026, all correspondence, meeting records, briefing notes, minutes and other documents created or received by Export Finance Australia between 1 March and 30 June 2026 concerning consultation with Fertiliser Australia or members of the Fertiliser Supply Working Group in relation to the Fuel and Fertiliser Security Facility, including:

(a) recommendations concerning companies that should receive access to the facility;

(b) recommendations concerning eligibility or selection criteria;

(c) recommendations concerning the structure or pricing of contracts for difference;

(d) declarations or disclosures of actual, potential or perceived conflicts of interest;

(e) arrangements for managing any disclosed conflicts; and

(f) communications involving representatives of Incitec Pivot, CSBP or Summit concerning the design of the facility prior to those companies receiving support.

Question agreed to.

Senator KOVACIC (New South Wales) (15:52): At the request of Senator Canavan, I move general business notices of motion Nos 707 and 708 together:

GENERAL BUSINESS NOTICE OF MOTION NO. 707

That there be laid on the table by the Minister for Trade and Tourism, by no later than 5 pm on Monday, 12 October 2026, all documents created or received by Export Finance Australia concerning the selection or eligibility of fertiliser companies for support under the Fuel and Fertiliser Security Facility, including:

(a) eligibility and assessment criteria;

(b) national-interest criteria;

(c) lists of fertiliser importers considered for participation;

(d) invitations or approaches made to potential participants;

(e) applications, expressions of interest or proposals received;

(f) assessments of Incitec Pivot, CSBP and Summit Rural;

(g) assessments of companies that sought or were considered for support but did not receive support;

(h) reasons for accepting or rejecting each company;

(i) advice provided by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry or the Department of Industry, Science and Resources concerning the selection of participating companies; and

(j) any consideration of whether an open, competitive or expression-of-interest process should be conducted.

GENERAL BUSINESS NOTICE OF MOTION NO. 708

That there be laid on the table by the Minister for Trade and Tourism, by no later than 5 pm on Monday, 12 October 2026, all documents created or received by Export Finance Australia between 1 April and 31 August 2026 concerning the actual or potential impact of the Fuel and Fertiliser Security Facility on competition in the Australian fertiliser market, including documents concerning:

(a) the effect of providing price-risk protection to participating companies but not to other importers or resellers;

(b) movements in Australian and international urea prices;

(c) the risk of supported companies being able to sell fertiliser below the cost faced by unsupported competitors;

(d) potential market distortion or competitive advantage arising from the facility;

(e) complaints or concerns raised by fertiliser importers, wholesalers, retailers or industry bodies;

(f) any advice received from or provided to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission;

(g) options to modify, suspend or terminate fertiliser support as market conditions changed; and

(h) any consideration of compensation or other assistance for non-participating businesses.

Question agreed to.

Senator PAYMAN (Western Australia—Australia's Voice Whip) (15:52): I move:

That there be laid on the table by the Special Minister of State, by no later than 5 pm on Friday, 25 September 2026, copies of ministerial submissions received by the Special Minister of State from the Australian Electoral Commission with parliamentary document record numbers MS25-000045, MS25-000049 and MS26-000008.

Question agreed to.

Senator DAVID POCOCK (Australian Capital Territory—Independent ACT Whip) (15:53): I, and also on behalf of Senators Faruqi, Payman and Thorpe, move:

That the following bill be introduced:

A Bill for an Act to amend the law relating to defence trade controls, investments in illegal undertakings, genocide, importation of goods and services from occupied territories, and for related purposes.

Question agreed to.

Senator DAVID POCOCK: I present the bill and move:

That this bill may proceed without formalities and be now read a first time.

The PRESIDENT: The question is that the motion moved by Senator David Pocock be agreed to.

Senator DAVID POCOCK (Australian Capital Territory—Independent ACT Whip) (16:02): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to table an explanatory memorandum relating to the bill.

Leave granted.

Senator DAVID POCOCK: I table an explanatory memorandum and seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

I rise today to speak in support of the Red Lines Package Omnibus Bill 2026.

At its heart, this bill is about a pretty simple principle.

There should be some lines that Australia is simply not prepared to cross.

We should not be supplying weapons or military technology where there is a serious risk they will contribute to genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity.

Australians' retirement savings and public money should not be financing illegal settlements or activities that contribute to genocide.

Australian businesses and institutions should have a responsibility to identify and act on genocide risks in their operations and value chains.

And Australians should not be able to profit from trade that sustains illegal settlements in occupied territories.

These should not be controversial propositions.

They should be basic standards for a country like Australia that says it believes in international law, human rights and the rules-based international order.

This bill brings those principles together into one package, covering defence trade controls, investment, genocide prevention and reporting, and trade with illegal settlements in occupied territories.

Importantly, these laws are not about picking a side in one particular conflict.

They are about establishing rules that apply consistently.

Because international law means very little if we insist on its application when it suits us and look the other way when it does not.

If we believe genocide is wrong, that must be true regardless of who is committing it.

If we believe war crimes are wrong, that must be true regardless of who commits them.

If we believe illegal occupation should not be economically sustained, that principle has to apply consistently too.

That consistency matters enormously at this moment.

I've heard from so many Australians who are deeply distressed by what they are witnessing overseas and frustrated by what they see as a gap between Australia's stated commitment to international law and the practical decisions we make about trade, investment and defence.

This legislation is an attempt to start closing that gap.

The first part of this package deals with defence exports.

Australia has a significant defence industry and increasingly sees defence exports as part of our economic and strategic policy.

But with that comes responsibility.

Schedule 1 deliberately adopts a broad definition of defence technology, goods and services. It covers not only arms, but relevant technical assistance, training, financial assistance, military personnel, technology, software and defence services.

It also strengthens end-use requirements so that there is greater accountability for where Australian defence goods and technology ultimately go and how they are used.

The principle here is straightforward: Australian weapons, technology and expertise should not contribute to genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity.

We cannot simply wash our hands of responsibility once something leaves Australian shores.

The second part of this package deals with investment.

This is increasingly important.

Australians collectively have enormous financial power through our superannuation system, while the Commonwealth manages significant public assets through the Future Fund.

Most Australians would reasonably expect that their retirement savings and public money are not being used to support serious violations of international law.

This bill puts legal obligations behind that expectation.

It establishes restrictions covering the Future Fund, registered Australian charities and superannuation entities.

For example, the bill would require the Future Fund Board to take reasonable steps to prevent investment in prohibited companies, illegal settlement activity or entities engaged in practices that may contribute to genocide risks.

And importantly, where the Board becomes aware that an investment is inconsistent with those requirements, it must promptly divest.

Again, the principle is simple.

Australia should not condemn serious violations of international law with one hand while allowing public money to help finance them with the other.

The third major element of this legislation is about prevention.

One of the things I think is particularly important about this package is that it does not treat genocide solely as something we respond to after the fact.

It asks what Australian governments, institutions and businesses can do to identify risks earlier and prevent Australian involvement.

The bill establishes a system of genocide statements, due diligence and corrective action, backed by an Australian Anti-Genocide Commissioner.

Reporting entities would be required to take reasonable measures, including appropriate due diligence, to avoid genocide risks and practices that may contribute to those risks in their operations and value chains.

They would also have to identify those risks when they arise and report them.

Crucially, this isn't intended to be a box-ticking reporting exercise.

Where risks are identified, entities are required to take action.

The Commissioner would have powers to make remediation orders, including requiring an entity to divest investments, terminate or unwind agreements, or take other specified action. Senior managers would also have a duty to take reasonable steps to ensure their organisation complies with the legislation.

That is an important shift.

Transparency matters, but transparency without action is not enough.

If an Australian institution discovers that something it is doing, buying, financing or investing in is contributing to an unacceptable risk, there should be a responsibility to do something about it.

The bill therefore establishes an independent Australian Anti-Genocide Commissioner.

The Commissioner would have functions relating to addressing genocide and supporting victims, including consultation, advocacy and inquiries.

The legislation expressly provides that the Commissioner has complete discretion in exercising their functions and is not subject to direction from anyone. Appointments would also be merit-based and publicly advertised, with candidates required to have appropriate expertise in areas including human rights, regulation or public policy relating to genocide.

I think that independence is particularly important.

Questions about Australia's involvement in conflicts overseas can be extraordinarily politically charged.

An independent office provides another mechanism for scrutiny that is grounded in evidence and law rather than the politics of the day.

The final major part of this package concerns trade with illegal settlements in occupied territories.

The bill creates offences relating to settlement goods and services and establishes enforcement mechanisms around those prohibitions.

Again, there is an important principle behind this.

If a settlement is unlawful under international law, Australia should not be helping make that settlement economically viable through our trade.

There is little point saying we do not recognise unlawful territorial acquisition while simultaneously allowing economic activity that helps sustain it.

This package is ambitious.

There will undoubtedly be debate about its details.

There should be.

These are significant legal obligations, and Parliament should properly scrutinise how they operate, whether definitions are appropriately drawn, how compliance will work and whether the institutions tasked with enforcing them have the resources and independence they need.

But we should not lose sight of the fundamental question this bill puts before us.

What responsibility should Australia take for the consequences of Australian money, Australian weapons, Australian companies and Australian trade?

For me, the answer cannot be: none.

Global supply chains and financial markets have made it increasingly easy for countries and corporations to be connected to human rights abuses thousands of kilometres away.

Distance does not make those connections meaningless.

And complexity cannot become an excuse for doing nothing.

Australia has spent decades arguing for a world governed by rules rather than simply by power.

As a middle power, we have a huge stake in that system.

But if we want other countries to respect international law, Australia has to demonstrate that we are willing to apply those principles ourselves—including when doing so is difficult.

And we have to apply them consistently.

That is one of the things I have heard most strongly from people in the ACT.

People are deeply concerned about the suffering they are seeing around the world.

They want Australia to play a constructive role.

But they also want consistency.

They don't want one standard for our friends and another for everyone else.

They want to know that when Australia says there are certain things the international community should never tolerate, we actually mean it.

Genocide.

War crimes.

Crimes against humanity.

Illegal occupation.

These are red lines.

And our domestic laws should reflect that.

This legislation says Australian weapons should not enable these crimes.

Australian public money and retirement savings should not finance them.

Australian organisations should take reasonable steps to ensure their operations and value chains are not contributing to genocide risks.

And Australian trade should not help sustain illegal settlements.

Those are serious obligations.

But they reflect the seriousness of the conduct we are talking about.

Ultimately, this bill is about ensuring that Australia's commitment to international law exists not only in the statements we make, but in the decisions we make about our weapons, our money, our businesses and our trade.

Australia cannot prevent every atrocity around the world.

But we can make sure we are not contributing to them.

We can make sure we are not profiting from them.

And we can draw clear legal red lines around what Australians, Australian institutions and Australian governments should never enable.

I commend the bill to the Senate.

Senator DAVID POCOCK: I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

Senator LAMBIE (Tasmania) (16:02): I move:

That the following bill be introduced: A Bill for an Act to amend the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2004, and for related purposes. Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment (Veterans' Healthcare Without Caps) Bill 2026.

Question agreed to.

Senator LAMBIE: I present the bill and move:

That this bill may proceed without formalities and be now read a first time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

Senator LAMBIE (Tasmania) (16:04): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to table an explanatory memorandum relating to the bill.

Leave granted.

Senator LAMBIE: I table an explanatory memorandum and seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

The Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment (Veterans' Healthcare Without Caps) Bill 2026 seeks to ensure that veterans' treatment for accepted service-related injuries, diseases or conditions should be determined by clinical need and not by an arbitrary cap.

This Bill is about a very simple principle: if a veteran needs treatment because of their service, they should be able to get that treatment. It should not come down to a number on a spreadsheet and a limit imposed by Canberra.

The final report of the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide stated: "Aspects of DVA culture, processes and systems have been consistently highlighted in previous reviews as negatively affecting the mental health and wellbeing of ex-serving ADF members."

The Commissioners were clear that access to timely health supports is key to addressing the rates of veteran suicide.

We have seen the government move towards a $5,000 threshold for allied health services. The government says it is not a cap because veterans can apply for additional treatment once they reach that threshold.

But let's be honest about what that means.

A veteran who needs ongoing physiotherapy, occupational therapy, psychology, exercise physiology or other allied health services may reach that threshold. The Veteran then has to go through another process and seek approval should they exceed the cap.

How can veterans seriously believe the Department of Veterans' Affairs will quickly approve additional treatment when the average MRCA liability claim takes over 300 days to process?

For some veterans, these services are not optional extras. They are what allows them to walk, work, manage pain, maintain their independence and participate in family and community life.

The Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide made it clear that timely, accessible and ongoing healthcare matters. Recommendations 71 and 72 are directly concerned with improving access to healthcare for veterans and strengthening the health system that supports them.

This Bill says that where a veteran has an existing entitlement to treatment, that entitlement should not be cut off because a particular amount of money has been spent or because a particular number of services has been used. That means no arbitrary limit on allied health treatment where more treatment is clinically required.

It also means the same principle can apply across other healthcare settings where necessary treatment is required. Veterans may require ongoing treatment from general practitioners and medical specialists, hospital and rehabilitation services, mental health professionals and other appropriately qualified health professionals. For some veterans, these services may be required regularly or over many years because of the nature of their service-related injury or disease. Their access to necessary treatment should not be restricted simply because a predetermined financial or numerical threshold has been reached.

I also want to be clear about what this Bill does not do. It does not mean there should be no oversight or that every treatment must automatically be funded. There should still be proper clinical governance and standards for quality and safety as well as safeguards against fraud, abuse and inappropriate provider conduct. But those safeguards should not be confused with an arbitrary financial cap.

I am calling on the major parties to put the interests of veterans first and support this Bill.

Veterans should not have to wait for another review, consultation or approval process before they can access the treatment they need. This is about making sure that when a veteran has an accepted service-related injury or disease, they can get clinically necessary treatment when they need it.

Senator LAMBIE: I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

Senator LAMBIE (Tasmania) (16:04): I move:

That there be laid on the table by the Minister representing the Minister for Veterans' Affairs, by midday on Thursday, 17 September 2026, the final report titled 'Women Veterans' Strategy' completed in 2025.

Question agreed to.

Senator KOVACIC (New South Wales) (16:05): At the request of Senator Collins, I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that:

(i) on 2 July 2026, the Senate agreed to order for the production of documents no. 552, relating to the Base Services Transformation Program, requiring the Minister representing the Minister for Defence to comply by midday on Monday, 3 August 2026,

(ii) on 30 July 2026, the Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme provided an interim response from the Minister for Defence, advising that additional time was required to comply with the order, and

(iii) the order has not been complied with; and

(b) requires the Minister representing the Minister for Defence to comply with the order by 10 am on Thursday, 17 September 2026.

Question agreed to.

Senator KOVACIC (New South Wales) (16:05): At the request of Senator McKenzie, I move:

That there be laid on the table by the Minister representing the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, by no later than midday on 12 October 2026, any documents including correspondence, file notes or decision briefs regarding the application for funding for the Carter Field upgrades at the National Hockey Centre as part of the Major and Local Community Infrastructure Program, between 1 April 2025 and 12 May 2026.

Question agreed to.

Senator KOVACIC (New South Wales) (16:06): At the request of Senator McKenzie, I move:

That there be laid on the table by the Minister representing the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, by no later than midday on 12 October 2026, any correspondence, emails, instant or other electronic messages, agendas, itineraries, meeting notes and meeting minutes, file notes and records of conversation held by the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, the minister's office or the department in relation to the Departmental Industry Forum and Airservices Australia between 1 January and 31 August 2026.

Question agreed to.

Senator KOVACIC (New South Wales) (16:07): At the request of Senator Cadell, I move:

That the following matter be referred to the Environment and Communications References Committee for inquiry and report by 31 March 2027:

The design and implementation of Commonwealth marine spatial planning and protection, with particular reference to:

(a) the scientific, environmental, social and economic basis for the Government's commitment to place 30% of Australia's marine environment in highly protected areas by 2030, including how the target is defined, applied and measured;

(b) the preparation of 6 new management plans covering 44 Australian marine parks and proposed changes affecting the Norfolk, Lord Howe and Gifford marine parks;

(c) the adequacy and transparency of consultation, First Nations engagement, scientific evidence, spatial modelling and economic analysis, including relevant findings from the Futures of Seafood project;

(d) whether existing and proposed marine park zoning delivers measurable biodiversity, habitat and fisheries outcomes, supported by effective monitoring, enforcement and review;

(e) the cumulative effects of marine parks, offshore energy development and other marine uses on First Nations, commercial and recreational fishing, seafood production and supply chains, fishing displacement and regional communities;

(f) the respective roles of highly protected areas, fisheries management, sustainable-use zoning, targeted habitat protection and other effective area based conservation measures;

(g) international approaches to balancing marine conservation, sustainable seafood production and access to marine resources;

(h) options to improve the design, implementation, transparency and periodic review of Commonwealth marine protection commitments; and

(i) any related matters.

The PRESIDENT: The question is that business of the Senate notice of motion No. 3, standing in the name of Senator Cadell, be agreed to.

Senator PAYMAN (Western Australia—Australia's Voice Whip) (16:13): I move:

That there be laid on the table by the Minister for the Environment and Water, by no later than 5 pm on Friday, 23 October 2026, copies of all ministerial submissions, briefing notes, meeting notes, emails and instant or other electronic messages between the Minister for the Environment and Water or his office and the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water that relate to the decision to no longer progress development of reforms which would have established national standards for packaging.

The PRESIDENT: The question is that general business notice of motion No. 709, standing in the name of Senator Payman, be agreed to.

Senator PAYMAN (Western Australia—Australia's Voice Whip) (16:17): I move:

That there be laid on the table by the Minister for the Public Service, by no later than 5 pm on Monday, 19 October 2026, anonymised copies of all responses and submissions made to the Remuneration Tribunal's consultation paper entitled 'Remuneration of Departmental Secretaries'.