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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 08 Hansard (Wednesday, 4 August 2004) . . Page.. 3394 ..

name but a few. I will not say any more. I thank you for that. If members need any more information please do not hesitate to come and ask me.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Bill agreed to in principle.

Detail stage

Bill, by leave, taken as a whole.

MS TUCKER (11.09): I seek leave to move the amendments circulated in my name together.

Leave granted.

MS TUCKER: I move amendments Nos 1 to 5 [see schedule 1 at page 3470]. I have already spoken to these.

Amendments agreed to.

Bill, as a whole, as amended, agreed to.

Bill, as amended, agreed to.

Discrimination (Genetic Status) Amendment Bill 2003

Debate resumed from 10 December 2003, on motion by Mrs Cross:

That this bill be agreed to in principle.

MR STANHOPE (Chief Minister, Attorney-General, Minister for Environment and Minister for Community Affairs) (11.10): The Discrimination (Genetic Status) Amendment Bill was introduced into the Assembly on 10 December 2003 by Mrs Cross. The bill aims to protect the community against the use of predictive genetic information and discrimination based on genetic information. Some legal protection is already available in the ACT under the Crimes Act against the non-consensual collection and use of body samples for genetic testing. However, the protection is limited.

While the collection and disclosure of personal information by a public or private laboratory is subject to national privacy principles, the laboratory may not know the identify of the individual from whom samples were derived. In that case the laboratory will not be dealing with personal information covered by the Privacy Act. The Privacy Act is further limited as it does not apply to genetic samples but rather to the genetic information derived from them.

The bill proposed by Mrs Cross amends the Discrimination Act 1991 through the insertion of new grounds for discrimination to which the act applies, namely discrimination on the grounds of a genetic characteristic or a genetic predisposition to a condition or disease. The government does not support the amendments to the

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