Page 3995 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 16 December 1992
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
To compound the problem, the Health Minister has taken every action possible to prevent disclosure of this ruling on a point of law. The Health Minister's letter ignored Dr Proudfoot's request that the Board of Health be instructed to comply with the law. Mr Berry, in signing the letter, has evidenced that he is guilty of flouting the law he swore to uphold. He did it knowingly and had no intention of doing otherwise, even after such clear and repeated communications on the illegality of his position had been put to him, as I have detailed above. I have already tabled a copy of the Minister's letter, entitled "Annexure D".
On 9 December 1991 Dr Proudfoot filed a FOI request - his second in relation to this matter - with the Health Department, seeking to obtain a copy of the Attorney-General's legal opinion referred to in Mr Berry's letter. This request was denied by Dr Vin McLoughlin on 13 January 1992. Dr Proudfoot then appealed for an internal review of the decision to deny access. This review was done by Ms Gillian Biscoe, chief executive of the Health Department, who, on 28 January 1992, refused to release this apparently simple legal ruling about a law which binds all medical doctors, pathologists and hospital managers in the ACT. On 29 January 1992 Dr Proudfoot, at his own expense, filed an appeal against this non-disclosure with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. The file number is C92/17, to which I referred earlier.
On 17 April 1992 Dr Proudfoot wrote to me expressing dissatisfaction with the Minister's response and formal refusal to release the Attorney-General's legal opinion. On the spurious ground of legal professional privilege, Mr Berry had refused Dr Proudfoot's request to make public this document which supposedly only clarified the fact of what the regulation required ACT medical practitioners and administrators to do. One must ask: Why is the law held by Mr Berry to be secret? After putting sound reasons for preserving public health by complying with this reporting requirement, Dr Proudfoot states:
For the last few years the ACT public health authorities, at the behest of community groups with a conflict of interest in AIDS policy, and with the connivance of government, have deliberately flouted the law on HIV reporting. Now in an attempt to legitimise its dereliction of duty, the government plans to amend the law.
I have already tabled a copy of this letter from Dr Proudfoot, entitled "Annexure F".
On 21 April 1992 I personally wrote to the Health Minister on Dr Proudfoot's behalf. I sought answers as to why it was suggested that the HIV reporting requirements should be changed and why the Attorney-General's advice was being withheld. I have tabled a copy of my letter to the Minister, entitled "Annexure G".
In May 1992, Discussion Paper No. 1, headed "HIV/AIDS Related Legislation in the ACT - Options for Change", was issued under the authority of Margaret Norington, director of services policy of the ACT Board of Health. In this paper, on page 5, there is a subheading "Public Health (Infectious and Notifiable Diseases) Regulations". I quote in part from that section:
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .