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One of the most concerning trends in Victoria in the last decade has been the attrition of our basic human rights vs the State. The phenomenon came under the spotlight during COVID, but the trend preceded the pandemic and has continued after it. On February 7, 2024, Victorians will lose another important right – the right to decide who they want to share their medical records with, and who not.
On this day, the Health Legislation Amendment (Information Sharing) Act 2023 will come into effect. That law establishes a centralised electronic system (we all know how this story ends) – managed by the Victorian government – collecting and amassing all public health records of all Victorians. The information that is fed into the system will be available not just to hospitals but also to ambulance services, public health services, public health centres, the Victorian Institute of Forensic Mental Health, the Victorian Collaborative Centre for Mental Health and Wellbeing, any prescribed entity or prescribed public health entity and finally, “a multi-purpose service”, whatever that means.
I list them so that you get a sense of the vast, uncontrolled swathe of strangers who will be able to access your most intimate physical and mental health records at the press of a button. A small number of keystrokes could compromise your name! Here are the most chilling words in the Act (The emphasis is mine):
Note well, no consent required:
1/ A participating health service may collect, use or disclose specified patient health information as permitted or authorised by this Part without the consent of the person to whom the information relates.
2/ The Secretary may collect, use or disclose specified patient health information as permitted or authorised by this Part without the consent of the person to whom the information relates.
In short, no one will ever need to ask you before they share your medical information into and out of the centralised information system, and there is no option for you to actively opt out of having all or specific medical information of yours shared. Once Victorians have interacted with the health system, there will be no way they can control the information.
Now think of the kind of intimate details of our lives we share with our doctors, counsellors, therapists and psychologists – details not just about our illnesses, but also family history, past traumas, relationship troubles, addictions and lapses in judgement in our personal lives. As of February 7 all those details will become the property of the Victorian government – to be shared, discussed, disclosed by strangers to strangers without you being able to exercise any control. We are told to just trust the system that the information will not be misused. Only, we know that health professionals are just humans, full of follies like the rest of us.
What is most galling is that all this is being done in the name of safeguarding Victorians’ interests. We are told it would make decision-making about health faster, better.
But here’s why it is not about you. Because if it were really about your interest – you would be given the right to decide what, where, with whom and under what circumstances private medical information could be shared. Because only you truly understand the complexity of your circumstances and what they warrant.
This Act is about the cold, impersonal and inept state Labor Government using it vast powers to make its life easier at the cost of your privacy and dignity. Frankly, it is outrageous.
Nick McGowan is a Liberal MP representing the North Eastern Region in Victoria’s Legislative Council
Hello Nick,
why are we only hearing about this now? Why wasn’t it in the news when the legislation was being debated? Did the Opposition maker a fuss about it then or were you too preoccupied negotiating the treaty?
Exactly, the Vic Libs are not a real opposition, they’re fully behind nearly everything Labor does. The parliamentary wing is little more than a bunch of bench warmers, nearly all of them utterly useless and out of touch with conservative voters.
Short of a complete cleanout of the state party and getting the local branches again involved, nothing will change. Victoria is in for generational poverty, stagnation and continuing loss of rights.
Read my mind.
Or you could just join the Libertarian party and help them win majority government.
My thoughts exactly. Such obviously draconian legislation and not a peep.
Just read your comment Peter. Made my day.
Thank you Peter
This is good to know about but I agree with P. O’B that it would have been more useful to have found out about it before the debate. I have the feeling that the volume of legislation presented makes reviewing it very difficult and perhaps Mr McGowan only thought to approach Quadrant after the fact. Sharing health records across state health facilities and services will obviously improve efficiency, most notably for patients who are very frequent users with complex health problems. For the average person it just represents further denial of the erstwhile right to privacy, a right which young people can’t even remember having. We will have to be alert to the ‘harmonisation of legislation’ surely soon to come in other states.
I don’t live in Victoria, but think I would have the issue fairly well covered if I did.
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While I have a Medicare card, I’ve only used that when broke, I pay doctors in cash, my GP does not have my Medicare number, nor my correct dob – he only needs to know about how old I am, not dob.
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My GP gave me a referral to have an ultra-sound scan, I rang to make an appointment and was quoted $300, with the possibility of an Item 23 charge if the scan indicated a consultation.
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When I reported to the receptionist she asked for my Medicare card and I said that as I’m not quite broke yet, I’ll pay my own way. After a bit of discussion of my objection to routine use of Medicare, how much better it was back in 1972 when around 90% of people had proper private insurance**, and an assurance I’d pay on the spot, she said they would only charge $170, more if a consultation followed.
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The scan indicated a steroid injection, which a doctor gave and then wrote across my form “No charge Item 23”.
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So I paid $170 cash instead of about $350 which would be the cost using Medicare. I can’t imagine that the clinic made a loss at $170, so it seems that the effect of Medicare is a massive increase in the cost, which we see wherever Socialism is allowed to take hold.
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** I had private insurance for years, but did not read the fine print and when I did make a claim for services I’d paid for in cash, Medibank Private said they were not allowed by law to pay unless I claimed from Medicare first! They were not allowed to even pay for the gap, could not pay me anything unless I put in a Medicare claim, the avoidance of which was the reason I’d taken out private insurance. I went home, read the fine print and cancelled the insurance.
On the US podcast “Econtalk”, Russ Roberts interviewed an employer who has an arrangement with his employees regarding their employer provided heath insurance. If they need care, he pays them to fly to Mexico to be treated, it apparently works out cheaper than US premiums.
Our system is designed to hide the cost of healthcare, to prevent a free market spontaneously emerging. It appears ‘free’ but in reality it all goes on your tax bill.
Well done! Medicare seems to be one of those exceptions that even devoted anti-socialists of my acquaintance–who would not claim child support, the first-homebuyers grant, or any other handout–justify to themselves (or, perhaps, ignore the obvious discrepancy). That did change with at least some when Medicare went to direct deposit only; so there are at least some advantages to such government measures.
Yes Rebekah it fascinates me that nobody ever talks about our socialist ‘health care’ system yet it is by far the biggest drain on our national treasure, has all but wiped out rural medical services, and the remaining hospitals are eroding in their ability to service the community. It is also an enormous expense to individual taxpayers, cleverly hidden behind the levy which nobody pays much attention to.
I think it shows how you can make people get used to anything, and that secular conservatism is little more than archaic progressivism.
In reality, it should be the number one conversation in Australian politics.
The levy pays only a tiny fraction of the cost of Medicare. Most of it comes from taxes.
Presumably (1) the ‘public health records’ referred tp are things like vaccination records rather than GP diagnoses (for example) and (2) the data is anonymised?
My comment: governments are showing far too much interest in both education and health in my view. This is a harbinger of tyranny.
Why would a “a multi-purpose service” *not* include insurance companies, police, local councils, banks etc ?
“Unfortunately, your credit card is forthwith cancelled as medical advice (!) indicates that … “
I wouldn’t bet on it, Steve. “Data is data” to big government, just as “business is business” to big business. And it’s so much easier to store it all together, isn’t it.
So, As Ai searches the human swamp of all available information, those found with abnormalities will have further scheduled testing to qualify for a drivers licence?
Steady on. This appears to refer to a centralisation of data already controlled by the Victorian government, not all data pertaining to the health of individuals.
GP health records on the practice computer system for example would not be included. These actually belong to the doctors who recorded their diagnoses of one’s condition, tests ordered etc. They don’t belong to the patient and the patient cannot challenge incorrect diagnoses which have negative repercussions on further diagnoses.
Medicare data is only available to the Commonwealth and even within its health agencies that analyse usage patterns, make projections etc it is only available on a need to know basis and patient identifying numbers are not the actual Medicare number. No way the Feds are going to be feeding this data to Vic Health.
One of the positive things done by the EU – believe it or not – was the GDPR, the General Data Protection Regulations. These have been retained by the UK post-Brexit and incorporated into UK domestic legislation. They’re not perfect, since you can never legislate to entirely eliminate corruption or state overreach, but they’re light-years ahead of anything in Australia, especially in protecting sensitive information like people’s health records. People have a much higher level of control over all their personal data generally. There would be a massive outcry if the Brits tried on this sort of stunt.
Anyone who has attained the age of 25 and still believes the State has ANY right to ANY of our personal medical information has either been hypnotised by the university sector or has not been paying attention throughout COVID (which, by the way, is far from over). The doctor/patient relationship is, or at least should be sacrosanct, just as the lawyer/client relationship should remain. I don’t mind sacrificing “efficiency” (which in truth does NOT exist – show me anywhere where government IT has made anything efficient) or convenience for privacy any day. And NO, don’t jump to conclusions or fall for that old scaremongering tactic of “anyone with nothing to hide has nothing to fear” (I have neither nothing to hide nor fear) but who knows when any of us would rather not have personal information spread Willy-nilly, for none know of the future and to what maybe unimagined ends someone might (will) use such information to their undeserved advantage (insurance companies we’re looking at YOU). There is non-invasive technology aplenty for our medical professionals to utilise in their role in providing the best diagnostic and restorative care they can, there simply is NO need for ANY government to be involved in that process. Ever!
Agreed!A healthy dose of deservedly cynical realism!
Your medical history becomes the property of the Victorian government, and by extension the Chinese Communist Party who will use the ‘misjudgments of your youth’ to blackmail you.
Cannot a Federal govt charged with protecting the nation’s security overturn this legislation on these grounds?
The Labor Party is an existential threat to the nation. It has to be reformed or destroyed.
This is probably a paranoid delusion but how safe are you going to be if your medical record indicates your covid vaxx status as unvaxxed and you are having a general anaesthetic for a major surgical proceedure. Will you wake up or will the government finally get its revenge on a vaxx refusenik?
Or, perhaps, be jabbed without knowing it.
Outrageous! Another example to prove that Victorians get the government they deserve. But don’t we all?
Yep, confected outrage after the horse has bolted never has the same impact. Better to kick up a stink before it happens. Yeah, it’s a fait accompli when you don’t have the numbers, but the public sometimes rewards effort.
On closer inspection, the Act appears to be designed to compel public hospitals and realted institutions to share their data with a central government authority (and to eliminate any rights patients may have concerning the sharing of their data). As with all centralising systems, this one no doubt offers advantages – data consistency across institutions and so on. The bureaucrat’s dream! Like all such systems, it provides safeguards (your privacy will be preserved, your data can only be used for authorised purposes). But we all know such safeguards are practically meaningless when ‘push comes to shove’.
What the Act does not disclose are the inherent disadvantages of the proposal: the potential for abuse of the system by the authorities, and an increased acceptance of socialist central control in the minds of the public. The Act will be another nail in the coffin of the democratic ethos, reinforcing the idea that individual freedom must be sacrificed for the General Good (as defined by the government).
A major independent review of the Covid debacle in Canada – the National Citizens Inquiry – noted an alarming willingness of the general public to submit to tyrannical measures “out of fear, a lack of unbiased and objective information, and questionable trust in long-standing institutions”.Likewise, in Australia, it was remarkably easy for governments, employers, the courts and the poilice to impose draconian restrictions – and even to coerce people (with threats of loss of employment etc) to take an injection. Most people cooperated, and many were supportive of these policies. The Victorian president of the AMA even asserted that ‘unvaccinated’ people should be denied access to healthcare. A centralised system of vaccination records was the key instrument used to back up these oppressive measures.
This new Victorian Act will be another step taken by the socialist elites to weaponise healthcare as a means of social control. Presumably most of the public, already demoralised and apathetic aftrer years of government abuse, will see nothing wrong with it. Conservatives should be doing their best to turn back legislation contributing to a system of state-controlled medicine,
“Public health” as the context for government to determine personal restrictions to ensure human rights of others has been field tested and found to be generally accepted.
That’s the way it’s framed.
Sadly the LINO’s, of which there are far too many (and you know who you are), are fully subscribed card carrying members of the global cabal elite and are all-in, hook line and sinker with their socialist comrades. Cite Mr. Hunt et al, undeclared alumni of the WEF. Not until the LNP executive purge all and sundry traitors from their ranks, no hope will exist to prevent further spread of this sort of communist ideology, even though there be a sizeable electorate (indeed majority if the Voice is any indication) waiting with eager anticipation to finally cast their conservative votes. But of course this will also need the complete removal of the no-skin-in-the-game advisers to whom the party executive seems inextricably hypnotised, no matter how many losses they have manufactured.
PS. The Voice win was NOT a Liberal/Dutton win. Without Price and Mundine and an early bout of courage from the Nationals the outcome would have been completely different. No laurels there for the Libs to crow about. Just a chance to wake up.
The feds are doing exactly the same thing.
Lib Nats will wave it through because they do not have the intestinal fortitude to push back against the bureaucrats who want this.
Lib Nats gave us that disaster called MyGov.
Lib Nats gace us Company Directors EID.
They have zero credibility in this space.