Warren-Clark AngieHEALTH PRACTITIONERS COMPETENCE ASSURANCE AMENDMENT BILLIn CommitteePart 1 Amendments to principal ActANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Thank you Madam Chair. It's a pleasure to rise and talk on this very very good bill the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Amendment Bill. I propose to talk on Part 1 of this bill but first before I do that I would like to commend our very friendly and hard-working Health Committee and all the officials for their great work. When I was reviewing what we had done because this was quite some time ago that we'd done this report we actually did a lot of work—a lot of really good work. So I would just like to congratulate the officials and the entire team. We came to some really good outcomes I believe. So I'm going to speak very briefly on two parts that I think are particularly interesting to me. One is—and I did raise this originally when I spoke in the second reading—around the opportunity for the electronic mechanism for basically having a practising certificate issued. Now the reason I think this is particularly useful is that under new clause 5A of this bill it ensures that we're more modern but actually when we listened to all the health practitioners out there I was absolutely gobsmacked to discover the hundreds of thousands of certificates that were issued manually across the health practitioners' organisation. So it's actually a really positive move forward. I raise that because we discussed quite clearly how having an electronic practising certificate will be managed and I think we managed to work this through very well. Essentially a practitioner must issue an electronic address. If their certificate has been revoked it's really important that they are given an electronic notice of that or they have it physically returned and they've got essentially 14 days to do so. Now what we thought about was Hey what if someone doesn't get that notice and fails to receive or give receipt of that?" and essentially what will occur is a fine. So there is an actual penalty for not returning that certificate. That brings me on to the second part of this bill which I particularly like and I do have a couple of questions for the Minister in the chair. So we've talked about an electronic certificate and what I would like to talk about is the next part of this and that is particularly I guess what we're all concerned about which is when a certificate needs to be surrendered. That is essentially when there's been a notice of conviction or practice issues with the person. I'm particularly proud of this particular part of the bill. I'd like to read a little bit of that with your permission Madam Chair. So this is new section 67A "Action to be taken by authority on receipt of notice of conviction" which says that "(1) This section applies if a responsible authority receives a notice of conviction—" and it's about "an offence punishable by imprisonment or a fine exceeding $1000; or … is otherwise an offence that the authority considers raises concerns about the appropriateness of the conduct or about the safety of the practice of the health practitioner." It's particularly useful. We've often known about people who have concerns so it's really important that this is addressed. The part that I'm particularly pleased about is the compassionate aspect of what we've put in place. So the first part is they must "refer the notice of conviction to a professional conduct committee or"—and this is the part I really like—"order the health practitioner to—(i) undergo any specific medical examination and treatment; or … undergo any specified psychological or psychiatric examination counselling or therapy; or … attend any specified course of treatment or therapy for alcohol or drug abuse." So this puts that compassionate aspect into the treatment—for example if someone has a drink-driving conviction but is an orthopaedic surgeon losing their career might not be the right method. This part of the bill enables that process to basically balance out based on public safety etc. But it's not just about "You have to go and do these things." You also must have a date that you have to comply to do these specific things and a date to report back. So these are really important aspects of this bill. I think it is tremendously compassionate but also practical that we do this. Now what we haven't said—and this is the question I have for the Minister—is what might happen should the person fail to do so. Now essentially if the person doesn't do this in the time frame for example or they may be in the process of having counselling etc. but that is not necessarily useful or hasn't been completed what might happen at that point? I'm essentially just wanting to know. These are health practitioners. These people have our lives in their hands etc. so what might happen in your reading Minister—would that prevent them continuing to practise or not? I think that I will leave it there. Thank you."