Committee Details

INQUIRY TRANSFERRED

On 13 February 2024, the Legislative Assembly amended Schedule 6 of the Standing Rules and Orders of the Legislative Assembly, establishing the Health, Environment and Agriculture Committe and transferred the Bill to the Health, Environment and Agriculture Committee for detailed consideration. 

NOTE: RELATED PUBLICATIONS AND SUBMISSIONS RECEIVED BEFORE 13 FEBRUARY 2024 CAN BE FOUND ON THIS PAGE, UNDER THE RESPECTIVE LINKS ABOVE.                      

About the bill 

On 30 November 2023, Hon Shannon Fentiman MP, Minister for Health, Mental Health and Ambulance Services and Minister for Women, introduced the Health and Other Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2023 into the Queensland Parliament.  The Bill was referred to the Health and Environment Committee for detailed consideration.   

View: Explanatory speech 
View: Bill 
View: Explanatory Notes 
View: Statement of compatibility 

The purpose of the Bill is to make amendments that support access to healthcare, promote quality improvement and patient safety in public health facilities, and improve the operation of health legislation in Queensland.

The Bill amends:

• the Hospital and Health Boards Act 2011 to –
  • clarify that, for the purposes of nurse- and midwife-to-patient ratios, a newborn baby should be counted as a patient when they are staying in a room on a maternity ward with their birthing parent
  • require a Quality Assurance Committee (QAC) to disclose information about a health professional to their chief executive where the QAC reasonably believes the health professional’s health, conduct or performance poses a serious risk of harm to a person
  • clarify that the chief executive of Queensland Health may, after considering a report from a clinical review or health service investigation conducted in a Hospital and Health Service, take the action the chief executive considers appropriate in relation to the matters identified in the report
  • ensure key findings, recommendations and lessons learnt from root cause analyses of serious clinical incidents can be shared with relevant staff across Queensland Health
• the Termination of Pregnancy Act 2018 and Criminal Code to –
  • allow additional health practitioners to perform early medical terminations of pregnancy through the use of termination drugs
  • make consequential amendments to the offence provision set out in the Criminal Code to align with the above change
  • provide for more inclusive language by replacing references to ‘woman’ with ‘person’ in termination of pregnancy provisions
• the Public Health Act 2005 to exempt medical practitioners from duplicate reporting of dust lung diseases to the Queensland Notifiable Dust Lung Disease Register where there has been notification to the National Occupational Respiratory Disease Registry
• the Mental Health Act 2016 to clarify how Mental Health Court expert reports and transcripts may be released and used.

Further information

Further information about public proceedings, transcripts, and other documents are accessible under the Related Publications tab.

submissions

Submissions closed on Monday, 15 January 2024. Submissions can be viewed under the ‘View Submissions’ tab.

PUBLIC PROCEEDINGS

The committee held a public briefing on the Bill on Thursday, 14 December 2023 at 10.15am. The committee will hold a second public briefing on Monday, 12 February 2024 at 12:00pm. See timeline below for further information.

The committee held a public hearing on the Bill on Thursday, 1 February 2024. See below for further information.

Committee’s report

The committee is due to table its report by 8 March 2024. The report will be published here.

Once the committee’s report has been tabled, the government has three months to respond to the report’s recommendations (if any). At that time, the Government Response will be published here.

Timeline