The Senate has voted to extend the opt-out period for the My Health Record system to 31 January, as a fresh website outage marred Thursday’s deadline for people to remove themselves from the system.
On Wednesday the Senate narrowly rejected Labor’s push to extend the opt-out period by 12 months but passed an amendment for an 11-week extension after a crossbench compromise was accepted by the government.
From 15 November, the Australian Digital Health Agency was due to begin creating My Health Records for 17 million Australians.
But after the Senate vote the health minister, Greg Hunt, announced the government would extend the opt-out period to 31 January.
Today the Government worked with the Senate crossbench to extend the opt-out period for #MyHealthRecord.
— Greg Hunt (@GregHuntMP) November 14, 2018
The opt-out period will be extended until January 31, 2019, however, it’s important to note that people can opt-out at any time.
Earlier on Wednesday the independent MP Kerryn Phelps and Labor’s health spokeswoman, Catherine King, warned that the Coalition bill adding safeguards to the My Health Record system would not pass by the Thursday deadline, as amendments would need to go to the lower house when it returns on 26 November.
“There is widespread confusion surrounding the rollout of My Health Record,” Phelps said on Wednesday morning. “There are serious questions over privacy and security that need to be debated and legislated by the parliament.”
Phelps said that Australians with legitimate concerns about My Health Record had “little choice but to opt out until these problems are addressed”.
After an outage earlier in November the My Health Record website was down again on Wednesday morning, informing users trying to opt out that the server was “unable to fulfil the request”.
I can confirm reports that the opt-out for the My Health record site is down. Server was "unable to fulfil the request" #auspol #MyHealthRecord pic.twitter.com/7hDjZ70OFx
— Paul Karp (@Paul_Karp) November 14, 2018
People attempting to opt out took to social media to vent their frustrations.
“How do we opt out when the #MyHealthRecord website is down and the phones are jammed?” Sara Phillips tweeted.
“The #MyHealthRecord opt out webpage has crashed. Which is a perfect example of why I want to opt out in the first place,” Melbourne resident Ben Jessup tweeted.
“It just failed straight away,” Jessup told Guardian Australia.
Phelps, the former president of the Australian Medical Association, cited the outage as a further reason to extend the opt-out period.
Hearing reports of people having trouble opting out of #MyHealthRecord today as the website keeps crashing and the phones have a recorded message that they are too busy.
— Prof Kerryn Phelps AM (@drkerrynphelps) November 14, 2018
Government needs to extend the opt out period until parliament votes on amendments and public better informed
Despite numerous reports of the website outage, confirmed by Guardian Australia, the ADHA claimed that “reports that the My Health Record system is not operational are incorrect”.
“The opt-out website and the My Health Record help line are both operational,” the ADHA told Guardian Australia. “We are experiencing high demand, which has slowed the system down, and some people have experienced difficulties opting out this morning. These issues have now been resolved.”
The ADHA said people experiencing long wait times on the hotline could opt to be called back, and no record would be created in the meantime.
On Wednesday morning the Senate voted 32 to 30 to reject Labor’s 12 month extension of the opt-out period. Centre Alliance, One Nation and four other crossbench senators voted with the government against the amendment, which was backed by Labor, the Greens, Derryn Hinch and Tim Storer.
An extension to 31 January backed by Centre Alliance and One Nation passed on the voices. Senator Cory Bernardi registered his opposition but nobody – including the government – called for a division.
Centre Alliance’s health spokesman, Stirling Griff, told Guardian Australia the proposed 12-month extension was “too long” and a shorter extension of almost three months was “sufficient” given people’s minds would now be focused on the need to opt out.
Griff said Hunt and Labor both accepted the shorter extension, which was a “good result”.
King said the Morrison government had been “dragged kicking and screaming into accepting an extension to the My Health Record opt-out period”.
At 19 October 1,147,000 Australians had opted out of My Health Record but Hunt and the ADHA have refused to update these figures.
