Scott Lynda: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill — In Committee 
Scott Lynda: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:611;Page:8081] 
Dr LYNDA SCOTT (NZ National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 I am so pleased that the Minister finally got to her feet and took a call. What a load of rhetoric that was! I have never heard anything like it. I tell the Minister that the devil is in the detail and the devil will come back to bite her on this one. The detail is where the Minister will be tripped up. This bill is too big. The Minister has tried to put too much into it. When the Minister talks about nurses saying that no one is better than anybody else I think she demonstrates that she has a chip on her shoulder. I think she demonstrates a Freudian slip when she keeps saying that no one is better than anybody else. I think she has an underlying concern about doctors. She thinks that they are better so one has to bring them down to all being one and the same. 
As a medical professional I can tell the Committee that nobody quite knows what it is like to be a doctor and to carry the final burden—and one does. The doctor carries the final burden of life and death. I do not think that anyone else in this Committee apart from Paul Hutchison actually knows what that is like. It is actually the doctors who make the final decisions. I have been a nurse and a doctor and I know how much more of a burden one carries as a doctor. The extra training that a doctor does is all about the ability to diagnose. So when the doctors say that they do not want a bar of this bill and that they were very happy with the Medical Practitioners Act I think the public—and the Minister was talking about the public—will take some notice of what the doctors say. Doctors are the ones on the front line. They are the ones who take the rap. They are the ones whose professional competence has to be assured. 
I agree that the aim of the bill is very worthy. Of course we should be trying to protect the public. Of course we should be making sure that every health practitioner who engages in any sort of practice that could harm an individual should definitely be keeping his or her competence up to speed. Yes if a health professional was registered 20 years ago his or her credentials should be kept updated. The Medical Practitioners Act corrected a lot of the problems of the 30 years before. It was working really well. Other health practitioners thought that this bill was based on that Act. However they have found that the Minister has massive powers under the bill and there is concern about new concepts in Part 2 and about scopes of practice and how they will work. The public does have some concerns. 
The Medical Council says that it knows what scopes are. If nothing is to change from the Medical Practitioners Act how would that help Monty Hornbeck? It would not. It could help him only if the Government were to say that there would be very individualised scopes of practice for individual doctors as opposed to broad scopes. That is the only way it could help so I would like the Minister to explain that. Ken Shirley’s bill was thrown out. They did not like it. Labour voted it down. Now the Government says that there were a whole lot of good things in it. Some things in that bill were trying to break down the patch protection that happens. We know that that happens. Medical specialists have said that medical patch protection does occur. However that can be changed by the way doctors are registered through a committee. In Britain the Calman Committee is used for that. It has a committee of people that decides. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: Nine long years. 
Dr LYNDA SCOTT 
: The member has been in for 4 long years and health care is an absolute mess. This Government has a bill that is an absolute mess. It will not protect the public. The Medical Practitioners Act was legislation that did not have political spin around it. Everybody agreed with it. It did an extremely good job to register doctors and have credentialing. That member who is continually screaming across the Chamber should go back to her knitting and reading because that is all she is good for.