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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
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VETERINARY PRACTICE (MISCELLANEOUS) AMENDMENT BILL

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 31 October 2013.)

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (11:03): I indicate that the opposition will be supporting this piece of legislation and that I am the lead speaker on this bill. I should also put on the record that I am still a registered veterinary surgeon and my daughter Sahra is also a registered veterinary surgeon working at the University of Adelaide's Roseworthy veterinary school.

This piece of legislation has been a long time coming. I remember speaking about it when we debated the national registration of medical practitioners, how there was a real need to have, if not national registration, at least mutual recognition of registration of veterinary practitioners across Australia. What we are seeing now is just that. It is not going to be a national board. We are still going to maintain our state and territory boards, but we are going to have a mutual recognition across all states and territories so that when, as vets, we move interstate for work purposes or in responding to emergencies, our registration will transfer so that it is not the bureaucratic nightmare that it can sometimes be and we do not suffer the time delays that sometimes can happen.

I suppose the best example of this is when I graduated from Murdoch University in 1982, I worked in racehorse and stud practice in Western Australia, and part of my job was working for Bloodstock Air Services. I used to fly Melbourne-Perth four times a week, then to South-East Asia and New Zealand on weekends. While that might sound very romantic, flying around with racehorses and millions of dollars worth of livestock, you end up smelling like a horse's backside most of the time.

The thing that was very forefront in my mind was the fact that, while I was registered in Western Australia, I was administering restricted medications to horses, cattle and sometimes dogs—we flew some greyhounds—in other states. We would fly to Melbourne, then sometimes we would fly to Sydney, as well, and you could end up in New Zealand on the same day. So, it was always an issue. Whether I was practicing illegally back then, I am not going to enter into that now. I was on commonwealth territory at all times.

So, it was an issue, and this legislation is going to overcome that issue. The ability for vets to transfer their workplaces all over Australia is something that is happening more and more. We have thousands of veterinary surgeons working across Australia in all sorts of practice, and I will talk about those in a moment. There is a need to recognise their high levels of training. It is always said that it is more difficult to get into veterinary science than it is to get into medicine. I suppose that is because we are treating all species, not just specialising in one, as doctors do. As vets we are well qualified. We know a lot about a lot. It is not knowing a lot about a little, it is a lot about a lot. As a profession, it is one that is very highly regarded.

I know when I was doorknocking during my first election campaign in 2001, a lady did say to me, 'You're the vet, aren't you?', because I was running on the slogan 'Vote for the vet', because people do like vets. She said, 'You'll be right, you're going from one lot of mongrels to the next,' which I thought was a real affront, not only to my former patients but also to my colleagues in this place. I know there are some difficult characters to deal with, but I do not think we are mongrels but well-determined and decent people. The fact that veterinary surgeons are held in the highest regard is something that I always accepted with great humility.

As a vet, when you had a family coming in with their pets to be treated, you often had an insight into relationships between members of the family, and also with their pet, that not very many people see, particularly when the decision comes to end an animal's life, it is a very stressful time for anybody, and I think people in this place who have had to have an animal euthanased can vouch for that. Seeing parents crying in front of their children is stressful. There was one particular case that struck me. I put a rabbit down for a family; this rabbit had myxomatosis. I gave the rabbit an injection of the solution we used, and I looked up and one of the kids who was with them, a little girl, was not looking at me, she was looking at her father. I looked at the father and he was crying. I said to the mother later on, 'What was that all about?' and she said, 'She's never seen her father cry before.'

At times, it is really quite an intense experience being a vet. You need to be able to cope not only with the stressors of diagnosing your clients but also dealing with the owners of those clients. Finding a place where you want to work and where you are comfortable working and changing your workplace is something that happens. I worked in Western Australia, as I say, in racehorse and stud practice and I did some rural practice as well, then we came to South Australia in the mid-eighties.

When I first started here, I had to go through the registration process and declare myself, get the character witnesses to show that I was of suitable, good character and was able to become registered as a vet here. Then we established the type of practice we had. Back in the eighties, I was down at Happy Valley and lived at Kangarilla. We had seven dairies in the practice, we did a lot of dog and cat work and a lot of horse work. We had a lot of young vets come and work for us and they cut their teeth on some of the work we were doing in the practice.

We did everything ourselves then, from just giving vaccinations and worming, right through to complex orthopaedic reconstruction work after motor vehicle accidents in small animals, in dogs and cats. We also had a large animal anaesthetic machine, one of the very few around the area, and we did large animal anaesthetics, repairing injuries in horses and cattle. Many of the young vets who came through, as I say, cut their teeth in my practice. They sometimes made a few mistakes, and that is something that we all learnt from, but then they moved on to other areas, some interstate, some within the state. Not having to go through that registration process each time is something everybody in the veterinary profession, as well as the bureaucrats, have been waiting for.

I will read into Hansard the submission from the Australian Veterinary Association about this piece of legislation. It provides a little bit of background on some of the issues associated with this legislation. The submission was from Graham Pratt, the Executive Officer of the South Australian and Northern Territory division of the AVA. The AVA have been very helpful, as has government officer Mark Peters, in making sure that this legislation is understood by the vets it will affect. The recommendation from the AVA was that the bill be passed by parliament. The background information they provide in their submission states that:

Separate regulatory systems in each state and territory hinder the mobility of veterinarians within Australia, hinder interstate competitiveness, and inconvenience clients with interstate or national interests as well as those requiring particularly veterinarian expertise only available outside South Australia.

Fortunately, with the new vet school at Roseworthy now, that expertise is coming from all over the world. If you have not been out to the new veterinary school, talk to me or give the vet school a call. I am sure they would be more than happy to show you around the vet school. It is an absolutely fabulous facility, one that was a long time in coming. I studied in Western Australia and my daughter studied in New Zealand, but it is great to see that in 2013, in a couple of weeks' time, there will be 35 people graduating as doctors of veterinary medicine from that school at Roseworthy. It is a very proud position for South Australian education to be in, particularly the University of Adelaide and the veterinary profession in South Australia. Continuing with the AVA submission:

National recognition of veterinary registration has assumed increasing importance in the last decade with the growing need to remove obstacles to the delivery of cross-border veterinary services. In addition, one of the objectives is to allow greater competition within the veterinary services market. As production animal enterprises consolidate or specialise and performance animals travel to compete nationally, reforms which enabled the integrated delivery of veterinary services on an Australia-wide basis are vital to the profession meeting existing and future market demands for veterinary services.

In conjunction with the Australasian Veterinary Boards Council (AVBC) and Australia's Animal Health Committee, the AVA helped develop the model for national recognition of veterinary registration across Australia.

About the Model

The national model was developed with the following aims:

ensure that veterinarians, registrable in Australia, can be registered to practise nationally on the basis of a single application and single fee, while retaining current arrangements as far as possible

provide for simple and effective implementation within current Veterinary Surgeons Board structure, easily applicable in all jurisdictions

progress nationally uniform categories of registration eg general and specialist registrants

be achievable with minimal legislative amendment

have minimal cost implications for the general public and be easy to administer.

To date New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania have implemented the model. The Northern Territory has made the interim step of removing fees for secondary registration until the review of the Act is completed.

Fortunately, now we are seeing this legislation before the house so that we can have a national system in place. Other amendments in this bill cover the composition of the board.

The bill proposes to expand the membership of the Veterinary Surgeons' Board to include a nominee from the University of Adelaide.

I mentioned the fact that my daughter Sahra is a vet in South Australia. She is working at a clinic of the University of Adelaide's veterinary hospital at Roseworthy and she is tutoring the fifth and sixth-year students, so she would be eligible to be on the Veterinary Surgeons Board if she wished. I put that forward so everybody is quite clear about what is in this legislation and what my family circumstances are.

The first cohort of students from the veterinary school will graduate at the end of this year. Having a nominee from the university on the Board will provide an invaluable understanding and appreciation of the competencies of a veterinarian on graduation. This will assist the work of the Board and influence the expectations and understanding that the Board has of recent graduates.

Other amendments cover the recognition of veterinary courses:

In recent years there has been greater co-operation between jurisdictions in the recognition of veterinary qualifications. This has been in recognition of the national labour market for veterinarians. All veterinary boards have agreed to the AVBC accrediting university veterinary schools. This facilitates all states then accepting veterinarians from these approved veterinary courses.

As each state recognises registration from another state, if one state allows registration from a university that is not accredited by the AVBC this will cause some difficulty. Currently, the South Australian act lists the Veterinary Surgeons Board as the body that approves university veterinary schools and also gives the minister the power to override the board's decisions if their university veterinary course is not approved at any stage.

The proposed amendments will bring South Australia into line with other jurisdictions by removing the ministerial review power and altering the Veterinary Surgeons Board's role from approval to recognition of qualifications. Under the national system there will be a system of suspending veterinarians, as there is now in the state system. However, with the national system there will be immediate notification across the country. In the AVA submission they point out, regarding the suspension of veterinarians, that:

While the board may suspend a veterinarian's registration following a disciplinary proceeding, the AVA recognises that there may be rare occasions that the board will need to temporarily suspend a veterinarian prior to the final determination. With this aim in mind, the amendment provides for the board to suspend the registration of a veterinary practitioner until any investigation is completed only if the board is of the opinion that it is necessary to do so because there is a serious risk that the health and safety of the public or the health and welfare of animals will be endangered.

As I said, the AVA strongly supports this piece of legislation. I know many of my colleagues, whom I speak to regularly, are very supportive and very keen to see this come in, because they are carrying out work not only in South Australia but also interstate and sometimes overseas.

The University of Adelaide also put out a note about this piece of legislation. There was a legal risks compliance and education awareness alert that came out in October that pointed out the amendments that were being made to the legislation and, obviously, it was very supportive of the changes. It is a great thing, a good thing to see for vets in South Australia.

For the information of the house I will give a quick overview of the number of vets in South Australia and the areas they are practising in; they are now not just your local vet but are vets working in specialist areas and in rural and regional areas. We should not forget the rural and regional vets, because biosecurity in Australia is a tremendously important issue. Should we get a case of foot-and-mouth disease in Australia that goes undetected there would be billions and billions of dollars worth of damage to our economy.

As at 30 June 2013 we had 799 registered vets in South Australia. Of them, 627 had primary registrations—in other words, they were full registrations and they could practise in the area of private practice—and there were 114 secondary registrations. Until now these were paying the secondary fee, which will no longer exist under this new legislation. The primary place of practice of these 114 secondary registrations was in other Australian states or territories.

There are 11 limited registrations. I had actually looked at going from a full primary registration to a limited registration myself, because while I have not been in general practice for a number of years, I do want to be able to continue to buy restricted drugs to treat my own animals, both my domestic animals and our own farm animals. That is something I am discussing with the Veterinary Surgeons Board at the moment.

There are 47 nonpractising vets, and these are vets who also want to retain that right to be able to treat their own animals and purchase medications that are restricted to licensed veterinarians. There are 28 vets in South Australia who are also on the specialist register, and I will give a bit of a breakdown of those specialities in a few moments.

An interesting fact is that in 2012-13, of the 120 applicants who were granted registration by the board, 86 registrations were from new registrants, which are new graduates. They came from all over the world: 56 from Australia, five from New Zealand, 20 from the United Kingdom, one from South Africa, one from Canada, two from the USA, and one from Utrecht. The 56 applicants who obtained their veterinary degrees in Australia came from the following universities: 13 from the University of Sydney; 14 from the University of Melbourne; seven from Charles Sturt University; 10 from the University of Queensland; four from James Cook University; and eight from my alma mater, Murdoch University, a terrific university.

As I said before, the exciting thing for us as vets in South Australia—and all South Australians should be excited about this—is that after six years of very, very hard work—three years of a Bachelor of Science in Veterinary Biosciences and then a three-year Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine—we have 35 young graduates about to be awarded their final degree in a couple of weeks' time. I look forward to going up and celebrating their valedictory moment with them. I have offered to donate a parliamentary medal to the student who has the highest merit in veterinary public health—an area the Minister for Health and I would know is very important for all of us, not just in veterinary public health but obviously human public health because they are very closely related.

The veterinary specialists we have in South Australia cover a far broader area than when I first came to practice in South Australia. In fact, we used to have a visiting veterinary ophthalmologist come from Victoria every now and again. We did have a veterinary radiologist we could send X-rays to interstate, but we had no real specialists of any sort here. There was one equine surgeon, I think: the late Harry Frauenfelder. Dr Bill Marmion, from down at Morphettville, came on the scene a bit later, but now we have specialists in everything from animal behaviour to equine medicine, sheep medicine, pathology, dermatology, diagnostic imaging, ophthalmology and pathobiology.

We have got a lot of good pathologists working in South Australia who are vital for those bloods and those work-ups on your cases and also for herd medicine. We have one specialist in veterinary public health and food hygiene working at the University of Adelaide, two veterinary radiologists and six veterinary surgeons who are specialising in equine surgery and small animal surgery. They are working both at the Adelaide Veterinary Specialist and Referral Centre at Magill and also at the University of Adelaide.

We do have an issue with veterinary radiologists in South Australia though. We are struggling to get the EPA to understand that you do not need to be qualified as a human radiologist to run a CT machine. That is something I will speak to the minister and the Minister for Environment and Conservation about at some other time.

There was one issue with this legislation that I raised because, initially, to run a veterinary practice you had to be a registered veterinary surgeon, and then the powers that be in the tax office and also on the Veterinary Surgeons Board saw the light and allowed vets in South Australia to register themselves and work under a trust or under a company. My wife and I formed a family company. We worked under that company, we were employed by that company and there were tax benefits for us in that, as well as being able to just structure the business in a slightly different way that was, as I say, of benefit to us.

On the initial reading of the legislation, it was not quite clear whether veterinary service providers—these trusts and businesses—would be part of this national scheme but, on speaking to ministerial advisers and some of my colleagues, that is not an issue, so I look forward to seeing this legislation work the way it was intended. The South Australian board will still continue to exist with that one extra member from the University of Adelaide.

That board will also contribute to the Australasian Veterinary Boards Council, which is, as I have said, consulting from a national perspective on the accreditation of veterinary schools, looking at vets who come from overseas and their overseas qualifications, looking at the uniform criteria for recognition of qualifications for registration and advising on specialty registration.

The world of veterinary science is a very broad area. It is an area that I always wanted to be involved in as a small child. I was very excited to get into Murdoch University on my third try, after having done some agricultural science at Adelaide University. I look forward to seeing how this legislation works.

I have a couple of other things I would just like to talk about regarding national registration, which is going to be the next step. One of the things I can proudly say I did was that I was the first practice in South Australia to computerise—to put all my records on computer on Netvet, as it was called then. We ran this system. It was very efficient for us and actually increased the profitability of the practice considerably. That was not the reason we did it: we did it for efficiencies and for retrieval of histories.

Those computer systems have now advanced considerably, but we need to recognise that with computers came the internet. I started up www.netvet.com.au. We were selling medications that you could sell—not the restricted medications but medications that could be sold over the counter—online many years ago. Had I developed it further, I could have made some money out of it but it was one of those things: you concentrate on the dogs and cats in front of you, not the virtual ones on the internet.

However, that brought into question and still brings into question the fact that you can get veterinary advice from all over the world. Can you be sued for giving the wrong advice? I don't know. If you were to receive veterinary advice from overseas and also be sent veterinary medications from overseas, as does happen, and then something went wrong, what do you do then? What is the fallback position?

I might remind the house that veterinary surgeons belonged to one of the first professions where you could not register unless you had professional indemnity insurance. That is a very good thing because there are times when things do go wrong and you need to have that protection. However, on a global registration system, do you need to have that protection? I think you should, and the internet is an area we are going to have to look at.

Very recently, I was fortunate enough to attend a conference, the International Large Animal Rescue Conference at Roseworthy's veterinary school. We had a professor of equine veterinary science from the University of London skyping with us and giving advice to us over the internet. At that end of it, he was giving advice to other vets. If he was giving individual advice to clients you might wonder what the legal position would be there. I am sure that is for lawyers to look at, and I would certainly be very surprised if they are not looking at that as we speak.

I will just use this International Large Animal Rescue Conference as a further example of where vets need to have the flexibility of being protected by being recognised, having their qualifications recognised and having their professional training recognised. With a veterinary emergency, be it an exotic disease or, in the case we were looking at on 2 and 3 of November this year at Roseworthy, it was large animal rescue. With the floods and bushfires and the need for vets to travel interstate to assist with the recovery and rescue of animals from floods and fires, we saw evidence at this conference, from vets from the eastern states, of horrendous injuries that were inflicted or suffered by animals during these floods and fires.

The need for vets to go over there and, at a moment's notice, assist in practices with native fauna, with domestic dogs and cats and also with farm animals was something that vets readily offered to do. Many of them went and many of them were over there for quite a while. They came from South Australia and other states. They also contributed to the social recovery of that area because as we all know we are very close to our pets, whether they are dogs, cats, horses, a pet goat or even a pet cow.

The Large Animal Rescue Course was put on by Horse SA, and I thank Julie Fiedler from Horse SA for having coordinated this course. Veterinary surgeons from all over the world came to this conference. There was one particular lady, Dr Rebecca Jimenez, from the US who is a world expert in large animal rescue and she was able to demonstrate and give us the benefit of her knowledge of techniques used in large animal rescue. We hope, as vets, that if we are faced with a disaster or with individual rescues, we can put that knowledge into place.

Certainly now with this legislation we know that we can travel all over Australia in all the states and territories—and I would hope in New Zealand eventually, too—because it is just a short distance across the ditch there. As I said, my daughter Sahra trained in New Zealand and then came back to South Australia to practise so I think we should have the ability to travel over there as well.

The importance of pets to our economy is in the billions of dollars. The importance of our farm animals to our economy is in the billions of dollars. We need vets who are highly trained and we need vets who are experienced and who can take the best advantage of the economic circumstances to set up practice and deliver services in a way that is not only desired by them as individuals but also is required by the society we live in.

This piece of legislation is good legislation. It is long overdue but we need to make sure it is going to work. We congratulate all those who were involved in developing the legislation. It is strongly supported by all members on this side and I look forward to seeing it work in the near future. With that, I look forward to being able to perhaps go back into practice once I finish in this place, in many years' time, and deliver my practice experiences to new graduates and younger vets, and also be able to do it anywhere I want in Australia.

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (11:30): I rise to make some comments in regards to the Veterinary Practice (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill 2013 and note the Liberal Party's support for the bill. Very briefly, what the bill is about is mutual recognition. It is not a national registration scheme, but it is about mutual recognition across the states in recognising veterinary professionals' qualifications so they do not have to reregister either in a neighbouring state or elsewhere in Australia.

I think it is very sensible legislation in that regard, especially when you see how much of the country in South Australia obviously abuts other farmland, etc., that vets can deal with issues across borders. I specifically think about my electorate across from Pinnaroo and further south down through MacKillop and the electorate of Mount Gambier where vets more likely than not have to perform their duties on one side of the border or the other.

There are also some administrative changes in the bill which address whether the Veterinary Surgeons Board of South Australia can recognise courses or veterinary education on the recommendation of the Australasian Veterinary Boards Council. I think this will save duplication, whereas up until now the South Australian board has been independently approving such courses, and this legislation, when it becomes law, will remove that duplication.

I would also like to acknowledge the contribution that vets make to all of us, whether you are a pet owner or whether you are like me and have a property. In the past (40 years ago), we had a commercial Poll Hereford operation, and occasionally a vet had to assist in pulling a calf. It is quite interesting at the time, as a young lad on the farm, witnessing what happens when cattle get bloat. Essentially, the vet puts a knife into the right area—it has to go in the appropriate place in the beast—and they essentially deflate the cow, bull or steer.

Dr McFetridge interjecting:

Mr PEDERICK: Yes; that's right. It's very interesting and technical work and obviously it demands a high degree of training, but it is very vital in rural industries, especially in the management and health of your stock. Certainly in regard to pets—and I know that people can spend thousands of dollars on pets—vets help keep them in good health and repair broken limbs or other issues that they need to deal with to keep those pets healthy. Certainly a big step that has been taken in this state, as far as the education program for veterinary surgeons is concerned, is the school at Roseworthy, and this was a great leap forward, not just for training of vets but—

Ms Chapman: Thank Julie Bishop for that.

Mr PEDERICK: Yes; thank Julie Bishop—thank you to the member for Bragg. This is a great leap forward, because I had real concerns that over time Roseworthy was fast disappearing. We saw the wine school come into Waite and the farming disciplines out there wind back, and we also saw the farm agriculture course taken away. I was really concerned that the agriculture education standing we certainly had in South Australia was going downhill, quite frankly. So it is with much pleasure in the last few years that I have seen the vet school get up and going.

They are doing great work out there. I know they have even studied fur seals up there which obviously have come from somewhere in the sea. They have quite an amazing set-up there, where they can operate on horses and large animals. This is great work, and I have witnessed some of the work when they have had dogs on the table at Roseworthy. This is fantastic, when I thought that Roseworthy was heading one way as far as an educational facility for the state was concerned, that it is onward and upward.

Having the veterinary school here meant that people who wanted to train to be a vet did not have to travel to Queensland or elsewhere to get those courses. It keeps our people in this state and hopefully they can take up those practices in this state. Especially in the country, you have longstanding veterinary surgeons and they become almost part of the family, because you get to know them at all odd hours of the day and night when they have to come out to emergencies. You are charged for those emergencies, I must say, but when you need them you have to have them, because the health of your stock is paramount.

I have seen some great work done by vets over the years, and I think there is plenty of work to go. I think we will produce some great veterinary surgeons at Roseworthy, and they will service the needs of people not just here in South Australia but across the country in years to come. It is a really great profession, helping people right across the state.

Mr VENNING (Schubert) (11:36): As one ends the last week in one's career, one has to take the opportunity to make a contribution. On this issue, it is quite easy, because it is a subject that is pretty close to my heart. Can I commend the member for Morphett very much for his presentation today. More importantly than that, it is great to have a vet in the house, particularly since we do not have a doctor at the moment, I don't think. If we do not have a doctor, a vet is—

Mr Gardner: A medical doctor.

Mr VENNING: We don't have a medical doctor in the house, so the vet will do. Can I say how lucky I have been, that in nearly 24 years I have not had a sick day. There are days when you are not quite so flash, but the vet was here to give me the horse treatment and on we go.

Mr Pederick: He didn't get his gun out, did he?

Mr VENNING: Well, that was the end. If you can't be cured, you know what they do, don't you? You put him out of his misery. It did not come to that. I have appreciated the member's camaraderie and friendship and also his expertise in this area. How much passion he has in this area is obvious in relation to his speech. No doubt he is going to go back to that.

As a farmer, I always had a lot of respect and admiration for our veterinary surgeons, because we need them. There is nothing more stressing as a farmer than to have sick stock—nothing worse. Whether it be dairy cows or beef cattle, or whether it be horses that are sick and you do not know what is wrong with them, thank goodness we have a vet who will usually come at all hours of the night.

Yes, they can charge pretty well, but who minds? What price do you put on to try to save an animal? Particularly if you have a herd and you have one sick, you have to be very careful it does not go through the whole lot. I can remember many years ago we had leptospirosis in my herd of day-old calves. It was panic; absolute panic. The vet picked it straightaway, and we were able to save most of them.

I think the registration of vets is very important, and I hear what the member for Morphett has just said, but in times past, I realise that in isolated areas we had people practising as vets who were not registered. Just as well they were, because we just did not have enough people around. In my young days, much younger days, in the Gladstone area, we had a Mr Frank Landers, who learned the trade from his dad. His dad was a registered vet, from the very old days.

Frank Landers was quite legendary. He would come out in the old Holden Statesman with the old suitcase in the back and he would look at your sick animal. I have to say, 90 times out of 100, he got it right, and thank goodness. We all knew he was not registered, but thank goodness he was there, because Clare was the closest vet after him. That was well over an hour away. Frank would usually be there within 15 minutes. That was not always the case. It is good to have registered vets, but if there is nobody else available and if somebody has a bit of a track record, I hope the system would allow some latitude for them to continue, because they do provide a great service.

Also, the member for Hammond just mentioned the new veterinary school at Roseworthy. Can I say how pleased I am that that is there and we have had an inspection of that because, as he said, Roseworthy was certainly being scaled down. I regretted very much the removal of the viticulture course, the head office and all the library section from there. It was going downhill every day.

I am pleased to see this veterinary school there, particularly the size and magnitude that it is and the expertise that it has. I am very pleased that the member's own daughter is there. Next time I have a sick dog, or whatever, I will be ringing up my good colleague to get a private consult. But I am very pleased that Roseworthy has this new lease of life.

It's good to see that the registration, and therefore the accreditation, of vets is being standardised across the country, because I think that says we are now a very mobile community. Particularly as the member was saying before, he would get on a plane and do the races at Randwick, and it is only a matter of an hour and a half and you are in a different state. So it is good to have some regularity in this, for the vets to say, 'Well, his accreditation is the same here as it is there.' At least it is recognised as such in each state.

We all have livestock and it is very important that we have our vets, but I think more important at my time of life is our dogs and our cats. I know that the member for Morphett has been very passionate about his dogs and cats and I think it has been reasonably lucrative business for him, but who cares. I think our dog is due for a parvo today. I think he is probably getting his parvo before the Christmas holidays. We are so attached to our animals and when they get sick we certainly need a vet. I commend the member for Morphett for bringing this to the house, and I hope he keeps his hand in with his practice because we certainly need good vets like him. I commend the motion to the house.

Mr PEGLER (Mount Gambier) (11:41): I rise to speak on this Veterinary Practice (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill. I think we should recognise that the result of this bill is not a national registration but rather recognition right throughout the country of the state registration so that veterinary surgeons will no longer have to register within each state.

The Australian Veterinary Association has been working on this with the various state jurisdictions since 2005 and according to them this nationally agreed model will allow veterinarians registered in other states or territories to practise in South Australia. It will remove red-tape, improve competition, increase access to specialist services and allow greater freedom of movement for veterinarians responding to national crises. Reciprocal legislation is already in place in Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania and Queensland.

I might say that within my own business we use vets from New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, depending on their expertise, and it has always seemed silly to me that those people have to be registered in every state to be able to practise.

This bit of legislation is very pertinent for the veterinary surgeons in Mount Gambier, because their client base actually goes a fair way into Victoria also, so they have always had to have registration in both South Australia and Victoria. With Victoria being only 20 kilometres from Mount Gambier, naturally a lot of the farms just across the border use the veterinary surgeons from Mount Gambier. This will take a lot of the costs away from those vets in having to have dual registrations and a lot of the red tape, etc., so to me it makes a lot of commonsense.

Also, I note in the bill that when interstate locums go to work for a veterinary surgeon it will be up to that veterinary surgeon to verify their identity and their credentials, so as far as I am concerned this bill is a step very strongly in the right direction and I will be supporting it.

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING (Playford—Minister for Health and Ageing, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Minister for Defence Industries, Minister for Veterans' Affairs) (11:44): I thank honourable members for their contribution to the debate and their support of the bill.

Bill read a second time.

Third Reading

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING (Playford—Minister for Health and Ageing, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Minister for Defence Industries, Minister for Veterans' Affairs) (11:45): I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Bill read a third time and passed.

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