Turner Judy: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading 
Turner Judy: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading 
[Volume:625;Page:20172] 
JUDY TURNER (Deputy Leader—United Future) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of United Future to speak in support of the Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill (No 3). It is a bill that seeks to tidy up the medical misadventure provisions of the Act so that these provisions become consistent with the rest of the accident compensation scheme. Currently we have two categories of injury: medical error and medical mishap. This is confusing and unhelpful because the current provisions are predicated on establishing blame in regard to the practitioner or the health provider involved. 
The problem that this creates is that Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) clients have had lengthy waits for the process of blame to be settled. Once that was established their claim was able to go ahead but that process took considerable time. 
With the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act and the work of the Office of the Health and Disability Commissioner—including the fact that the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act strengthened the ability for hospitals for instance to run safe quality assurance activities for their staff—we believe that health professionals are now well able to be held to account for their competency and their practice and there is now no need for ACC clients to have to suffer in a climate of uncertainty. This means that they can get on with securing the treatment and the rehabilitation they need. 
It has been important for us to make sure that the term “treatment injury” is carefully defined so that it does not end up having unintended applications. We can understand for instance that when people go for surgery there are intended injuries by way of a surgeon’s blade. We have to be careful to differentiate very clearly between injuries that were intended for the ongoing good of the patient and unintended injuries. Over the last couple of years the media has been full of stories about people who have had tubes pieces of metal swabs and all sorts of things left inside them during surgery with the ongoing obvious complications that that has meant for patients. So it was very important for us and we did take some time to make sure we got the definition and the terminology correct. 
The bill also gives additional flexibility to ACC in terms of using its discretion to provide additional entitlements. In relation to decisions in these areas where there is quite a bit of flexibility I can anticipate some angst as claimants compare notes and try to determine why one person has received discretionary payments rehabilitation services or equipment of some kind and somebody else has not. I suspect that the outworking of this provision will need to be closely monitored because it is unable to be reviewed or challenged. 
There is also a change to the way in which weekly contributions are calculated for the self-employed. What will happen is that all sources of income over the previous 52 weeks leading up to the injury will be considered. That is particularly good news for newly self-employed people who often found themselves assessed against the low income their new business was making and really out of pocket and unable to survive on what ACC could pay them. So that is a really positive move. 
Other speakers have mentioned the issue of acupuncturists. It was intended that the definition of acupuncturist would be extended so that a greater range of providers could be registered with ACC and able to claim accident compensation payments. The problem that developed was that the new group being included was not recognised by the groups currently recognised as accident compensation providers. 
The Minister has reassured us that all is well and near completion and I hope she is right because what concerned me a little bit with this bill was that there was an attempt and I do not think it was intentional to use this bill to achieve an outcome that was really only possible under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act. It is not an easy thing to come to terms with. For instance we were given briefings about the number of organisations that currently consider themselves acupuncturists the number of practitioners that each group has registered with it and the kinds of qualifications each group requires. The range is quite considerable and I can see the problems the group was having. However I do believe that it is definitely the job of the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act which has set up the legal mechanism so that any health practitioner group can become registered to find commonality between the different disciplines within their own discipline and put out a set of qualifications and scopes of practice that they will recognise. 
There seem to have been some real problems in the ability of acupuncturists to work together and if they are making headway on this then we are very very pleased. Often when one is a spokesperson for another party in health one asks oneself: “If I were the Minister of Health or the Minister for ACC what would I do about such an issue?”. I have to say that the frustration I felt on that matter was that I wondered why we were providing accident compensation for practitioners who had not yet reached some sort of agreement under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act. If this is about to resolve itself then that is great but I would like to give acupuncturists a time frame and say: “If you cannot reach agreement and come under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act by a set date you are no longer entitled to be an ACC registered practitioner.” 
I suspect that the financial incentive would mean that they would very quickly find some common ground and would get their act together. We are talking about putting patients at risk if we are allowing people who are not competent to practice. We are talking about inserting needles into people’s bodies as a treatment and if they get that wrong they could create a whole set of other problems. It is really important that we call for this group to get their act together. Certainly I was concerned that there was an opportunity for this legislation to act in a counter-productive way to the recently passed very good Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act. 
We are very keen and very happy to support the second reading of this bill. We look forward to the Committee stage and working through the Supplementary Order Paper of the Minister and those proposed by other members on the committee. I congratulate those who have worked with us on the Health Committee on this matter. I think we worked extremely well on this bill. There was a genuinely good intention around the table to get it right. We look forward to its passage.