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COMMITTEE’S REPORT

The committee tabled its Report No. 29, 57th Parliament - Health and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2022 on 24 February 2023. The Bill was passed on 19 April 2023.

ABOUT THE BILL 

On 29 November 2022, Hon Yvette D’Ath MP, Minister for Health and Ambulance Services, introduced the Health and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2022 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 Bill amends 8 Acts in the Health portfolio. Key amendments in the Bill include:

• requiring Hospital and Health Boards and Hospital and Health Services to proactively consider ways to support staff health, safety and wellbeing (Hospital and Health Boards Act 2011)
• allowing disclosure of information about individuals working with medicines or poisons, if in the public interest (Medicines and Poisons Act 2019)
• enabling Qld Health to disclose confidential medicines and poisons information for regulation, safety and compliance purposes (Medicines and Poisons Act 2019)
• clarifying the meanings of fumigation activity, pest control activity and the definition of primary producer, in relation to authorisation for use of fumigants and pesticides (Medicines and Poisons Act 2019)
• establishing a statutory framework for recording tribunal proceedings and providing access to records and transcripts (Recording of Evidence Act 1962)
• clarifying and restricting access to copies of records or transcriptions of Mental Health Review Tribunal proceedings (Mental Health Act 2016)
• changing requirements for adults waiving the right to representation in Mental Health Review Tribunal proceedings (Mental Health Act 2016)
• authorising schools to disclose student information to Qld Health’s vision screening health service (Public Health Act 2005)
• extending notification requirements for the Queensland Cancer Register and enabling additional data to be collected (Public Health Act 2005)
• creating a new offence for failure to ensure a person does not receive greater than a specified dose of ionising radiation (Radiation Safety Act 1999)
• enabling low risk radioactive material to be exempted from requirements (eg disposal requirements) (Radiation Safety Act 1999)
• changing requirements for doctors to purchase human tissue products approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s ‘Special Access Scheme’ (Transplantation and Anatomy Act 1979)
• ensuring consistent consent processes for human tissue and organ donation across public and private hospitals (Transplantation and Anatomy Act 1979)
• removing the requirement for print newspaper publication of water fluoridation decision and implementation notices (Water Flouridation Act 2008).

SUBMISSIONS 

Submissions closed on Friday 13 January 2023. Submissions can be viewed under the ‘View Submissions’ tab.

COMMITTEE’S REPORT

The committee is due to table its report on Friday, 24 February 2023. The report will be published here after tabling.

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

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