Page 3492 - Week 13 - Thursday, 26 November 1992
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MR BERRY: And, of course, not something that the Liberals are concerned about. It recommends that partner notification should be of a voluntary nature, not coercive; so, what Mrs Carnell is calling for is a sort of compulsory notification of adultery. If that were achievable she might have something.
Mrs Carnell: Wayne, that has to be the longest - - -
MR BERRY: That is what she is proposing. That is what you can take from what she said. We all well know that traditional coercive public health strategies are inappropriate, ineffective and counterproductive in these circumstances. It is very clear - now listen to this - that, if a person believes that in coming forward to be tested for HIV his or her privacy will not be respected, he or she will not come forward, and the opportunity to counsel and to educate that person will be lost and partners may not be informed. Mrs Carnell giggles at these matters because she thinks they are quite funny. It is essential that public health measures assist in the control of the virus and do not drive it underground. I have said repeatedly that what the Liberals have been on about is to drive HIV sufferers underground and to create circumstances which will prevent them from coming forward.
What we are saying is that we are going to create an environment where they can come forward without any fear of their privacy being interfered with, and without any fear of discrimination as a result of their reporting to a doctor and undergoing tests and so on. If you have a situation as is proposed by Mrs Carnell, people will not come forward willingly and we will end up in a situation where the very women that she claims that she is trying to protect will be put in more danger. That is what in fact will occur.
We have to recognise that there may be exceptional cases where voluntary notification of partners does not occur. The legal working party recommends that there be appropriate public health action in circumstances where counselling has not been successful. This requirement is not incompatible with a system of coded notification. If you bothered to take the time to have a look at the regulations you should have taken a bit of a look at the powers of the Medical Officer of Health. They are very wide. I will read to you from regulation 5. It states:
Where the Medical Officer of Health or an authorised medical practitioner has reasonable cause to suspect that a person who is or was an inmate of a house is suffering from an infectious disease, the Medical Officer of Health or the authorised medical practitioner may, for the purpose of ascertaining whether or not that person or any other person in that house is suffering from an infectious disease ...
It then goes through a whole range of - - -
Mrs Carnell: But the Medical Officer of Health does not know who the person is, Wayne.
MR BERRY: If the treating doctor is aware of unsafe behaviour amongst people who are suffering from AIDS, he can raise it with the Medical Officer of Health and the Medical Officer of Health does have some powers. In the first instance you have to get people to come forward, and under the Liberals' proposal they will not. The Liberals are not concerned about the people out there - - -
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