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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 14 Hansard (10 December) . . Page.. 4588 ..

MS FOLLETT (continuing):

I believe that my amendment is the minimum constraint that we ought to impose on the Government; but it is a very necessary constraint, in my view, in order to prevent the removal of a remandee, a person who has been charged but not convicted, from their own community to an interstate institution. I think that is a major disadvantage for them and should be contemplated only when our own facilities are, in effect, exhausted. Those are the circumstances in which I move this amendment. I commend it to the Assembly.

Debate (on motion by Mr Osborne) adjourned.

Debate resumed from 21 November 1996, on motion by Mr Humphries:

That this Bill be agreed to in principle.

Debate (on motion by Mr Osborne) adjourned.

Debate resumed from 21 November 1996, on motion by Mrs Carnell:

That this Bill be agreed to in principle.

MR BERRY (11.35): Mr Speaker, the Opposition will be supporting this Bill. It refocuses the legislation onto a range of diseases rather than the acquired immune deficiency syndrome, as was mentioned in the 1985 Act. It recognises that other diseases are well and truly on the agenda when it comes to transmission by bodily fluids, and blood donation is an area where there are risks. At the same time the proposed amendment does not interfere with the liabilities of the various players in the area of blood donations. For example, the Red Cross Society would still be liable were it to be negligent in the provision of blood, and hospitals and medical practitioners will still be liable pursuant to the provisions of the 1985 Act. So, Mr Speaker, these amendments will not interfere with those liabilities. They go another step, Mr Speaker, and allow the Executive to make regulations for the purposes of the Act. Mrs Carnell said in her speech that that would permit the Executive to add other diseases to the list of transmittable diseases mentioned in the legislation, which I do not need to repeat here.

One other issue arose during my consideration of this Bill, Mr Speaker, and that was the breadth of consultation on the process. Bearing in mind the Liberal Government's commitment to open and full consultation with the community, I thought that in the past there had been some breaches of that commitment, so I decided to check in one or two places. I took the trouble to ring the ACT branch of the AMA who, I thought, surely would have been consulted on an issue such as this. Well, what do you know?

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