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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Thursday, 1 July 2004) . . Page.. 3191 ..

I am aware that Ms Dundas is proposing to move an amendment to clause 130 to provide that any exemption granted under that clause is to be a disallowable instrument. The government, in response to the concerns expressed by the scrutiny of bills committee, has already agreed to amend this clause to provide that any exemption must be in accordance with guidelines that are issued and any guidelines that are made are a disallowable instrument. To require the exemption also to be a disallowable instrument is unusual and to some may appear unnecessary but, to demonstrate the government’s commitment to the transparency of decision making, we will be supporting that amendment as well.

Finally, the government will be moving an amendment to clause 136, which is concerned with the repeal of legislation. The proposed amendment will remove all doubt that a repeal of an act mentioned in that clause will not take effect until a corresponding schedule has been developed by the relevant health profession and made part of the regulations to the Health Professionals Act.

I commend these amendments to the Assembly and look forward to rapid progress in their carriage.

MS TUCKER (6.05): I will not be speaking about the whole bill in the way that Mr Wood did, but I will respond quickly to the two amendments to clause 15, which make it clear that all services provided by people described as health professionals in their capacity as health professionals are acceptable as a health service in the context of this act.

I understand that the amendments to clause 15 are a consequence of representations made by psychologists, who argued that the legislation unamended would result in them being precluded from using the title of psychologist because they would not be delivering health services as defined in the unamended act, and so would be operating under false pretences. I understand that that problem has been, in part, addressed through the amendments and will be further addressed in government amendments to the health professionals legislation and then at a later time in consultation with the professions through regulation.

MR SMYTH (Leader of the Opposition) (6.06): Mr Speaker, in this outburst of cooperation, I will just say that, having looked at all the amendments, the opposition can support them all. We have some concerns about how the motion of the Assembly last week to keep pharmacies out of supermarkets will be affected, but note the assurance of the minister and the amendment of Ms Tucker. I think that has been covered quite well.

I have suggested to the Clerk that all the amendments be moved as a job lot, but he has said that that cannot be done because some of them are consequential, so we have to do one before we can do the other. That being said, the opposition will support all the amendments as they are before us at this time.

MS DUNDAS (6.07): The Democrats are happy to support this amendment and, as with other members, we are quite happy with the rest of the government amendments. However, we do need to go through them one by one because there is an amendment that

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