Page 3509 - Week 13 - Thursday, 26 November 1992
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It would also mean that if the person is not amenable to voluntary partner notification the doctor can advise the Medical Officer of Health, whose power under the Public Health (Infectious and Notifiable Diseases) Regulations allows the seeking of additional information and the taking of appropriate public health action. In other words, the provision of data in coded form does not preclude action by either the treating doctor or the Medical Officer of Health in exceptional circumstances. The notification form gives the Medical Officer of Health basic information and is only part of the total capacity for public health action. Public health action has never been bound by only what is on the notification form.
It is important for the health of the people in the ACT and for the proper management of HIV/AIDS that these regulations are not disallowed. We all know the danger for male or female members of the ACT who, if Mrs Carnell's notice got up, would never report this. We could have an epidemic of HIV/AIDS. Now, in the ACT and Australia, we are in a far better position to cope with this disease as long as we maintain privacy. Mrs Carnell will want these people in a camp, with barbed wire around them to keep them in and other people out; or maybe they should be wearing a patch that says, "Unclean". This is medieval; this is what would have been done in the past. Mrs Carnell quoted from Who. Next she will be quoting from the Readers Digest. We must not allow the spread of AIDS, and, with privacy, this will not happen. At a party I attended in Sydney some time ago, I spoke with Professor Penny - - -
Mr Humphries: Are you going to quote a party guest now?
MRS GRASSBY: I do not quote from Who; I quote people who really know about it. When I spoke to Professor Penny he made the point that privacy was one of the most important things; that we must not chase this disease underground. If we were to chase it underground, he said, we would have a lot of trouble in getting people to come forward and admit that they had this disease. I think that Professor Penny would know a lot more about it than Who magazine.
MS SZUTY (11.54): Madam Speaker, I believe that it is unfortunate that I need to oppose a motion proposed by a member of the Legislative Assembly which is motivated by concern for human health and welfare. In the case of the motion to disallow the Public Health (Infectious and Notifiable Diseases) Regulations Amendment No. 27, I feel that the issues have been blurred. While situations where women whose partners have not told them that they are bisexual or that they have contracted the AIDS virus are very tragic, we are not able to legislate to ensure that people will always tell the truth. After a lifetime of duplicity and lying, as is stated in the letter by Ms Trisha Goddard, circulated to members of the Assembly by Dr Alex Proudfoot, some people are not going to become virtuous all of a sudden and tell all. If they have seen it as being in their interests to lie about their sexuality in the past, they will continue to lie if it suits their needs at that time.
It would seem to me that in some cases it is, in fact, easier to lie to a doctor or a health professional than to a partner. At what point do we believe the information given about their sexual behaviour by a person who presents for HIV testing? Once the medical officer has a positive diagnosis, the promoters of compulsory notification would have us believe that it is simply a case of contacting the partners of the person involved. In many cases that may be true; but has that action protected them, or would such action prevent people who may
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