Lees-Galloway Iain: Health (Protection) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Health (Protection) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 06 November 2014. Volume:701;Page:737. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North):I am very pleased to support this legislation because I always support Labour policy. This is a good bill that implements Labour policy that has been around for a very very long time. Other speakers have referred to the fact that the bulk of this legislation comes directly out of Labour’s Public Health Bill but of course the National Party vehemently opposed it. I believe it got reported back from the select committee sadly on 26 June 2008 which was right before the 2008 election and of course the National Party could not help but play politics with a piece of legislation that was designed to improve the health and well-being of New Zealanders. Of course what term did National use? Well it was nanny State—nanny State nanny State nanny State.What I found really interesting was reading through the minority report that the National Party wrote on the Public Health Bill—probably written by Chris Bishop. He is having a good old grin. I do not know whether he was in a National MP’s office at the time but it certainly looks like it was written by a communications person not by a member of Parliament sitting on the Health Committee.I read the section entitled “Not so voluntary codes of practice” in which National Party members wax lyrical about their concerns about how voluntary codes of practice that could be used to ask different industries to adopt practices that support the safety and well-being of New Zealanders could ultimately turn into regulation or even legislation. Of course you have just got to grin when really that is exactly what this legislation does. It takes a voluntary code of practice that the people who operate UV tanning devices were asked to implement. They spectacularly failed to do anything that was in the interests of the health and well-being of New Zealanders and so this National Government is in fact doing exactly what it warned the terrible Labour-led Government back in 2008 it was going to do by implementing voluntary codes of practice.I see the former medical practitioner over there—sorry I have not learnt your name yet; I will eventually. But he is having a wry grin. He knows what I am talking about. Usually the medical practitioners in National side with Labour on this stuff. I remember when Paul Hutchison crossed the floor of the House to vote with Labour on its tobacco legislation. The medical practitioners in the National Party always get this stuff. It must be painful being in the National caucus having to deal with the silly political rhetoric that those members engage themselves with when it comes to health legislation.We could have been doing this. We could have got this in place 7 long years ago but thankfully because of the Ebola crisis in West Africa the National Government sees fit to pass this legislation at this point in time. I have to say it is a little bit disappointing that National has chosen to use the Ebola outbreak as the catalyst for introducing this legislation. The bill itself says that National made the decision back in October last year to pursue these regulations but it seems that it sort of waited until there was an appropriate moment in the media to say that it is doing something to protect the health and well-being of New Zealanders.I attended a briefing with ministry officials that the Minister of Health organised for Opposition health spokespeople to talk about what the response is to the Ebola outbreak. One of the things that they were at pains to get us to understand was that the last thing they wanted to do was for people’s vigilance to suddenly improve during the outbreak and then fall away again if and when the outbreak is finally over. Actually there are real risks to New Zealand of people carrying communicable diseases into the country from overseas every single day. In fact even today we are more at risk from malaria than we are from Ebola because malaria is much more communicable much more infectious and actually people coming in—the chair of the Health Committee is looking perplexed and bemused. I encourage the chair of the select committee to talk to the health officials about this. They said that people coming into the country with a heightened temperature from West Africa are more likely to be carrying malaria than they are Ebola.But of course there is a range of other diseases as well that could be brought into the country by people from elsewhere so these provisions actually are necessary all of the time and have been necessary for the entire last 7 years since National made politics out of the provisions of the Public Health Bill. It is really good that National is finally charging ahead with this now but we could have done it much sooner.Speaking of “much sooner” I note that the World Health Organization recognised tanning beds as a significant carcinogenic threat back in 2009 and recommended that Governments should implement legislation to do exactly what this bill does—to ban the use of tanning beds for people under the age of 18. With its usual haste and enthusiasm a mere 5 years later we see this Government finally implementing the recommendations of the World Health Organization on UV tanning beds.This is the problem with National. It is slow to act. National usually lets Labour Governments take the progressive stance to actually do things. National members jump up and down and squeal at the time they tell everybody how their rights are going to be taken away from them and then when they do get into Government of course they do not repeal any of it; they just carry on with business as usual. But it is always left to this side to make the positive change that actually improves the health and well-being of New Zealanders. The sky is always going to fall when National is in Opposition and then when it gets into Government of course it repeals absolutely none of it. So it is no surprise that it took it a mere 5 years. In fact we should be really quite impressed that it took it just 5 years from when the World Health Organization first recommended legislating against the use of UV tanning beds for under-18s to when the National Government finally gets to the point where it legislates for them.I do take the point the Green member Kevin Hague made that the evidence that the age of 18 is the appropriate age is probably not strong. I heard from one of the members opposite—the deputy chair of the select committee—that the recommendation is not to use them before the age of 35 but there is always a balancing act with these things. I think that most of the evidence tells us that the use of alcohol before the age of 25 probably is not that good for the development of the young developing human brain yet we have made 18 the purchase age for alcohol. Again I actually applaud the Government for achieving what is probably an appropriate balancing act by finding that age and 18 is of course the age of eligibility for a range of things that we deny to young people. It just seems appropriate that that would be the age at which you become able to use a tanning bed if you feel so inclined despite the fact that the evidence against doing so is getting stronger and stronger every day.It is important to be able to improve the tracing of people who have or who may have an infectious disease or who may have been exposed to one. Certainly the measures that are already in place for tracing people who are identified as being at a risk of carrying Ebola or any other infectious disease from overseas are quite sound and I think New Zealanders should feel satisfied that their Government and the Ministry of Health are taking appropriate action to ensure that the community at large is kept safe and that the risks are managed. In fact the current legislation really does allow for that and I am pleased that in this country we have not really seen too much fearmongering around the risk associated with Ebola and other communicable diseases because that risk is very real every single day. Just because we have got an issue that is getting a lot of media attention does not mean actually that our vigilance should go up. We should remain vigilant at all times.This is good legislation. It implements what has been long-held Labour policy. We look forward to the discussions at the select committee and a robust and constructive debate around some of the finer points. We commend this bill to the House.