Page 843 - Week 03 - Thursday, 25 March 1993
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MRS CARNELL: You were. This Bill goes a very long way towards remedying this situation by giving the board the power to caution, reprimand, fine, suspend registration and, of course, deregister.
Madam Speaker, I am pleased that this Bill continues the program of removing sexist language from legislation. It is interesting to note that there are now more female medical students than male, so it is appropriate to acknowledge this in legislation. There is one provision of this legislation that concerns me, although I am aware that it was agreed to by all health Ministers, and that is clause 35 of the Bill. This clause allows foreign medical practitioners who hold Australian registration and are regular Australian citizens to be deregistered if they were not domiciled in Australia on 31 January 1992 and did not practise medicine in Australia for at least three months during 1992.
I understand that very little notice was given of this provision, and certainly not enough to allow doctors who, I stress, have Australian registration and are Australian citizens but were practising overseas or studying overseas, to make adequate arrangements to avoid deregistration. In fact, I understand that a large number of the doctors received notification of the change only in January 1992, approximately two weeks before they were required to be living here - a situation that is totally untenable. At face value, this provision would appear to be discriminatory, so I sincerely hope that doctors unfairly caught by this clause will be sympathetically dealt with and that the Medical Board has the discretion to decide who should and who should not be deregistered. I have been assured that that discretion does exist in this legislation, but I sincerely hope that the Medical Board will treat this power with due caution.
The Medical Practitioners Registration (Amendment) Bill picks up the recommendations of the Australian Health Ministers Conference, and it is the first of a series of Bills designed to bring the ACT into line with other States. In fact, this Bill has been lifted from fairly similar legislation in New South Wales. Madam Speaker, I have just said that this is the first of a series of Bills, all of which should have been in place by 1 March. The Chief Minister agreed at the Heads of Government meeting early last year that all legislation required for mutual recognition should, if possible - and I accept that - be in place by 1 March, so we are certainly looking forward to registration legislation for psychologists, podiatrists, dentists, optometrists, pharmacists, physiotherapists, chiropractors, and the list goes on. All of this legislation should be in front of this Assembly now.
These pieces of legislation have the potential to improve the quality of health in the ACT, so why did Mr Berry give priority to legislation to abolish the Board of Health - a piece of legislation that had absolutely no capacity to increase the quality of health anywhere, let alone here? As usual, it appears that ideology wins out over better health services for the people of Canberra. Still, I suppose we should be thankful that this Bill is in front of us today. This Bill is not an initiative of this Labor Government; it is part of a nationwide move to standardised health legislation. I cannot help wondering whether, if it had been up to Mr Berry to change the legislation to give the Medical Board these increased powers that are very necessary, we would have seen this legislation on the table at all. Madam Speaker, the Liberal Party will be supporting this legislation and will also be supporting the amendments.
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