Page 4282 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 29 November 1994
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several concerns about the implications of the code of practice and how that would affect the Bill. But, as the last meeting of this working party is supposedly tomorrow, how could these concerns ever be accommodated by the Government or, for that matter, this Assembly? Or was it the intention of the Government just to ignore altogether the working party and the recommendations of that working party? Certainly, this Assembly has not seen any of those recommendations.
Madam Speaker, the Opposition will not prevent this Bill from being passed, but we believe that it should be deferred until proper analysis has occurred and the concerns of the working party have been examined. I also hope that the Government will give serious consideration to the amendments that we are proposing. These amendments attempt to preserve the rights of skin penetration businesses and their operators, while at the same time continuing to protect consumers from operators with questionable procedures. As I said, Madam Speaker, we have no problems at all with this legislation in principle, but we would like to know what the final meeting of the working party tomorrow comes forward with. Again, if the working party is quite happy with this Bill, if the people whom it actually affects are quite happy, then the Opposition will be more than happy to pass the legislation.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General and Minister for Health) (10.57), in reply: I thank Mrs Carnell for her general support in principle in her ex tempore comments at the end of the speech; but I do not know who writes the stuff that Mrs Carnell comes in here with sometimes, because it is really bitter and partisan. There were comments about ramming things through. It is unfortunate that this carping, bitter tone ran through a lot of her speech.
The legislation is important in principle because it applies to a whole range of businesses that you would not really call health professional businesses. You would probably call acupuncturists health professionals, but there are other businesses that involve procedures that can involve skin penetration. With highly infectious conditions such as hepatitis C and HIV, it is important that we develop public health controls in areas that perhaps, in the era before HIV and hepatitis C were known to be so infectious through blood contact, public authorities would not have taken any particular interest in. That is what this legislation is about.
Mrs Carnell has a range of difficulties with the various provisions in the Bill which she says really go too far in giving excessive powers to bureaucrats and will make it difficult for people to conduct their businesses. We will have a close look at all her detailed suggestions. We have not actually seen the amendments yet; but she has provided me with a note setting out what her concerns are, which is helpful. The preliminary advice is that many points about which she has concerns mirror provisions that exist in the Food Act. The Food Act is a good analogy, because that is where we have given to officials - after quite heated debate in some cases - certain powers that you would not normally give to a bureaucrat to deal with a business. But we give those powers to officials because public health is an important area. We as a parliament are prepared to
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