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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Thursday, 1 July 2004) . . Page.. 3182 ..

Whilst these bills have at their core the good principle of consolidating and updating legislation, concern has been expressed about the way in which the whole process has been handled. The bulk of the law is to be incorporated into regulations and schedules. If amendments are not moved in the detail stage those concerns will remain unanswered. When the government is looking at omnibus-type bills and it is seeking to codify the regulation of professionals in such a way, it should be aware of those concerns. I hope that the regulations and schedules address all the concerns that have been expressed by industry and by stakeholders and that we no longer need to have extensive debates about them. However, we will not be taking that leap of good faith if those amendments are not supported tonight.

MS TUCKER (5.32): These two bills are the outcome of a fairly long project, dating from a review of the legislation of health professionals which began in 1999. There are a number of features of this project that are generally supported by the professions and the community. Rather than having 10 separate acts, with their own arcane details in regard to competence, registration and standards, these bills will ensure that there is a consistent approach, with all professions governed by the same act. Details specific to the various health professions will be addressed in schedules made by regulation. There is a 12-month period for that process of working with the professional boards to determine the schedules to be completed.

Key features of this consolidation that the Greens support include community representation on the boards of health professionals and greater transparency and accountability requirements. There are real limitations with any industry or profession that is entirely self-regulating and self-governing. Consumer or community participation in these governance structures is one of the essential components of building sustainable communities. That engagement will not happen unless the structures we set up are both transparent and accountable.

Linked to those basic components is a broader shift that is reflected in this legislation. Once the right to practise, like the right to do almost anything, simply depended on whom you trained with. Once you had qualified or been accepted into the club or the profession, your place was assured—lawyers, doctors, accountants and all. There is much more emphasis now on ongoing competence, about people practising in the professions being, if not at the cutting edge, certainly not left behind. There is much closer scrutiny of people’s work. Given that, a legislative framework that can manage that scrutiny, deal with issues of competency, set out and enforce standards of behaviour, and effectively and fairly manage complaints is essential.

In this case, the balance ensures health professionals constitute the majority of persons on the relevant tribunals and panels, in addition to community representatives and a presiding magistrate. I am fairly confident that there are sufficient protections in this legislation for health professionals who are called before the tribunal panels, ranging from specific natural justice requirements to appeals to the Supreme Court.

There have been some issues that have concerned various health professionals as this legislation has come closer to coming into force. Psychologists raised the point that not all psychologists could reasonably describe themselves as health professionals and that to capture all psychologists with this legislation would create problems. The government

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