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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 12 Hansard (7 December) . . Page.. 3919 ..
Mr Stanhope: What are you doing to protect them?
MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call the Leader of the Opposition to order. Mr Berry has the call. Address your remarks to the chair and do not bait the minister.
MR BERRY: Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, if you want to enter the debate, come down here.
MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: I do not need to enter the debate. Stick to the standing orders, Mr Berry.
MR BERRY: You can talk about what you think about a minister who says that children are being put in danger by school counsellors and you can ask a question of the Minister for Education as to what he is doing about it. I do not believe it. If there are employees out there who are endangering children, something ought to be done about it, but if there is a process which is -
Mr Moore: That is what this legislation is about, Wayne.
MR BERRY: This legislation is not about that.
Mr Moore: It is.
MR BERRY: No, no. I have heard your dissembling on several occasions before, Mr Moore, and this is no different from the usual style. These people are providing psychology services out there. It is not as if they are going to be registered just because they are providing psychology services or that they are going to be grandfathered into the profession. No, that is not going to happen at all. As I understand it, they will have to apply for registration like anybody else, and so they ought to, and it will be up to the board to make the decisions. It will be up to the board, not Michael Moore, this Assembly or anybody else.
A fully professional board made up of registered psychologists, fully qualified, will receive all of the applications from potential psychologists who would be doing the job that they have been doing in the past and consider them against all the professional criteria they have to consider them against. Minister, it is misleading in the extreme for you to say that it will be any different. If you and the education minister have any sense of responsibility about what is going on in our schools, you should climb to your feet pretty shortly and tell us why these children are in danger and what it is you have done about it, not what you are doing about it now with this piece of legislation. What have you done about it in the schools. If you think that they are in danger, what have you done about it? I want to know.
MR MOORE
(Minister for Health, Housing and Community Care) (9.31): We have all heard Mr Berry stand up in this place on many occasions and argue that black is white. The argument that I have put is that the whole reason for having a psychologists act is to protect the public. How does that protect the public, in particular our children in this case? It protects them because it makes sure that when somebody is practising as a psychologist they are not practising without the appropriate levels of qualification to be
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