Heatley Phil: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill — In Committee 
Heatley Phil: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:611;Page:8100] 
PHIL HEATLEY (NZ National—Whangarei) 
: 
 As the applause dies down I take the opportunity to speak to Part 4 “Complaints and discipline”. There are two provisions in the bill that have the potential to erode severely—and I do not say that lightly—the advantages to the public of professional self-regulation which is what we have generally seen throughout different health areas and what we have generally seen historically. The first provision is the removal of the setting of professional codes of ethics from the various professions to the statutory authority and the abolition of the right of election to the authorities. Those things are of concern to us. Those are the issues in Part 4 that I put before the Committee. The first is the removal from the profession of the setting of professional codes of ethics and the second is the abolition of the right of election to the authorities. 
This bill and particularly Part 4 establishes a single disciplinary tribunal—the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal—to hear complaints against those health practitioners who warrant significant disciplinary action and are defined that way. It applies to those who warrant “significant” disciplinary action. There is a bar as to what is significant and what is insignificant. Health practitioners certainly those who work together with those requiring discipline are the first to recognise that difference and can make the recommendation as to what is significant and what is not. 
In the first instance complaints must be referred by the authority to the Health and Disability Commissioner. After an investigation which should reach a high degree of thoroughness with interviews and so on and so forth and with rights of reply by those being disciplined charges may be laid before the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal by the director of proceedings under the Health and Disability Commissioner Act which was passed in 1994.  
There is another option which applies if the complaint is referred to an authority by the Health and Disability Commissioner by a complaints investigation committee of the authority under this bill. We read about that in clauses 61 through to 100 which make reference to the schedules which I suspect we will be debating later. Clauses 219 to 238 in Part 8 also amend the Health and Disability Commissioner Act. We will need to look at those schedules and examine them and ensure that everything that should be there is there.  
However our concern is that the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal will be made up of ministerial appointees and that is just one more example of where the Minister has her finger in the pie. There was a high degree of professional representation on the previous tribunal and I think Dr Lynda Scott alluded to that. I understand that representatives formerly were elected independent of the Minister but here we have the Minister actually involving herself in the appointment process.  
There is no provision for the profession to elect its own representatives and there is no provision for the profession to judge its own as there should be. It has worked well in the past. It works in other sectors outside the health sector so why should it not work here? Why should the Minister have the opportunity to reward her mates by giving them a role on this tribunal? I think it opens up the process to accusations of political interference. I can imagine that happening because it is the habit of this Government.