Marcroft JennyJENNY MARCROFT (NZ First): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to stand and rise on behalf of New Zealand First in support of this bill the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Amendment Bill. I'd just like to acknowledge as I begin this short call on this all the members of the Health Committee. I have just joined the Health Committee. I was sad to leave the Māori Affairs Committee because they have the best kai but I'm looking forward to ensuring that the standard of the food in the Health Committee suddenly rises. Hon Member: It'll be nutritious. JENNY MARCROFT: It surely will be. [Interruption] Yes that's right—I'll put my pinny on. So yes I look forward to the next period of time with the Health Committee. To all who have submitted and the diligent work of the committee unfortunately I wasn't there through the process of this bill going through the select committee—Angie Warren-Clark: We were diligent.JENNY MARCROFT: —but I do know that they worked very hard on it so I'm looking forward to continuing their good work as well. The original Act the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003 was a bit of a groundbreaking piece of legislation—in fact it even had some sort of international acclaim. But it has spent a long time—two reviews. In 2007 it went under review for a couple of years and then in 2012 through to 2014 there was another set of reviews but finally it has made its way all the way now through to this second reading. Now it's really vital that we have mechanisms to ensure that we protect every member of the public and we can do this by ensuring that the health practitioners are competent and are fit to practise their professions. Now that's absolutely vital. To claim professional status—to be a member of their profession—every health professional must actually have the appropriate qualification and on top of that they must also be registered with the responsible authority. Public safety as I have mentioned is critical and is the right of every member of our community. So this bill is important to make sure that we have safe practice amongst our medical fraternity. Forty-nine submissions were made to the select committee 23 were heard and a great variety of those were in support—as Dr Shane Reti the member before me spoke about—in terms of bringing it into the technological age by allowing emails to be used as a form of communication in sending information. So that's a good thing to know that finally they've become part of the electronic age. The performance reviews are to be carried out by independent reviewers set against some indicators that will be developed by the Ministry of Health in consultation with the responsible authorities. Just making note of the Hon Dr David Clark in his speech when it came to the second reading earlier—one important change that the bill will make is the introduction of these performance reviews for the responsible authorities. They will be five-yearly reviews which will ensure public confidence in those responsible authorities so that's really important to note. So really just touching very briefly on three areas where there will be changes after consideration of the submissions that came to the select committee the bill now allows responsible authorities as regulators to act immediately to suspend a practitioner's practising certificate if that's required. Obviously I mentioned the updating into the electronic age that we live in—email will now be an acceptable thing so that's finally got there—and making note that cultural competence provisions are also made note of as well in respect to all things Māori and there is a respect for interaction and so on as the health professionals conduct their work. So on that short contribution this evening I'd like to commend this bill to the House.