Page 4018 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 16 December 1992
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We then know, and I think this is the area that has been missed, that in June this year new regulations were issued through the Public Health (Infectious and Notifiable Diseases) Regulations, after the 1991 Bayliss opinion, which went to quite great lengths to change the regulations. In June this year those changes did not address the AIDS/HIV issue. Why? At that stage Mr Berry had another legal opinion. He supposedly had a legal opinion which clarified the very appropriate issues that Mr Connolly brought up - the changes in the way things were looked at, the change in the way that we look at AIDS and HIV. In June this year, as I said, new regulations were issued which substantially changed the conditions requiring verification in various areas of the legislation. They changed the diseases and the conditions which were notifiable and infectious, but that particular AIDS/HIV issue was not addressed.
After that, on Wednesday, 17 June, in response to a question from me, Mr Berry said in the house that HIV notification was "voluntary, in coded form". He also said, "HIV will continue to be notified differently from other infectious diseases because we are not going to drive HIV sufferers underground". So, on 17 June he said that HIV notification was voluntary, in coded form, and he went on to say, "HIV will continue" - I stress the word "continue" - "to be notified differently from other infectious diseases", and so on. Remember that the Bayliss opinion was given on 18 September 1991. There could have been other opinions in between, but the one in question was a number of months earlier.
Then there were quite a number of questions in the house, as everyone will remember. In answer to a dorothy dixer - so, you assume that Mr Berry got it right this time - from Mr Lamont on Thursday, 13 August, after the issue had been canvassed at length in the press and also in the house, Mr Berry said:
The regulations, as they stand, require notification in accordance with the form in Schedule 1, and this includes full name and address.
So, from 17 June to 13 August a dramatic "Saul on the road to Damascus" conversion occurred, or so you would think; but he went on to say:
However, a policy decision has been made to bring the ACT into line with the practice in New South Wales and Victoria -
and so on. Obviously, there was a big change of heart. In his speech notes that he tabled on that day he went on to say:
I would now like to inform the house that I am advised that ACT Health has never notified medical practitioners, pathologists and the hospitals that they no longer need to give name and address when notifying AIDS.
Everything we have heard today suggests that they actually had done that. I think that is really important. Mr Connolly and everyone here have suggested that there actually had been a legal opinion that they had acted on. Mr Berry then, on 13 August, seems to indicate that that had never happened. At the Estimates Committee, on 25 September, Dr Bob Scott said:
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