Bidois DanDAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): It's a pleasure to rise and speak in the third reading of the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Amendment Bill. I do want to start out by acknowledging the Hon Dr David Clark for his contribution and for bringing this bill to the House. I would also like to acknowledge the chair of the Health Committee Louisa Wall for her contribution but also the contributions over a number of years because as we know this has been a bill that has had cross-parliamentary input. I certainly want to acknowledge previous National Governments for the work that they did in the reviews that were undertaken both in 2009 and then again in 2012 that have led to some of the key recommendations that have been implemented into this bill.As the Hon David Clark mentioned this is an important bill. It does tidy up a whole range of regulatory inconsistencies but it is an important bill to provide the public with assurance and confidence in their healthcare practitioners and to make sure these practitioners are fit and competent to practise their professions. So that is essentially the purpose of the bill. It is a procedural bill. It makes a range of 14 provisions to tidy up the Act and make sure that the definitions are clear. If there are concerns with practitioners there is now a process in place by which those concerns can be raised with the regulatory body and the appropriate discipline can be sought—but also the collaboration the cooperation and the delivery of these mechanisms as well.So just to go back in time in terms of the reviews that were conducted probably the most significant review that was conducted was in 2012. The key recommendations that came out of that were around the responsible authorities' performance better visibility of the decisions around practitioners' practice but also around the better workforce information. That was really key in terms of providing us with the framework by which this bill has come to the House today.As the Minister outlined this is really about improving the efficiency and the effectiveness of the healthcare practitioners in the way they go about their business and ensuring that there's a process by which discipline can be brought on healthcare practitioners that are not living up to the standard of their profession. That could be in terms of a suspension but it also could be in terms of just a performance review as well. There is now in place a process to examine healthcare practitioners and that is certainly very handy and very important to make sure that the public has full confidence in the people that are coming to them as registered healthcare practitioners because that is of the utmost importance for our healthcare system.There were a number of select committees—we won't go through them in detail—but the Health Committee of course looked at 49 submissions and no substantial changes were made from that. So it is worth that I take the time to just acknowledge everybody who has contributed to this bill in terms of the select committee the Minister but also previous National Governments as well and every official out there who has contributed to making sure that we've got the most efficient and effective system for healthcare practitioners. This will make sure that we've got confidence in the system but also that there are processes in place whereby we can hold healthcare practitioners to account but also make sure that we uncover any inconsistencies or any poor performance in their work. So it's my pleasure in the third reading to commend this bill to the House.