Page 662 - Week 02 - Thursday, 18 February 2016

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The Assembly voted—

Ayes 6		Noes 7
Mr Coe	Mrs Jones	Mr Barr	Mr Corbell
Mr Doszpot	Ms Lawder	Ms Berry	Ms Porter
Mrs Dunne		Dr Bourke	Mr Rattenbury
Mr Hanson		Ms Burch

Question so resolved in the negative.

Bill, as a whole, agreed to.

Bill agreed to.

Health Legislation Amendment Bill 2015

Debate resumed from 19 November 2015, on motion by Mr Corbell:

That this bill be agreed to in principle.

MR HANSON (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (5.11): The opposition will be supporting this bill. It amends three pieces of current legislation. The bill repeals part 3A of the Health Act 1993 to remove the provisions relating to the establishment of functions of the Local Hospital Network Council. With respect to the Health Records (Privacy and Access) Act 1997, the bill changes definitions. With respect to the Civil Law (Wrongs) Act, the bill seeks to protect people, so-called “good Samaritans”, who may be impaired by a recreational drug from civil litigation when administering naloxone in an emergency situation. I will deal with those issues in that order.

Turning first to the Health Act 1993, the requirement for a local hospital network was created by the Rudd Labor government in the national health reform agreement. The national reform agreement required the states and territories to agree to create local hospital network councils. As part of the grand Kevin Rudd vision, they were intended to provide more local and flexible governance arrangements for hospital management.

Among other things, they hoped to deliver agreed performance standards, monitor performance and improve local patient outcomes. The reality is that these were not required in the ACT. I think there was acknowledgement that that was the case, certainly from my discussions with the former minister. I think that everybody in the ACT understood that we were adopting structures that were essentially consequential to reforms that may or may not have been required in other jurisdictions, but certainly were not required in the ACT. They have been, I would imagine, an administrative duplication and burden, and the removal will, I would hope, simplify ACT Health Directorate funding and reporting. I welcome the fact that we go back essentially to where we were.

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