The statutory framework under the Medical Practice Act 1992 (NSW) did not require the Commission to formulate complaints in a pleading or the Tribunal to formulate charges; the common law duty of procedural fairness required only reasonable notice of the case to be met. However, a medical tribunal must conduct a separate hearing on penalty before ordering deregistration, giving the practitioner the opportunity to adduce evidence and make submissions on appropriate orders consequential on findings. The dissent (Macfarlan JA) would have required a higher degree of particularity, especially where sexual misconduct is alleged, and would have required the sexual character of the conduct to be expressly alleged.
The full text is available to signed-in members, including the 24 later cases that cite this judgment.
4 of the 24 citing cases carry a classified treatment. How each court treated it is available to signed-in members.