Page 3103 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 10 September 1991
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received from a well-known and eminent Canberra eye specialist who has a modern apparatus - I have mentioned it before in this chamber - to detect real life ocular ability, rather than the normal alphabetic word chart. The good specialist's machine has a series of frames that show the view from your car window in good light, poor light, indeterminate light and near darkness; and there is a sequence of a child chasing a ball stepping across in front of the driver. It is the more modern American form of eye testing rather than medical examination, I was advised. There is one trial machine here in Canberra, and I want to tell you that it is very hard to get past the third step in that machine. I hope that that is not an admission on my part.
The machine raises other questions, and I must say that, just for once, I found myself at variance with a very excellent adviser in the Government Law Office, Mr Brendan Bailey, on this topic. I refer to the question of whether government will provide an indemnity, an immunity, from legal process and law suits to those eye specialists who, on encountering a person who clearly should not be on the road due to defective vision, inform the Registrar of Motor Vehicles of that person's incapacity and the likely danger to that person and to other road users.
I had some gentle collegiate difference of opinion on the civil liberties aspect of that matter, which I am sure will entertain the present Attorney. I say "present" because I hope he enjoys the full six or seven months that he has in the job before he and his single member aspirants go down in a big heap in February.
Mrs Grassby: You are the one who will be going down.
MR COLLAERY: You will see. We are just following on from the cemeteries debate, Mrs Grassby.
Mr Speaker, the question, in terms of public safety, that the Attorney needs to look at is how we balance the civil rights and confidentiality in that area with the danger to road users of people discovered to have eye difficulties, perhaps during the course of other medical procedures, not being reported upon due to the fact that there is both the Hippocratic oath situation and also the problem of private civil proceedings against a doctor who might reveal that matter to the Motor Registry.
Certainly the AMA, for its part, if I recall correctly, wanted the immunity and was prepared to make the disclosures. That seemed to be the necessary implication. I think this is an opportunity for me to draw that to the Attorney's attention. Perhaps he can see where that issue has gone to and report to the house. It is an aspect of road safety and public safety as well.
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