Page 3424 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 14 November 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
I have listened to them. That is the outrage you have got today? It is incredible that they claim that it is majority government bulldozing its way through; it is ignoring the human rights processes. What a load of rubbish! We have had this audited by Monash University, by a professor of law. We have had it go through JACS. They have asked us to make an amendment. We made an amendment to a clause that has existed for 12 years. And you guys go off like that! It is absolutely ridiculous. Maybe it is more beneficial for you to vent your spleen on matters like this rather than attacking each other. But for Mrs Dunne to come in here with her little tirade of abuse of me on this, saying that I am not doing my job properly and that I had not read the bill, is a load of rubbish. We have taken more advice on 59A than on other areas.
Mrs Dunne: And you were prepared to let it go through?
MS GALLAGHER: You disagree with it, Mrs Dunne. You are not a human rights lawyer but you have got a particular view on this. We have taken human rights advice on a clause that has existed in our legislation and has been used for 12 years. Today you have cottoned onto it and you think, “Goody, we can get in here and slap it around.”
I foreshadow that the government will be moving three amendments to the legislation. We will change the commencement provision to allow schedule 2 to commence on the day after notification, rather than 28 days after notification. We will also omit section 130C (1) (b) (ii), which makes sense. The pharmacy guild contacted us on this issue and it is sensible that we accept their advice that it should not be a criminal offence for anyone who supplies a substance for anyone else for the treatment of menstrual problems. As I said about section 59A, we accept the Assembly’s view; we accept the scrutiny of bills report; and we accept the position of Dr Foskey. We are agreeing to remove section 59A.
This legislation deals with a number of matters, some of which were time critical, which is why we have had to push forward with passage today. As I said, if members had spoken to me and asked for further time to consider the range of matters being dealt with in this bill, we would have certainly considered splitting the bill. As it was all in together, we proceeded, based on the discussions we had had with those opposite. If Mrs Dunne had wanted to raise a matter, if she had taken the time over the last couple of weeks to have a look at it and had expressed concerns about it, we would have certainly been talking with her as well.
There are a number of acts covered by this bill dealing with the audit of the human rights legislation as it applies to health legislation. The Gene Technology Act, the Public Health Act, the Public Health Regulations 2000, the Food Act 2001, the Health Professionals Act 2004, the Sexually Transmitted Diseases Act 1956 and the Tuberculosis Act 1950 are being repealed through this.
The third category of amendments relates to other portfolio amendments that are not suitable for a separate bill or for inclusion in the Statute Law Amendment Bill. This includes:
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .