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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 11 Hansard (30 November) . . Page.. 3556 ..

As the minister indicated, my amendment was circulated to all government and crossbench members earlier this month, so I will just make some general comments without going into great detail.

As I indicated in my earlier remarks, current government employees practising psychology will be permitted under the amendment to continue practising for a period of only 12 months after the commencement date of the bill without being registered. If they wish to continue practising after that time, they must apply for registrations within the 12 months.

The board has the power to grant full registration if an employee meets the board's requirements. However, if the employee does not meet the board's requirements in full, registration may still be granted to the employee if he or she has provided psychology services for a period of four years in the previous 10 years and is otherwise competent to provide those services. The board could make resignation under this provision conditional. I am advised by the drafter that such a condition could be that registration lapses if the person leaves government employment, for example.

If a government employee cannot be registered under these two conditions, there is a third option: the board may grant temporary registration for a period not exceeding three years, during which the employee must obtain such additional qualification as the board requires. That should be achievable by the employee as they will only require an upgrade of existing qualifications. The amendment also includes an appeal provision against decisions of the board under this part.

I conclude by saying that, as I indicated in my remarks earlier, the amendment is designed simply to achieve parity between the position of psychologists employed in government service and a position which applied to private sector psychologists at the time the act was originally introduced. It seems to me that there is no cogent reason for discriminating between the two.

MR MOORE (Minister for Health, Housing and Community Care) (4.53): In fact, that is the very reason this piece of legislation is in place and why the amendment ought not to be accepted. We ought not to discriminate in favour of these people and allow them to be psychologists when they are not qualified as psychologists. We ought not to open up the floodgates to allow these people to be registered as psychologists.

Mr Speaker, I had some notes prepared for me about this matter and I think it is worth identifying some of the most important points. The amendment proposed by Mr Stanhope to include transitional provisions is not supported because the bill exists simply to correct an oversight in the original drafting of the act in 1994 which was identified in the context of an impending inquiry.

Legal advice provided by the ACT Government Solicitor indicated that the board may not have jurisdiction in this matter because of the provisions of paragraphs 3(2)(a) and 3(2)(b) of the Psychologists Act, which appeared to exempt psychologists employed in the public sector from the provisions of the act. That is only one reading of it. By the way, most public psychologists had not read it that way. Most public psychologists had registered as psychologists.

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