Nash StuartHon STUART NASH (Minister of Police): Thank you very much Mr Chair. I've spoken I think four times on pest control and I've answered all those questions. But to Mr Jami-Lee Ross I need to answer some of the questions that that member's put forward and in doing that Mr Ross I'll also address Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 447 from Mr Hudson. But I'll come back to Mr Ross's questions.SOP 447 wants us to put immediate threat" in terms of when the doctor must consider informing the police. Under the status quo—Brett Hudson: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I would've allowed this to go because obviously you're in control of relevance but the Minister by using the words that he's going to debate my SOP SOP 447—that's a Part 5 SOP. I won't have the Minister debate the—CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): No that's not correct actually. It alters Part 5 of the principal Act. It's in Part 1. So e noho.Hon STUART NASH: Look I'll put yours aside Mr Hudson. Mr Ross we thought long and hard about this because you are right: there is a fundamental relationship there is a confidential relationship between the medical practitioner and the patient and that is sacrosanct. You know the patient has to be able to trust their doctor that they are going to do the right thing. Under current legislation—principle 11 of the Privacy Act 1993 and in the Health Information Privacy Code 1994—a health practitioner may disclose information if they believe "on reasonable grounds that the disclosure is necessary to prevent or lessen a serious threat to public health or [private] safety". That's what exists in the law at the moment.The bill is seeking to reduce the threshold for notifying police to deliver a better outcome for firearms licence holders. We worked closely with the Privacy Commissioner on this and what it would look like and we also worked closely with the medical fraternity as well just to ensure that we got that part of it right as well. So what the bill provides is that a medical practitioner "must consider"—and that word is "consider"—"notifying the Police" if they consider "that the health condition of the licence holder is such that in the interests of the safety of individuals or the public the licence holder should not be permitted to use or possess a firearm; or should only be permitted to use or possess a firearm subject to any limitations that may be warranted by the health condition of the licence holder". Now under clause 83 new section 91 if you have a look on page 106—you mentioned the fact that a doctor may not go to police or may consider being more conservative in his and her approach because they open themselves up to liability. What we actually did is remove the health practitioner's liability in this case simply for the reason that you're talking about—the reason that you mentioned Mr Ross. The other thing we did is that we said that if a health practitioner notifies the police that they believe someone is of sufficient state that the police need to deal with that—their licence needs to be removed or revoked or suspended—then the police have to go to someone independent of that medical practitioner. So in essence if the police decided to act on this in a way that meant that the firearms licence holder lost their licence then that licence holder would be notified and an independent practitioner or expert would then come in and do an assessment as well. So the way the regime is set up—and this was mentioned under consultation with the Privacy Commissioner—is such that there's a degree of independence from the doctor who has made that initial complaint if police want to carry this through and revoke or suspend the licence.So we think we have got that balance right in terms of (a) protecting the privacy of the individual (b) protecting the safety of the individual and our community and (c) providing a level of assurance to the medical community that they won't be held liable if in fact you know in hindsight a call they made might have been the wrong one. It's the reason why we put the word "consider" as opposed to "compel" and it is the reason why we removed that liability from the medical fraternity."