Menéndez March RicardoRICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): So if we take a step back and think about what is it that we are all trying to achieve and what this bill is trying to achieve I think the intent of what we're trying to get behind is to have things like acceptable safety quality and efficacy or performance of medical devices and active pharmaceutical ingredients across a lifetime and acceptable safety and quality of natural health products across the life cycle—I think these are goals that we can all rally behind.I want to acknowledge everyone who contributed in the select committee process and who has campaigned on the ground to put the lived experiences in front of politicians the challenges that they have faced but also to propose constructive changes to the legislation so that these goals are met. Because I think it's critical that we do have a regulatory framework of medical products and devices and it is fair to say that the feedback about small players not wanting to get unnecessarily caught up in the regulations is incredibly fair. We also want to make sure that patients are not disadvantaged by these regulations. To just make a sweeping statement that any form of regulation is inherently harmful is just simply not true. We have examples of where there are necessary and actually urgent regulations that we need to put in for devices that have proven time and time again to be incredibly harmful. Surgical mesh is a massive example of this of why this bill actually will help enable finally having a regulatory framework—and the Green Party feels we can move towards banning the use of surgical mesh—and that is one that has proved to be incredibly difficult to regulate. We haven't made significant progress despite years of campaigning by many people who have shown the harms that such a device can create. So with this bill I do hope that we can move towards finally banning things like surgical mesh. But there are still outstanding concerns and while I welcome the Minister's move to introduce Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) particularly to address the concerns around—well the SOPs that would then set processes to then address concerns on a case by case basis we really welcome that. And actually part of that has only been in my view addressed thanks to the grassroots campaigning by so many. What we want to see as part of this SOP is that the body that will then deal with complaints around the use of rongoā is fully made up of Māori. That is the feedback of the Greens that we want to send to the Minister—that that this body actually reflects the people who should be empowered to then deal with these concerns and who have the knowledge to deal with these concerns. Then the other one is around enabling secondary legislation to exempt small-scale natural health products from the regime. I think with this one while there is always a tension about how prescriptive we want to be in primary legislation and the risk that that could create in terms of futureproofing things there's also the reality around the fact that the Ministry of Health is not currently adequately resourced to actually be able to field the nuances that are required to make the secondary legislation work. And it's interesting hearing the previous speaker from the ACT Party Toni Severin who talked about the staffing concerns in the Ministry of Health because to me it's one of those great examples of where often the right talks about the so-called bloated Public Service but this is a great example of actually the importance that the Public Service plays in keeping us all safe. And actually I do think we should be having those conversations about how can we adequately resource the Public Service to make sure that the secondary legislation works as intended. We have seen in the medicinal cannabis space that the risks from not properly resourcing the ministry to make good decisions based on community feedback creates problems. And the reality here is that when we create frameworks there are imbalances in power between the big corporates and the small players in the market. I think we all talked about the concerns that we have around small players getting unnecessarily caught up by the secondary legislation. One way to address this is to adequately resource the Ministry of Health so that it can do its job and ensuring that the feedback and the voices of the small players and of patients are adequately taken into account and are not lost in what can often be really heavy-handed lobbying from big big players. So that is one of the key things that we will want to continue exploring and holding the Government to account. The other thing that remains unresolved so far is the direct-to-consumer advertising for pharmaceutical medicines. The Green Party's position is that we should just ban it. The feedback is overwhelming and it is heartening to see other MPs having make public comments about this as well. This is also a way of evening the field and ensuring that we put the safety of our communities as paramount as part of any framework that covers natural health products and medicines. There are also issues that we have and unresolved questions that were raised actually by Shane Reti around the use of cosmetics. Particularly for us it's the use of sunscreens and how these products will get caught up in the new legislation—whether in this case we could be risking creating unnecessary barriers but then also acknowledging that if we're going to create a comprehensive framework for all of these kinds of products we have to be careful of just making sort of discrete carve-outs—avoid making discrete carve-outs unless absolutely necessary. So that's something that we will continue exploring in the next phases of the bill. We also take the constructive comments from the National Party around the use of software products. That is a really valid concern that I think we still need to unpack in the later stages of the bill. Finally I want to acknowledge the members of the Health Committee who did put an incredible amount of hours into listening to the feedback of said matters. Other speakers have talked about how this bill has generated a huge amount of public discourse. I think in some ways while I know the National Party was talking about the Labour Party flip-flopping what I want to frame it as is actually Government responding to overwhelming feedback. Some of it remains unresolved but what it shows is the power of the grassroots. It shows the power that the public actually has in guiding the direction of Government legislation. This is how the Green Party has worked on several pieces of legislation historically where I think we forget that actually people have the power to pressure Government into moving into the right direction. There is so much more that needs to be addressed and I think the public will continue to hold our feet to the fire when it comes to making sure that the secondary legislation works as the Government intends it to work and the Green Party will continue putting scrutiny and accountability—to make sure that we don't create a framework that disadvantages patients and small players.