Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

It may be so easy to do; I am not sure that it is justified. As I understand it, the substance of the issue—rather than the cheap point—related to the doctor shopping hotline being disbanded. The reason it was disbanded was that there were privacy concerns. The doctor shopping service was implemented before the private sector privacy provisions which we introduced. To ensure that it was possible, the particular route that we took was to establish the Prescription Shopping Information Service to overcome the privacy issues that were there. I think that is the only point that really needs to be made.

The two principal issues about which the bill implements are not the subject of any adverse comment. Amending the National Health Act and the Privacy Act to ensure that practitioners making use of the Prescription Shopping Information Service can do so without breaching the Privacy Act is the important measure. To date, the Privacy Commissioner has issued temporary determinations to ensure that the service can operate. You cannot do that interminably, so the legislative measures are important to address that question. The information collected from the service can be crucial for a medical practitioner assessing the treatment needs of a patient, so it is appropriate that this issue be dealt with more permanently, particularly when it relates to assessing whether or not people are obtaining multiple prescriptions which can do them harm.

The second aspect that the bill deals with is in relation to genetic information being brought within the protective framework of the Privacy Act as recommended by the Australian Law Reform Commission and the Australian Health Ethics Committee in their report Essentially yours: the protection of human genetic information in Australia. The bill will permit the disclosure of genetic information to a genetic relative where there is a serious threat to the relative’s life, health or safety. Guidelines will be developed by the National Health and Medical Research Council and will be approved by the Privacy Commissioner.

I say in relation to the Australian Law Reform Commission generally and in relation to the work that has been undertaken with the Australian Health Ethics Committee that I value their work. I have a great deal of personal confidence in the law reform commissioner. He undertakes the job professionally and well. I have the highest respect for their reports. Like all reports, they do require some consideration from a policy point of view. There are matters on which they helpfully advise us, but in the end we have to take policy decisions.

Many of the outstanding matters in this report, as I understand it—and this was referred to by the member for Gellibrand—are not within the purview of the Commonwealth alone; they involve the states and territories. Those are issues about which I can remind them of the need for them to press on and deal with them, but I cannot direct them. Others, which I am told are being pursued—

See this speech in context