Page 856 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 16 March 2010

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The amendments I am moving today will simply ensure that the ACT does not deviate from the nationally agreed and consistent model.

I will briefly go through my substantive amendments in the order in which they appear. I will do so now before we get to the detail stage because they are relevant to the whole debate. What I will be seeking to do is remove the proposed new section 35A relating to national board consideration of criminal history, as this places a greater impost on national boards to implement for ACT-based practitioners alone.

This modification to bill B is simply impractical and, as outlined in the explanatory statement, requires a national board to apply a specific set of criteria, including case law precedents, when considering an applicant’s criminal history. One possible result of this will be that practitioners will apply for registration as ACT-based practitioners because of a perceived leniency in application criteria, and then they are free to practise their profession across Australia. This is hardly in the national interest.

On another note, I believe the government is refusing to make a technical amendment to reflect that this section should really be located in section 135 of the act and not section 35. Whilst there is nothing to prevent this from appearing in either section, I do believe it was a mistake, and an honest mistake by the government, but they are simply compounding that mistake.

The next amendment is to remove new section 150(4A). This provision closely resembles the public interest assessor—PIA—model which the minister outlined in her presentation speech. This section gives the ACT Health Services Commissioner the additional powers which the commissioner’s counterparts in the other jurisdictions will not be given. I will discuss the removal of the PIA in a minute.

I will also be asking for the removal of modification 1.16 in section 177, which gives the ACT health services commission presumed authority to jointly consider a report by an assessor under division 9 of bill B. Again, this is above and beyond the powers to be given to the relevant health complaints entity in other jurisdictions.

For the same reasons as outlined before, I will also seek to remove the new section 178(1A), the new section 178(4), the new section 184(3), the new section 185(4) and the new section 186A, as these simply grant considerably more authority than health complaints entities in other jurisdictions will be given.

This initiative went through an extensive and exhaustive national consultation process and the reform package was considered in detail by the Senate committee inquiry last year. I do understand that there are a number of concerns still held by various stakeholders about elements of the national law. I have received a significant volume of correspondence from the various boards. But we are now at the point where this legislation has been passed or introduced in a number of other jurisdictions, and the ACT legislation proposes a model of complaint handling which deviates significantly from that nationally consistent model that has been either adopted or introduced.

I have met with the local health professional boards, all of which you will note are due to be abolished when this legislation commences. All of the boards are united in their commitment to the national scheme. That is all the boards including the medical board,


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