Page 3425 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 14 November 2006
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• the Health Professionals Act 2004, a power to allow the Health Professionals Tribunal to award costs in appropriate circumstances;
• the Health Professionals Act 2004, an amendment to protect a health professional from being directed or incited to engage in unprofessional conduct;
• the Gene Technology Act 2003, amendments to section 194 to allow the ACT to rely on the independent review of the operation of the act conducted by the commonwealth to satisfy the requirements for an independent review of the corresponding legislation;
• the Health Professionals Act 2004, an amendment to section 43 to allow the presidential member of the tribunal to select a person from a list of health professionals approved by the minister to sit on the tribunal and to make clear that lay members of the tribunal are only appointed for the duration of a hearing;
• the Health Professionals Act 2004, an amendment to section 14 to list the health professions regulated by the act; and
• the Health Act 1993, an amendment to ensure that retrospective approvals of medical facilities to undertake pregnancy terminations made under section 30D are valid.
I understand the opposition will move an amendment to this, based on members’ opposition to the termination procedures in the territory. It is very unfortunate that this error was made when we made previous legislative amendments to regulation in this area. It was my office that picked up the fact that the notifiable instrument had not been made. The minute we were aware of it we moved to retrospectively address the situation. Certainly we had a notifiable instrument drawn up straight away to address the problem from a forward point of view.
It creates the position where, for a number of months, due to a notifiable instrument not being made, we simply have to do it, regardless of your position on terminations, because we are creating a situation where terminations conducted during that period of time may be illegal. I do not know how that suits the purpose of those who do not believe in terminations being performed because it exposes potentially the medical professionals and staff—through no fault of their own, other than a failure to have a notifiable instrument—who are working in these facilities. It is extremely unfortunate that that occurred, but errors occur from time to time.
A number of errors have occurred. As members who have been ministers before are aware, these things happen from time to time, through no-one’s real fault. There are a couple that I can think of: Quamby not being declared a shelter under the Children and Young People Act for maybe 14 years; CIT fees, with no-one notifying the fee increases but you, the opposition, when in government, happily collected the fees. There are a number of times that these situations occurred. Nobody likes them to occur. On a matter as serious as this, I certainly regret it. As I said, my office were the ones that picked it up and the ones that moved. This is part of making sure that we are correcting that in the interests of all people who are concerned.
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