Page 4578 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 14 December 1993
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Let me deal, first of all, with the question of the privacy matters raised by Mr Berry. Mr Berry has claimed that it is a breach of privacy provisions for one agency to provide information about complaints against a particular individual to another agency in order that they might then do something with those complaints. I draw members' attention to clause 57 of this Bill. It says that where a board "receives a complaint that appears to be made by a person referred to in section 21" - anybody, in other words - "and to disclose a ground referred to in section 22" - that is, a ground of complaint which operates under this Bill - the particular health professional board "shall notify the Commissioner; provide the Commissioner with a copy of the complaint and of all documents in its possession that relate to the complaint; and if the Commissioner so requests, refer the complaint to the Commissioner".
Mr Deputy Speaker, it is obvious that if you are providing information about the complaint, and a copy of the complaint, you are providing all the relevant information about that matter sufficient to identify both the complainant and the provider about whom the complaint is being made. Where is the privacy in that? Where is the privacy to the unit for a complaint which has been dealt with wholly by the board? Let us take the example of a person who makes a complaint to the Medical Board because the person wishes to have the board deal with that complaint. It is the sort of matter that the person feels the particular board concerned ought to deal with. That person might feel, conceivably, some angst at having that complaint dealt with by another unit of the government, the Health Complaints Unit.
Mr Berry: But this is a law that prescribes it.
MR HUMPHRIES: Exactly. But we accept, by passing this law, that those bodies - the Health Complaints Unit and the relevant board - both have an interest in this matter.
Mr Berry: By law. The boards may not have.
MR HUMPHRIES: By law. That is what Mrs Carnell's amendment is all about - providing that the law should cover both those contingencies. Why should not a medical board, for example, know about a complaint being made against a doctor? Is it not the role of the Medical Board of this Territory to know about complaints against doctors?
Mr Berry says, in answer to that point, "There are some matters not within the jurisdiction of the Medical Board, or the Pharmacy Board, or the Chiropractors Board", whatever it might be. Those matters are, in fact, very limited indeed. In fact, when pressed by Mrs Carnell to quote an example of a case where a matter would not be within the jurisdiction of the particular board, he could not find one. The fact is, Mr Deputy Speaker, that there are almost no examples. If a doctor, for example, is incompetent, then it is a matter equally for the attention of the Health Complaints Unit and of the Medical Board. If a pharmacist overcharges, that is equally a matter for the Pharmacy Board and the Health Complaints Unit. If a chiropractor mistreats one of his or her patients, it is equally a matter for both those bodies. It is obviously incumbent on a system which smoothly deals with these sorts of complaints that there be a capacity for those two parts of the system, those two hemispheres, to exchange information. That cannot happen if Mr Berry's amendment is successful in this house.
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