Greens List is pleased to announce that List member Dr Elizabeth Brophy has won the Harold Luntz Graduate Research Thesis Prize 2008.

The prize is awarded annually to the University of Melbourne Law School graduate research student judged to have presented the best thesis in the previous year, provided that the nominee meets an overall level of excellence required for the award.

The award was presented at the Law School on 28 May 2009.

Dr Brophy's   PhD focused on the regulation of health care in Australia, including the regulation of health services, health practitioners and medicines. She adopted a wide view of regulation that included the law of negligence and so the thesis also examines aspects of the common law obligations of health practitioners.

Her thesis addressed a novel issue, namely, the particular problem of how to integrate evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine into mainstream health care. Western Governments around the world, including the UK, the USA, and Canada, are currently grappling with the significant economic, professional, ethical and regulatory implications of consumer driven developments in this area.

The Selection Committee for the Prize said that Dr Brophy's work was "ambitious and visionary in being truly inter-disciplinary in an area which is of growing social importance."

Dr Brophy's  PhD was supervised by Associate Professor Christine Parker, a regulatory compliance and enforcement scholar, and Emeritus Professor Harold Luntz, a world expert on torts law.