Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, , 2:11:17 to 2:16:18
Debate over the implementation of a human override mechanism within the aged care escalation pathway and the drafting of legislative amendments.
Topics: Social services, Law reform
Speakers: Senator The Hon Anne Ruston, Mr Blair Comley, Mr Robert Day, Unknown Speaker
He was aware of the recommendations of the draft report. He wasn't necessarily aware of whether the final report then came later. So the final report wasn't published until this week.
So Mr. Comley, are you seriously telling me that the Minister would have been of the view that the draft recommendations that had been received by you and subsequently provided to him were likely to substantially change to the effect that the Minister should be completely disregarding those draft recommendations in terms of his actions during that time?
Well, what I'm suggesting, and what's in the Minister's mind is not for me to comment, but the Ombudsman provided us a draft report for comment, which we did provide comment. It is probably true to say it's unusual for recommendations to change very substantially from a draft report to a final, but it's not unheard of that that would occur based on the feedback that occurred. But yes, I think it's fair to say that certainly I can speak for the department that the department was working on the basis that it was likely that the final form of the report would have recommendations very similar to those recommendations made in the draft report.
But you still proceeded with an alternative mechanism and disregarded the recommendation.
I wouldn't say we disregarded it. I say it was uh there's a lot of people who have input and have views about what should be done in the design of a policy. So clearly we were aware of the recommendation from the the draft recommendation from the Ombudsman, um, but there are other views as to what should constitute a process for determining a human override.
So would you accept the that the report of the Ombudsman was particularly damning of the way this particular policy has been designed and implemented?
I leave commentary to other people. We take seriously all reports by accountability bodies, we take seriously reports by the Ombudsman, we take seriously reports by the ANO, and we take it in the in the spirit of continuous improvement.
Well, clearly not serious enough to do anything about when you had an amendment before the parliament, you still proceeded with one that was outside of what was being recommended. So the exposure draft rules.
So just to be clear, um Senator Ruston, the the escalation pathway provides the avenue for a human override of a decision made based on the IAT. The Ombudsman has a different view about exactly who within the system should exercise that human override. Um I I genuinely think this is one where a reasonable people can differ as to where you want to put that human override in the system. Obviously, recognising that as we've traversed many times, there is a lot of human involvement in the inputs to the IAT, at least 125 questions.
Well, the Ombudsman did suggest that reasonable people would make take a view on this and that that the system wasn't fair and it wasn't consistent, although I did see you made a valiant attempt to get him to change his mind on that in your response back to him on the draft and clearly on the basis of every other reasonable person who doesn't agree with you, um, neither did the Ombudsman. Um but nonetheless we've now got the final report. Um the exposure draft rules that were dated on the 18th of September say they were um version 21. Do we take that to mean that there'd been 20 previous versions?
That would probably be a fair summation, Senator.
A lot of work. Um after receiving um the draft report, did the department provide any advice to government on changing the escalation pathway in relation particularly to recommendation one? Um and given that we've had 20 iterations of the rules prior to the final lot, were any of did the government the department provide advice to government recommending that changes be made?
That goes to the nature of our advice, Minister, which we don't comment on.
Okay. Um who ultimately made the decision in relation to pursuing this particular course of action?
Well, clearly the minister made the final decision because that's the policy approval for what the escalation pathway would look like.
So I'm not sure.
Thank you, Senator Ruston. Senator Stewart.