Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): It is with pleasure that I take a short call for the Green Party on this legislation which was previously one bill but has now been divided into eight bills addressing the Health Practitioners (Replacement of Statutory References to Medical Practitioners) Bill. Firstly I just want to acknowledge how important issues of health are to New Zealanders. It is kind of a no-brainer really that our health impacts on every single part of our lives and is a foundation for our ability to participate and live fully. We also need to recognise the changing circumstances around the health needs across the country. In New Zealand we have an ageing population which of itself increases demands on our health system. We have as has already been mentioned an ageing health workforce which we need to be very aware of in planning to prevent that impacting negatively on our systems. We have had significant advances in health technology which has put a cost pressure on our health system and we have a growing pressure on our health system from diseases that have been created as a result of poverty of our sick homes that are putting people into hospital and of the obesogenic environments that we all live in. These are very very significant pressures that should be addressed at the point to prevent people needing to be pushed into our healthcare system. But some of these things obviously we cannot prevent. We cannot prevent ourselves ageing as much as I would like to some days. We know that we need to be thinking really creatively and be forward thinking about our health system. This legislation is actually catching up I would say with some of the changes that have already been made within our health system. I will take nurse practitioners as an example. Since the 2000s registered nurses have been able to become nurse practitioners which means that they need to be registered with the Nursing Council that they need to have had a minimum of 4 years' experience in a specific area of practice and that they need to have completed a clinically focused Master's degree on top of their degree to become a registered nurse. With all of that training those nurses have not been able to do some pretty basic functions. So this legislation is helping us catch up to enable them to do what they are trained to do which really does make sense in our system. I think it is useful to have a bit of a feminist analysis around this because it has been a battle for this women-dominated profession to be able to have recognition for their skills and be able to work at their level of competence. The competency of nurses has always been undervalued in our health system and I think it is really good that we are in some way catching up. But as has also already been mentioned this cannot be done to say that they can do the work that would otherwise cost the system more when being done by a doctor for less money because they are nurses. That would be unjust and that would feed into more of an equal pay problem—our pay equity issue which we already have. So we need to be resolving those issues and we do hope that the Government is not going to exacerbate them in its actions following the passing of this legislation. I would also again like to particularly note the importance of this in terms of rural health and specialist health areas where there are practitioners currently operating under the guidance of a GP who will often come in on particular days when they are available to travel around to sign off and they will spend so much of their time signing things off when actually the practitioners had the competence and supervision to be able to make the decisions in the first place. We are wasting their time—their precious time—signing things off when they could be face-to-face with people doing what is specific to their role. So in conclusion the Green Party is very happy to join with all the other parties in this House in supporting this legislation.