Page 4758 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 7 December 1994
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That one has changed a bit now, but it still goes to the right to be told that you do not have to be in it. The view of the committee is that you do not need to do that when you do it through the letter.
Mrs Carnell: That is not what they said, Terry. They said that they think a woman should be told but they did not want to do it.
MR CONNOLLY: We went through a process of consultation - for 20 months in this case - on a very sensitive issue. We built up a consensus. All the professionals were saying, "This is the way we want it". Both Mr Berry and I would like to have had this register up and running a year ago. I would like to have had it up and running within months, but it took six months. Both Mr Berry, when he had the carriage of the matter, and I took the view that this thing will work only with the goodwill of the medical profession. This whole concept would collapse if the doctors were uncomfortable with it or unhappy with it. So, we essentially said to the doctors, "We will provide the mechanism for it, but it is your scheme. We rely on your goodwill. You tell us what you want in the regulations. You tell us how you want to go with this privacy regime". So, the management committee came up with these protocols and the letters which we sent to the Privacy Commissioner, who said that it was all okay. Then Mrs Carnell consults with the Federal AMA and the Queensland AMA and says, "But we have not spoken to the local doctors", and comes up with this raft of amendments.
I am not saying that there is anything inherently wrong with what Mrs Carnell is suggesting. On a clean slate, starting from scratch, it is highly likely, particularly on the "eyether-eether" stuff where it is just definition, that I would say, "Mrs Carnell, I am quite happy with that". The reality is that this has been through a long process of consultation. After exhaustive debate we have reached a form of words. We showed Mrs Carnell's amendments in their various forms to the various doctors involved in the process and they said, "Just leave it alone".
Mrs Carnell: You have spoken to one group. The AMA do not agree with you. The pathologists do not agree with you.
MR CONNOLLY: We have spoken to the representative group, which is the management committee that runs the cervical cytology scheme, that represents the doctors, the GPs and the pathologists and that the profession themselves threw up as the group to run this to make it work; and they have said, "Leave it alone". Members of the Liberal Party, I told you last week to leave it alone, but you would not. Again, we are told by the professions involved, "Liberal Party, leave it alone".
The Government will not be supporting any of these amendments, but not because we say that there is anything inherently wrong with them. I am sure that Mrs Carnell is well motivated in what she is saying. When the Queensland Government is dealing with this, they will listen to what the Queensland branch of the AMA says and they will reflect that; but in the ACT over 20 months we have come up with a form of words. It has been an exhaustive process. We have shown Mrs Carnell's amendments, as they have come along - although there has been a last minute change to one of them - to the professional groups and the view on both occasions has been, "Do not tamper with it".
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