Page 4006 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 16 December 1992
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
you have a complex issue. You have an old set of regulations which put a definition of AIDS in about 1983. In 1983 AIDS was known. What caused AIDS really was not. People thought it was probably a virus, but the actual virus was not isolated until a year or so later. In respect of the definition of AIDS in the regulations as they then stood, there was a deeming clause which said:
For the purposes of these regulations, where the organism presumed to cause an infectious disease or a notifiable disease is found to be present in a person, that person shall be deemed to be suffering from that disease.
One may conclude from that, one may take a view, that showing HIV positive brings you within the definition of AIDS, but an alternative view would be that a HIV positive test shows only the presence of antibodies and does not necessarily show the presence of the organism. So, there is an ambiguity between a definition that is drafted by a lawyer and professional medical advice. So, you had a set of regulations that were very difficult to get clarity for. A lawyer may take a view and a doctor would take another view, and you have a Minister who has to administer those regulations getting advice essentially from his health professionals. Then there is a legal advice which enters the picture, and which of course I cannot canvass because of the fact that that is subject to a Supreme Court appeal.
Mrs Carnell: That would make measles and rubella unnotifiable.
MR CONNOLLY: But, Mrs Carnell, the point remains that there is an ambiguity as to what these regulations said when drafted back in the days when we really did not know what we were dealing with. While there is a difference - Mr Kaine is right - between what we say should happen with notification and what you say should happen with notification, I think - - -
Mr Kaine: No, no; what the law says.
MR CONNOLLY: No, no; no, no. What I am getting to is this: If your favoured position was to be put into law today you would not say that it is the regulations as they once stood. You would clarify what it means. These sorts of open definitions and ambiguous definitions would be replaced. So, you have a Minister who is getting advice from his medical professionals, who is acting on that advice, and who is administering a practice - and this is important - which has not changed over changes of administration. If we go back to the legal advice which has been tabled, and it really forms the centre point of Mr Stevenson's indictment, it is that 1986 legal advice. The practices that occurred from 1986 onwards seem to have changed little.
To the extent that there is any mala fides in the administration of Mr Berry, you have to track that back to the administration of Mr Humphries and previous Commonwealth Ministers administering health in the ACT. While Mr Stevenson may be attempting to attack Mr Berry - there may be, dare one suggest, some partisan politics in this, and members opposite may feel tempted to play some partisan politics with this - members opposite should realise that the indictment that Mr Stevenson is drawing catches in its net not just Mr Berry but other persons who have been administering that Act.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .