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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 10 Hansard (23 September) . . Page.. 3500 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

them confidence that they can come here and practise their medicine and not be short-changed by the government.

So what we have is a process that the minister is setting up on what you might call the model contract-the contract that will be used for five, six, seven or eight years-and we are going to do in under two months. Are we going to do it fairly in under two months and is everybody going to be happy? I do not think so. Mr Speaker, as a former health minister you would know how long and protracted negotiations with VMOs can be. I think it is a joke that we are being asked to consider this in this way.

The government knew that these contracts should have been done in May. They knew when they extended the deadline by six months that November was rapidly approaching and yet three months out we received legislation and two months out we are discussing it. I think that is highly inappropriate.

Mr Corbell talks about other things in his letter to members and I think we would be agreeing with some of them. Dot point 1 and probably dot points 3 and 4 are things that we can live with as well. But it is proposed that a new section 33G (5) (b) be inserted requiring that the rules determined by the minister "must be fair and reasonable". Who will determine that the rules are fair and reasonable? We will we asked to insert a paragraph that says that the minister is going to give us fair and reasonable rules, but who will judge that they are fair and reasonable?

This is to be a disallowable instrument. We will have to wait for the disallowable instrument to be lodged in this place, and if the Assembly does not think it is fair and reasonable we will need to have time to debate it and that will put the process back even further. Mr Speaker, I think that is something that we should all take on board.

I think what we have is a minister who has been tardy in his duty. In fact, we have two ministers who have been tardy in their duty. Negotiations should have commenced and been in place when the Chief Minister was still the health minister, and Mr Corbell has had since December last year to be working on this. So what we have is a tardy minister who has not paid enough attention to the health portfolio.

Mr Speaker, Mr Corbell does make some sensible suggestions in his letter and we will get to those suggestions when we consider the amendments. I want to talk about paragraph (c) (iv) of proposed section 33E (2). According to his letter, Mr Corbell is going to delete this paragraph because it might be seen that if a mediation agent is too successful the government will have the ability to actually knock that agent out. So it is quaint that you can read the bill the other way, which of course you can with any interpretation of law. But it is interesting that we are willing to get rid of that but we are still leaving 33G (3) in, and I want to concentrate a little bit on that section.

Proposed section 33G provides for arbitration and I think what we would all like to see is mediation and arbitration before we go to court to sort these things out. It is certainly something that most people would agree to. This section provides that if agreement is not reached in collective negotiations the matter then can be decided by arbitration. Proposed section 33G (3) provides that "the arbitration must be conducted under the Commercial Arbitration Act 1986 and in accordance with the principles and rules determined, in writing, by the Minister". I think people should be afraid of that, Mr Speaker, because

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