Page 664 - Week 02 - Thursday, 18 February 2016
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MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (5.18): The ACT Greens are happy to support this bill. The key component of the passage of this bill will provide an exemption so that the good Samaritan provisions apply to people who honestly and not recklessly administer naloxone with the aim of resuscitating someone who has overdosed, whether or not the good Samaritan is impaired by a recreational drug, including alcohol.
As the Minister for Health has stated, the ACT’s unique naloxone trial has now been successfully evaluated and has become an ongoing program. The government and the community partners that have worked to achieve this should be commended for building up a strong evidence base and taking a health-led approach to personal drug use. There are many other areas of the lost war on drugs that would benefit from this clear and strong validation of harm minimisation approaches that seek to put human lives and safety at the fore or seek to provide medical use of currently illicit substances.
I say that not to take away from the genuine appreciation that the Greens have for the naloxone program; rather, I make these comments because I see it as an innovative response to drug and law issues, and I hope that in other areas we might continue down this path and learn from what has been a positive experience.
The bill also includes the repeal of part 3A of the Health Act 1993 to remove the provisions relating to the establishment and functions of the Local Hospital Network Council, which, as the minister has explained, is in response to changes to health funding announced in the federal budget for 2014-15 which seriously undermined the integrity of the original intent of the networks.
As I understand it from the last network annual report, the 2014-15 federal budget announced the cessation of the hospital funding agreement under the national health reform agreement 2011 from 2017, and, from July 2015, the cessation of the national partnership agreement on improving public health services. The federal budget of 2015-16 confirmed that the ACT will lose a range of reward funding measures, including reward funding for improved public hospital services provided against the national emergency access targets and national elective surgery targets.
I further understand that in 2014 a legislated review of the Local Hospital Network Council was completed by the Nous Group and tabled by the minister in the Assembly. It recommended that the government consider the ongoing role of the local health network, while acknowledging the good work it had undertaken.
In June 2015 the network met for a final time pending the proposed establishment of an alternative health advisory body. I look forward to finding out more from the minister on new initiatives and coordination approaches in this area.
The third component of the bill relates to the definition of “young people”. The minister believes it is confusing and inconsistent with other relevant legislation such as the Children and Young People Act 2008. The proposed amendments to the Health Records (Privacy and Access) Act 1997 will bring the definitions of the health records act in line with the definitions for “carer”, “child”, “young person” and “guardian” in other legislation.
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