Kedgley Sue: Health (National Cervical Screening Programme) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Kedgley Sue: Health (National Cervical Screening Programme) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:615;Page:11279] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 I would like to inform people that the Green Party has put up a Supplementary Order Paper. In it we have basically reinstated the informed-consent provisions that were originally in this bill for general-practitioner and primary health-care records. We have reinstated informed consent. 
The bizarre thing is that nobody objects to evaluators having automatic access to laboratory records to records that are on the screening register or indeed to hospital records. The concern is around evaluators having automatic access without consent to highly confidential and sensitive medical health-care records. The extraordinary thing is that no good explanation or convincing rationale has even been put up as to why we would want to set aside the privacy of personal health information in this way. The officials have said that they need automatic access to 1 million general-practitioner records so that they can evaluate whether women who develop cervical cancer are properly referred to and treated by their general practitioners. 
But if that is the reason that officials allege they need automatic access to general practitioner records without women’s consent then it simply does not stand up. Only about 200 women develop cervical cancer each year and it would be extremely easy to get consent from those women to carry out an evaluation of their primary health-care records at the time they are diagnosed. I am absolutely convinced that the overwhelming majority of women—certainly those who are diagnosed with cervical cancer—would be only too happy to give consent at that stage. 
The problem is that by doing it in this way—by saying that somehow in order to access the records of 200 women we need automatic access to the very personal and sensitive general-practitioner records of 1 million women—we will undermine confidence in the entire National Cervical-screening programme. 
The member for the National Party said that if the Green Party whipped up fear about this bill then that might result in women opting off. I can assure members that it will not be the Green Party that will whip up the fear. The fear is there. I have been contacted by women’s organisations and by women around New Zealand who first of all resent the fact that their personal health-care records will be able to be accessed in this way. They resent the fact that they will basically be given Hobson’s choice. If they want to be on the programme they have to agree to surrender their right to informed consent. They have to allow automatic access to all their private health-care records without their consent or they have to opt off the programme and risk both their health and the efficacy of the whole nationwide screening programme. Pansy Wong was right when she said that is the key issue. 
Why should women have to have Hobson’s choice? Why should they have to surrender personal consent in order to be on the programme? Officials told us that allegedly we needed these last-minute amendments to strengthen the cervical-screening programme. In my view they will not strengthen the cervical-screening programme. They will erode confidence in it and they will erode confidence in the doctor-patient relationship which is founded on confidentiality and privacy. Once women realise that this confidentiality may not be maintained—that an unspecified number of evaluators can access their personal health-care records and without their consent—it will undermine the whole confidence in the doctor-patient relationship. 
I notice that the latest New Zealand Medical Association records point out that the code of ethics of the World Medical Association and the New Zealand Medical Association state that physicians must preserve absolute confidentiality in all they know about their patient even after the patient has died.