farmdoc's blog post number 151

I’ve previously written of the imbalance against doctors who are defendants in legal actions and quasi-legal inquiries, the issue being presumption of innocence. On 1 August 2008 the Medical Practice Amendment Act 2008 came into force in NSW. It’s an offensive and pernicious bit of legislation because, inter alia, it requires the NSW Medical Board, when investigating a complaint against a doctor, to have regard to all previous complaints against that doctor – even complaints which were not found proven. How disgusting. To my knowledge, in the Australian legal system prior convictions are suppressed until a verdict is reached. And prior cases not resulting in conviction are not mentioned, even then. The NSW Parliament’s Legislation Review Committee opined ‘The presumption of innocence is a fundamental right of the accused under Australian law. The admission of all previous complaints and findings against a practitioner whether these were relevant to the current complaint or not or whether these were dismissed or not has the ability to compromise a practitioner’s right to a fair trial. The Committee refers the matter to Parliament’. Parliament dismissed this commonsense approach because ‘the paramount consideration is the protection of the public’. Australia’s dire medical manpower shortage is well documented. Stupid, misguided bits of legislation like this one will only exacerbate it. Politicians are myopic morons. No wonder the NSW government is in crisis.