Health Legislation (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill 2022 (No 19)

Wednesday 7 Sept 2022, Second reading speech

[4.20 p.m.]

Ms ARMITAGE (Launceston) - Mr President, I also have quite a short contribution. The bill is largely administrative with quite a few definitional changes and realistically, just a housekeeping or a tidy up as mentioned. As was mentioned by the member for Murchison, particularly with amendments to the definition of 'paramedic,' it has been updated as 'para‑medicine,' to become a regulated profession, under the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law (Tasmania), 1 December 2018, as the member for McIntyre pointed out.

Mrs Hiscutt - Along with the member for Hobart.

Ms ARMITAGE - Some of the other terms are out of date and have changed, but I still hear people refer to going down to the 'chemist,' so I must admit that.

Ms Forrest - It was not the building, it was the person.

Ms ARMITAGE - People still refer to the chemist as being a person. It is probably a pharmaceutical chemist, but it is good to update and it is just a tidy up. One of the important ones I have seen is to do with the Poisons Act and the slight changes. The authorisation currently for S8 drugs if a doctor does prescribe something and then makes a slight change, the amount of work they need to go through previous to this bill, whether they be dropping the medication dosage - obviously, every change needs to be authorised by the Director of Public Health, or the Public Health officer who oversees it. It is a good change, to make things a bit easier and not so onerous, particularly on doctors and on patients when obviously, things do change from time to time and with S8 drugs we do need to be careful. Another good change and realistically, contemporising the act. It is good - the correction in spelling, from authorize with a 'z' to authorise with an 's' so we are all on the same page, we are looking like we are all living in the same country. It does make a difference.

Going through the bill, most of the changes are to do with simple things like that. Simple amendments to bring it up to date. While it is rather a large bill, I have noticed the majority are simple changes and 'authorised' and 'registered pharmacist' takes up a lot of the bill.

I support the bill, it is purely housekeeping and it is well due.