Page 1504 - Week 05 - Thursday, 12 May 1994
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Let me remind you and the Assembly of the time when Dr Blewett, who was Commonwealth Health Minister, used confidential medical records for political purposes in a dispute with doctors. The Privacy Act gave no protection because the information was released by one of Dr Blewett's staff. The Act referred to only authorised officers, but as the staff member was not an authorised officer he was deemed not to be covered by the Act. It was probably fairly clever on the part of the Government at the time, but the Act was of no use whatsoever in protecting the rights of patients or doctors. The Bill makes no mention of to whom the information may be released, although the Minister said in his presentation speech that it could go to agencies such as the Health Insurance Commission. But, again, we have to ask where else it could go. There is also nothing in this Bill which would prevent information which was believed to be confidential from being used for political purposes - for example, information about salaries being given to the Canberra Times. Because of its inadequacy we are proposing that the Bill be amended so that information cannot be released to just any person or any body. Those words should be omitted and replaced with the stipulation that confidential information should be released only to the Health Insurance Commission or to the Auditor-General. I have circulated that amendment and we will come to it in due course.
The third thing that this Bill does is that it allows the Executive to make regulations. Allowing the Executive to make regulations consistent with the Act seems satisfactory, provided that they are made for reasons of efficiency and the public good. There is, however, an understandable suspicion of the motives of government generally. I am sure that the Minister will elaborate on how this will be done. One of the unfortunate lessons of history is that the executive does not always make decisions for the good of the people. Instead, the executive - this one is no exception - tends to advance its own interests, often at the expense of other people. In general, we support this Bill, but we will move the amendment that I have spoken about. I think everybody supports a situation where fraud can be addressed and where the Medicare agreement works properly.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General and Minister for Health) (4.25), in reply: I think I thank the Opposition for, I think, their support for the Bill generally. We heard a bit of a tirade about waiting lists; but again they whinge, complain and make no constructive suggestions. I must take issue with Mrs Carnell on a couple of points, though. She went on at some length about the purpose of this amendment being to participate in a survey. There is a survey and this amendment will allow us to participate in it, but it is not correct to say that that is the only purpose of this legislation. The other purpose, which is clear from not only my presentation speech but also Mrs Carnell's amendment, is to allow the Auditor-General to have access to this, which has nothing to do with any survey; so her comment about the purpose of this being just a survey is clearly wrong, even in relation to her own amendment. It is true that we are going to take part with all the other States in this survey; but there are other reasons why we may want to have this information, as the Auditor-General said, in order to combat fraud. It may well be that the New South Wales authorities may come to us and say, "We think there might have been some double dipping", and we may want to pursue that, regardless of any general survey going on at the time. So there is more than one purpose to this.
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