Collins Judith: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill — In Committee 
Collins Judith: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:611;Page:8087] 
JUDITH COLLINS (NZ National—Clevedon) 
: 
 This bill on which the Opposition has spoken so well tonight in its usual united way is a massive bill and it will be of huge cost to the public. There is no reason to regulate health professionals other than for public safety. It is not all right to regulate health professionals in order to create some sort of patch protection and it is not all right to regulate health professionals to destroy a profession as has been done to the general practice profession by this Government. In this particular part I am concerned that the fitness for registration and scopes of practice will bring an incredible amount of cost not only to the professions but also to the public as a natural flow-on effect. 
As a member of the Health Committee I sat through the many and varied submissions on this bill and one of the things that came out quite strongly was that some of the smaller professional groups were very much concerned about the cost of this bill to them and their professions and occupations. Not all health professionals are highly paid people and that is a point that needs to be brought home. We can say almost without exception that the more unionised the workforce the poorer paid it will be because that is a natural consequence of the lowest common denominator on which unions exist which is what they promote. 
One of the concerns in this part is that in the provisions dealing with the fitness for registration and the scopes of practice there is a tremendous amount of over-regulation that will severely impact on the ability of some health professionals to get registered and to operate within their chosen professions. Quite a lot of those professions comprise women who are often mothers working on a part-time basis and that is particularly the case for those who work with schools. They are people who are often getting no more than say $25000 or $30000 a year and they will be regulated as though they are neurosurgeons which is just ridiculous. That is the sort of silly thing that is in this part. 
I take up the point made by my colleague in New Zealand First in relation to clause 15 which deals with the ability to communicate in and comprehend English. I am concerned to know how the Race Relations Conciliator Joris de Bres who called my ancestors “the Taliban” will interpret that. I cannot help but think that he will come out and say that this sort of provision is discriminatory because it is—it is discriminatory against people who do not speak and comprehend English. That might be considered a good thing by some people in this Committee but I have to wonder about some of the practitioners of Chinese medicines who deal with people who are speakers of the many dialects of China. I wonder why it is that we will require them to be able to communicate in and comprehend English if they are practising solely in their own field among people who understand them. 
Dr Lynda Scott 
: Will that be a scope of practice? 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: As Dr Lynda Scott correctly asks: will that be a scope of practice? We will have to find out from the Minister. That is one of the awful things about this part—it does not say what those scopes of practice are going to be. We are being told by this Minister and this nanny State that we simply have to wait and trust the Minister which is a bad bad thing. We are being told that we cannot trust the health professionals but we can trust the Minister. Well I think not—I would rather trust the health professionals any day because one of the surest ways to find incompetence in a profession or its members is to over-regulate it to the point of death.