Kedgley Sue: Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill — First Reading 
Kedgley Sue: Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:636;Page:7077] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 I have utmost respect for the last speaker Barbara Stewart and I feel very much for her because she has opposed this legislation for many years and has been rolled by her leader. She has confirmed that the Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill was to be debated under urgency and that because of New Zealand First it will now be sent to a select committee. 
Steve Chadwick 
: You’re hearing things! 
SUE KEDGLEY 
: That is what I heard her say and that is very interesting. The grave concerns that New Zealanders have about this legislation are threefold. New Zealanders understand that despite all the spin and all the flannel by passing this legislation we will transfer power over dietary supplements medicines and medical devices to this offshore entity that is based under Australian legislation. The entity will have its headquarters in Australia and it will be staffed by Australians. The Minister for Food Safety Annette King is trying to say that this is not true but I have sat through two hearings on this issue and we have been told that this will be an offshore entity. That has been confirmed. The bill states that the agreement will be set up under Australian law—it is all there. I have another document that points out that there will be 550 staff of which 93 percent will be Australians and 7 percent will be New Zealanders. So there is all the spin and all the flannel but the truth is that if that is what New Zealand First understands by equal status having an agency— 
Steve Chadwick 
: The head office is in New Zealand! 
SUE KEDGLEY 
: Sure there might be a little office set up in Wellington but the headquarters will be in Canberra. I visited the headquarters; it is a huge bloated bureaucracy. That is where the headquarters will be. 
Basically once we hand over the jurisdiction for this agency it will be beyond the reach of our democracy—much as our food laws are. When I went to introduce legislation that there should be mandatory GE labelling in New Zealand I was told by the Clerk that our Parliament has no jurisdiction over this because we have handed it over to Food Standards Australia New Zealand. That is exactly what we are doing with this 385-page bill. It states that it will give effect to the agreement. This legislation does not actually set up the agency; that has been set up under the agreement that has been signed between Australia and New Zealand. The treaty has been signed and that is where the details are all outlined; we are giving effect to the treaty. We in the Health Committee know exactly how the treaty will operate because we examined and rejected it. We urged the Government not to proceed with the trans-Tasman agency— 
Steve Chadwick 
: No we didn’t! 
SUE KEDGLEY 
: If the member over there can contain herself I will tell her that we had a select committee inquiry into how to regulate dietary supplements and everyone agreed that yes we need better regulation. I agree wholeheartedly—we need better regulation of dietary supplements. We urged the Government not to go down the road of this trans-Tasman agency and we were unanimous in that. Of course the Government signed the treaty 2 days before a unanimous Health Committee report came out urging that it not proceed with the legislation. This is what we said in our report on the treaty: “The power given to the proposed agency and in particular its managing director is unprecedented both in law-making terms and in terms of powers of monitoring and enforcement.” By the way most of the details of how this new entity will operate are unknown; they are all in the rules and orders that are being consulted on. Passing this legislation without knowing the details is like signing a contract without having read it first. 
Basically all the powers will reside with the unelected official the managing director who will have virtually unlimited powers to make delegated legislation in the form of orders—yes orders—and rules. All the way through the bill refers to orders and rules. These will have direct effect on our Parliament and on New Zealand but they will not require the approval of Parliament. These rules have sweeping powers. We said in our report that many of the things that are left to the rules will be significant areas of policy-making; these will be delegated away from Parliament. We said that many of the matters that are proposed to be dealt with by rules and orders should be dealt with in primary legislation. Once one of these rules has been passed the only thing that we as members of the Regulations Review Committee will be able to do is move a motion of disallowance in this House. The only problem is that there never has been a motion passed in this House to disallow a rule. So that power is there but it is a complete utter nonsense. That is why if one reads the fine print one realises that we are transferring powers to this agency. 
This agency will have not just the power to regulate as the trans-Tasman food authority has but also powers to police to search and of seizure. This is unprecedented. In no other agency in the world does an offshore entity have such powers over an industry in another country—namely New Zealand. The agency will have the powers of search and seizure and the power to police so that some in the industry here may hear a knock on the door and find that an inspector from this offshore entity has turned up to close down their business. 
I make it clear that the Green Party wants to see a flourishing natural health industry in New Zealand. We want to see natural health products widely and safely used. If we thought that regulating them through this agency would help to achieve those purposes we would embrace it. We have scrutinised this legislation. I sat up last night reading this 385-page Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill. We have come to the conclusion that it will impose a pharmaceutical-type model for low-risk dietary supplements. It will result in increasing pharmaceutical control of natural health products. Those products will become more expensive and difficult to access small New Zealand businesses will go to the wall as a result of the excessive compliance costs of this agency and there will be reduced consumer choice as some ingredients will not be available in the future. 
I will give the House an example of this. The majority of Chinese herbs are not available in Australia. A Chinese herbalist for example has about 282 herbs. If those herbs are not on the approved list—they are not on that list at the moment and are unlikely to be because of the extensive bureaucratic procedures and the fact that herbalists are required to produce a Western medicine pharmaceutical-type analysis for Chinese medicine which is not based on the Western medical paradigm—they will become illegal if this bill is passed. So we will face the prospect in about 5 years’ time of dietary supplements that have been safely used around the world for centuries becoming illegal in this country. 
This is what is causing huge unease. It is the fact that we are transferring power across to this Australian-based offshore entity. Spin it as you like it is Aussie rules. This is an Australian-dominated agency—93 percent of the staff will be Australians. Spin it as you will New Zealanders know that this is the truth. They know that those health products will become increasingly expensive once the little bribe—yes the Government has come up with a bribe—of paying some of the costs for 5 years ends. Anyway that money pays for only a tiny amount of the costs. The products will become more expensive and small businesses will go to the wall. We will basically have a pharmaceutical-type takeover of our natural health products industry. 
The Treaty is not mentioned in this entire bill. What a great way of circumventing the Treaty! If a Maori practitioner wants to sell some of his or her traditional Maori products why should he or she have to seek approval and get a licence from a managing director—an unelected official—based in Australia? It is absolutely outrageous. The Minister has confirmed that if a Maori practitioner wants to sell a product—a Maori traditional product—he or she will have to get approval from this offshore entity. That is absolutely scandalous and it breaches the Treaty of Waitangi.