Page 3416 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 14 November 2006
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I understand that during the detail stage the government will move an amendment to delete that provision from the bill. It is on that basis that I am prepared to support the bill in principle. However, I have other concerns which I will outline below. I am also not entirely convinced as to the rationale for some amendments which appear to flow on from the audit of legislation for which ACT Health has administrative responsibility for consistency with the Human Rights Act conducted by the Monash University Castan Centre for Human Rights Law. This lack of clarity goes to the heart of the functioning and the value of the Human Rights Act. I will address these issues shortly. I also have concerns about amendments to the Gene Technology Act, which I will return to. I support most of the other amendments in this bill.
The amendments to legislation in order to bring the optometrists and pharmacists into the health professionals bills were expected and welcome. It was clear when this legislation was first introduced in 2004 that the various health professions previously covered by stand-alone legislation would need to be brought into this overarching legislation one at a time, once those professions had done some more work on their codes of practice. Neither the optometrists nor the pharmacists have raised any concerns with the Assembly or through the media, so the process appears to be continuing as expected.
Similarly, there are a number of amendments which are, in effect, consequential to the separation of midwifery and nursing as professions under the act. The Greens support the affirmation of midwifery as a specific and valuable profession and support these amendments, which simply ensure that both nurses and midwives are considered separately, where necessary, in other legislation.
The bill also makes clear that the ACT government sees the statutory review of the ACT’s Gene Technology Act as unnecessary, as the commonwealth’s review of its own legislation will suffice. This is one area where the Greens have concern with this bill because this is a complete backdown on the agreement the ACT government made when it introduced the act in the ACT.
No-one would doubt that the review of the commonwealth act was detailed and thorough but, as the ACT itself argues very often, we are not simply an adjunct of the commonwealth. Indeed, on very many matters we think quite differently to the commonwealth. Certainly the government thinks quite differently to this current commonwealth government.
My office followed up exactly why we should be happy with the commonwealth’s review of gene technology around the country. We actually asked for the paper, an input of the government’s submissions, letters or other representations of its views on this issue. I am very thankful to the staff of the Minister for Health’s office for getting back to my office. No doubt they had to do a bit of extra work that they did not really have in their plans. While we have here a list of the ways in which the ACT got involved in the commonwealth review, we do not yet have anything which says what the ACT government said to that review. That is really, I believe, what we need to know.
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