Page 3101 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 17 November 1992
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from that applicable to other notifiable diseases. We saw that again today with the changes to the regulations. He has been suggesting, as he did again today, that we do not want to drive AIDS sufferers underground. I believe that that is a very imaginary fear, but that is really not the point at all. On 17 June - - -
Mr Berry: Nobody else believes that. The experts all believe that it is a real problem.
MRS CARNELL: You mean all the people in South Australia, Queensland and Western Australia? In Hansard of 17 June Mr Berry is recorded as saying that HIV notification was voluntary and would be in coded form. At the Estimates Committee we had an acknowledgment from Dr Bob Scott that voluntary notification was illegal.
Mr Berry: The law has never said that. There are different views.
MRS CARNELL: Mr Berry, on 17 June, said that it was voluntary. Bob Scott noted that notification of HIV should not have been listed as voluntary in ACT Health publications and reports.
Mr De Domenico: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I am finding it very difficult because of Mr Berry's interjections.
MADAM SPEAKER: I think there is a rather high level of conversation all round. Mrs Carnell, would you continue, please?
MRS CARNELL: Despite the fact that Mr Berry was sitting right next to Bob Scott at the time when Dr Scott made the comments, Mr Berry did nothing to take on board the advice he was given by his own senior bureaucrat. Mr Berry refused to clarify the requirement to notify HIV to ACT doctors, even after he was asked to do so. The committee disagreed with Mr Berry and recommended that he advise doctors of their legal obligations.
At the moment many doctors are definitely not clear about their obligations, and obviously those obligations change today with the changes to the regulations that Mr Berry talked about this morning. Again, that in no way suggests that doctors do not need to be told. They need to know what their legal position is, and that is what the Estimates Committee suggested. It was not a recommendation that was a political point scoring exercise. It was not a political recommendation, as Mr Berry would have it; it was a recommendation concerned with core issues of public health and individual rights both of doctors and of patients.
Another area of concern is the Commonwealth MRI program in which the ACT plans to participate, as we found out in the Estimates Committee. An MRI unit is planned for Woden Valley Hospital. We were told that and were very pleased to hear that a decision had actually been made, but we know that this technology is very expensive and has particularly high recurrent costs. It seems that the ACT and the Commonwealth have widely different views about their respective financial obligations. Nothing that was said by those appearing before the committee convinced me or other members that the ACT Government had a concrete view about what these financial obligations are. The ACT Government seems to think that they are getting a new MRI unit free, unaware of the fact that the ACT, as with all States, is supposed to be footing part of the bill both to buy the MRI and, more importantly, to run it.
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