Scott Lynda: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill — In Committee 
Scott Lynda: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:611;Page:8159] 
Dr LYNDA SCOTT (NZ National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 The Health Committee did a lot of work on this part. We tried our very best to improve it because it most certainly needed to be improved. By majority new clause 166A “Review of operation of Act” was added and states: “(1) As soon as practicable after the expiry of the period of 3 years beginning on the commencement of this section the Director-General of Health must—(a) review the operation of this Act since the date of the commencement of this section;”. 
Members who were on the select committee know why the legislation will need to be reviewed. It is an absolute mess. We know there will be problems with it. We know there will be trouble. Everybody on the committee agreed that a review would be needed. It will be a National Government that will have to sort out the mess from this bill because we will be in office when the review is done. The problems around scopes of practice will be the first thing we will have to sort out. Scopes of practice have been defined as “leading edge” “cutting edge” “new” “untried” “untested” and “a new concept”. I believe that every time something like this is done we end up with all sorts of problems. Scopes of practice are not found anywhere else in the world. The only place that tried having scopes of practice was British Columbia and it stopped them. 
Judith Collins 
: Why? 
Dr LYNDA SCOTT 
: They just did not work. British Columbia had so much trouble with them and I think we will in 3 years’ time. We will have to go back to the Medical Practitioners Act because this bill is supposed to be based on it. 
Tonight United Future would not vote to have elected members on authorities. Had they done that my amendments would have won. Dentists pharmacists and doctors would have been very proud of United Future had its members stood up and voted for them. Authorities have elected members now. They have professionalism and they will lose it. That Minister will appoint more “fopms”. Do members know what that stands for? It stands for “friends of the Prime Minister”. There will be more “fopms” on boards and authorities all over New Zealand. [ 
Interruption 
] She thinks that if people get elected they are right. People will not be elected. The Minister will appoint people she can control so that they will not make political noise. There will be a reduction in professionalism. Doctors do not want a bar of that and they will be extremely disappointed in United Future because that party could have voted for our amendment. It could have voted that one amendment through tonight to let doctors dentists and pharmacists have elected members on their boards. But no United Future did not vote for the amendment. 
Sue Kedgley wanted any other group that came under the bill to have elected members as well. The professions want their people elected so that they can have faith in them. But no the Minister will appoint them all. But hey professions will have the right to nominate! Great! We know that this bill changes the quality assurance provisions. They have been changed from the Medical Practitioners Act and there will be concerns amongst the professions. 
Some changes in the select committee were made to the quality assurance provisions because the professions do need to be able to engage in quality assurance activities with some protection They have to know that their meetings will be confidential enough for them to be able to disclose problems. But the provision did not go far enough. I proposed amendments to it so it would go a bit further. People can access the Health and Disability Commissioner the Accident Compensation Corporation and a complaints assessment process in every hospital but if we want quality assurance to work there has to be some protection for practitioners; otherwise they will not freely discuss what goes wrong and that will be another problem. 
Then we come to the powers of the Minister. Under the bill that Minister—or any Minister because this Minister will be the Minister for only a very short time longer—has a huge amount of power to appoint people and to determine the scopes of practice when there is a dispute. The Minister stood up before and said that somebody had to do it. Well let the professions sort things out. They should be doing it. Let them work things out because that is what they have been doing for the last 100 years but now the Minister will have control.