Street Maryan: Medicines Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Street Maryan: Medicines Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 28 February 2012. Volume:677;Page:603. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to speak to the Medicines Amendment Bill and say with my colleagues from the Labour Party we will support this bill being referred to the select committee. But can I just say that what we have just heard from the Associate Minister of Health Peter Dunne is a truncated version of the regulatory impact statement so there was nothing about the original purpose of this bill and nothing about what could have been done earlier. In fact if I take up where the Minister left off the Minister left off at the second sentence of the regulatory impact statement. The Minister was quoting the regulatory impact statement written by an official and I have to say written delicately by an official so as not to cause the current Minister of Health or the Associate Minister of Health in this case any embarrassment. My commendations go to the official for that. It says “A more comprehensive overhaul of the Medicines Act will be required in the future to modernise and recast the medicines legislation …”. The Minister just said that. The question that is begged in that sentence is if why not now then why not 5 years ago?  
For those who were not in this House 5 years ago let me elucidate. The National Party decided to play naked politics jumping on the bandwagon of people in the supplementary medicines industry: the dietary supplements the people who produce vitamins and the people who use non-traditional medicines. It jumped on that bandwagon. They all got out at the front of Parliament stood there under red umbrellas—if I remember correctly Tony Ryall leading the band—and said “We can’t have this regulatory thing. It’s going to put up the cost of everybody’s Berocca. It’s going to put up the cost of everybody’s vitamin supplements.” Never mind that the intention was to regulate unregulated medicines coming in from overseas and being sold to New Zealanders without any reference to a panel of experts without any regulation applying to them and without any comeback—and there were adverse incidents occurring as a result of that. But no the National Party at the time decided that it could have a photo opportunity here it could get out at the front of Parliament with all these red umbrellas and say “We’re not having a bar of this.”  
And what do we get now? Minister we get a half-baked piece of legislation coming back now. Of course we will support it; it was ours to start with. Of course we will support it but it is only half the job. Why come into the ministry Minister and do half a job? Why not do the whole thing? This is pathetic. Yes we will support it. Let us hope we can find some improvements to make to it at the Health Committee. I look forward to receiving it; I am on the Health Committee and I look forward to receiving it and seeing whether there is anything we can do to improve it.  
Let me give one example of things that could have been done 5 years ago if the National Party had agreed even to parts of this legislation and not other parts. It could have agreed to do the things that the Minister is now proposing around Medsafe to make the procedures more flexible. What we have done in the meantime between 2007 and now—and I am not reading this from the regulatory impact statement Minister. What we have lost in the 5 years between 2007 and now is the potential for a faster process around the accession of medicines on to the market in New Zealand. If we had been able to do that who knows what medicines might have been available to the New Zealand public that could have alleviated symptoms provided a cure and improved people’s quality of life over the last 5 years—and that responsibility I sheet directly home to the National Party. This is not how one runs politics in this country—not at the expense of people’s health. There was a serious risk and for new members of the National Government I do bring this to your attention. Do not be hoodwinked by the fact that you have no institutional memory of what happened 5 years ago. Do not be hoodwinked that this is the best thing since sliced bread. We could have had sliced bread and toast 5 years ago; we are just getting the sliced bread now.  
So I do lay at the door of this Government now the responsibility for Medsafe processes not being able to become more flexible so more medicines prescribed and not prescribed standard and not so standard could be allowed to come into the market in New Zealand in a regulated fashion that guaranteed the safety of those medicines for New Zealand patients and that could have improved their quality of life in the last 5 years. That is a serious responsibility and I hope members particularly new members of the Government understand that. If one reads the regulatory impact statement one will see—and most of it has been read to us by the Minister just now—that the consultation processes particularly around prescribing rights were all consulted and agreed on in 2007. That bit was all good to go; that bit was all good to go. So why would such a thing which this Government is now parading as highly desirable have taken 5 years of delay because of that party’s naked politicking when it was in Opposition? It does not matter how members opposite may joke about this; it is an extremely serious issue.  
There are really good things in this bill that we are keen to see put in place because we drafted them in the first place. But just be aware that the consultation processes were undertaken. We started in 2003 with a trans-Tasman therapeutic agency proposal and that was part of the bill that went through. There was a huge reaction against that by members of the public and members of that industry as I have outlined already. But such things as prescribing rights and recasting the scope of practice of certain practitioners so that prescribing rights could be given are very sensible initiatives. They would free up some of our medical services and make them more available and accessible to the people who need them most.  
I am going to be interested to hear from the Green Party on its approach to this. There were some differences at the time between us and it on this measure in its totality but we are getting only half of the bill now. We are getting the bit that the National Party could have agreed to 5 years ago so let us get on and do it. Five years have passed when people have not been able to access medicines quickly that may have improved their quality of life and that is undeniable. So let us get on with it let us get it through and let us take note of the facts that the consultation has happened and that all of the stakeholder groups that have an interest in this area have been consulted and have agreed to these provisions.  
I am hoping that this bill will have a very speedy route through the Health Committee. Dr Paul Hutchison chairs that select committee and chairs it very well and I hope that he will expedite this piece of legislation so that we do not have to wait 6 years for it to come into effect. Thank you.