Page 842 - Week 03 - Thursday, 25 March 1993
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MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS REGISTRATION (AMENDMENT) BILL 1993
Debate resumed from 23 February 1993, on motion by Mr Berry:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
MRS CARNELL (4.19): It is with very real pleasure that on behalf of the Liberal Party I support this Bill. The Medical Practitioners Registration (Amendment) Bill 1993 has been a long time in coming, for a number of reasons, not the least being the inactivity of the Minister. Primarily, this Bill puts into place the requirements of the Mutual Recognition Bill.
Mr Berry: How many other States have done it?
MRS CARNELL: It is not for that reason, Mr Berry. We are not talking about that bit of the Bill. This means that the requirements and qualifications to register as a medical practitioner in the ACT will be the same as those elsewhere in Australia. Apart from being substantially more efficient and sensible, this will protect ACT health consumers from practitioners who may have been deregistered or convicted of an offence in another State or overseas.
It is heartening to see legislation that treats Australia as one country rather than a number of individual States. There are some downsides to this approach, because there is a potential for the lowest common denominator effect to occur; that is, for one State to adopt lower registration requirements than other States, thus allowing a flow-through effect of decreased professional standards. I believe that this Bill gives the Medical Registration Board sufficient discretion to overcome this potential problem, but a watching brief should be adopted. In principle, the adoption of mutual recognition principles should improve standards and ensure that all Australians have similar quality of medical practice.
The Bill also greatly increases the power of medical boards to discipline practitioners. For many years - and I stress many years - a number of the registration boards have been lobbying governments to give them some real teeth. Registration boards exist to protect the public, and it is incumbent on the members of the boards to ensure that the practice of their peers is of a high standard. But up until now the scope of the Medical Board to discipline practitioners has been very narrow indeed. This has caused very real problems for the board, because regularly the types of complaints received have not been serious enough to actually deregister the offender, but the capacity of the board to levy any other appropriate penalty has been very limited. In fact, the Minister has been known to be critical of registration boards for being too lenient, but the primary problem has been boards not having appropriate penalties available to them.
Mr Berry: When was I critical? Go on, tell me.
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