17th Aug 2011 – Representatives National Health Reform Amendment (National Health Performance Authority) Bill 2011 - Consideration in Detail - Agree to the bill

The majority voted in favour of a motion that the bill, as amended, be agreed to.(Read more about the stages that a bill must pass through here. ) This means that the House can now consider whether to read the bill for a third time and therefore pass it in the House of Representatives.

One member of parliament, Nationals MP Tony Crook, rebelled and crossed the floor to vote 'aye' with the Government.(Read more about what it means to rebel in our FAQ Section. )

Background to the bill

The bill was introduced to establish the National Health Performance Authority, which the Government first committed to establish at the April 2010 Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting.(Read more about the bill, including its explanatory memorandum and bills digest, here. ) Although there are a number of local, state and national performance monitoring schemes already operating in the health sector, there is little nationally consistent and comparable publicly available information on providers’ performance.(Read more about the background to the bill in the bills digest. )

Establishing this authority was controversial, with supporters saying that it will encourage hospitals to improve and detractors saying that it will add to the administrative burden of the health sector.(Read more about these arguments on ABC's PM here. Read more about the concerns of the states on ABC's AM here.)

References