Page 2784 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 20 October 1992
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MR BERRY (Minister for Health, Minister for Industrial Relations and Minister for Sport) (9.22): Mr Moore's amendments to Mrs Carnell's Drugs of Dependence (Amendment) Bill would have the effect of including premises at which the medical practitioner practises medicine. This would enable these premises to be approved under section 150 of the Act, as I understand it, as a treatment centre at which methadone may be supplied or administered to a drug dependent person in accordance with the provisions of the Act. As the Act provides for a medical practitioner or a person under his or her personal supervision to supply methadone and also provides for the administration of methadone to another person by a medical practitioner in subsections 80(1) and 170(3), there is no legal or apparent practical impediment to the supply and administration of methadone at premises where a medical practitioner practises medicine.
It should be noted that any person who would administer or supply methadone at a treatment centre must have satisfactorily completed an appropriate course of instruction, subject, of course, to those amendments being successful, to supply or administer methadone, and the Board of Health would, in these circumstances, have to be satisfied, again subject to the foreshadowed amendments being carried, as to the appropriate location of a proposed treatment centre. What is proposed by Mr Moore is that the premises of a medical practitioner would be treated in the same way as pharmacies. The Government is opposed to the amendments.
Question put:
That the amendments (Mr Moore's) be agreed to.
The Assembly voted -
AYES, 9 NOES, 8
Mrs Carnell Mr Berry
Mr Cornwell Mr Connolly
Mr De Domenico Ms Ellis
Mr Humphries Ms Follett
Mr Kaine Mrs Grassby
Mr Moore Mr Lamont
Mr Stevenson Ms McRae
Ms Szuty Mr Wood
Mr Westende
Question so resolved in the affirmative.
Clause, as amended, agreed to.
Remainder of Bill, by leave, taken as a whole
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