Kedgley Sue: Natural Health Products Bill — First Reading 
Kedgley Sue: Natural Health Products Bill — First Reading 
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SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party is delighted that the Natural Health Products Bill which will set up a stand-alone natural health products regulator within the Ministry of Health is before this House. Instead of lumping in natural health products with medicine and food the bill sets up a system for the regulation of natural health products as a separate low-risk category of product. 
The bill which the Green Party has helped to negotiate with the Government has been a long time in gestation. I do not intend to dwell on the past but just for the record I will point out why I believe that the regulatory system we have come up with in this bill is a vast improvement on the proposal previously before this House which was to regulate natural health products through a heavy-handed trans-Tasman regulator. The natural health unit that we are setting up will be located here in Wellington not in Canberra. It will be staffed by New Zealanders not by Australians and we will retain our sovereignty over it. Grant Robertson said he believed that New Zealand could have retained its sovereignty through the trans-Tasman regulator but let me assure New Zealanders that we could not under the previous scheme. Basically all regulations were delegated to an official based in Canberra and we had no ability to exercise our sovereignty. 
The scheme we have come up with is a low-risk regulatory scheme that is appropriate for the low-risk nature of natural health products. It is not a heavy-handed regime as was previously proposed. There will be a relatively straightforward system for approval. An online database for products and ingredients used in other countries with recognised regulatory schemes will be automatically recognised. If a natural health company has its products already approved in Australia those products will be automatically approved here as Australia will be recognised under our scheme as an approved overseas regulator. There will be an open-ended list of ingredients not a so-called permitted list as exists in Australia. The problem with the Australian permitted list is that if an ingredient is not on its list it would be an illegal product. We do not want to see a situation whereby natural herbs that have been used for millennia—for example traditional herbs in New Zealand—could be deemed to be illegal. 
We are effectively setting up a disapproval system such as what exists in countries like the United States by which there will be a presumption that new products coming to the market are acceptable unless the regulator has reason to be concerned. This is very different from the onerous approval process for new ingredients that exists in Australia where an applicant has to undergo an extensive and expensive process to prove that a new ingredient is safe. Many companies have said that the Australian system is so expensive they cannot afford to bring new and innovative products on to the Australian market. That system discourages innovation and we do not want to see that happening here. 
The practice of rongoa Maori will be exempt from the bill as it is a taonga of Maori and should be governed for and by Maori according to tikanga. Products made for consumers and low-risk products like homeopathy products will also be exempt. The Green Party wanted to have a clause in the legislation to recognise the Treaty and we will still be seeking to amend the legislation to include such a clause. We also want to see dedicated Maori representation within the new regulatory body provided for in the legislation. 
We are pleased that the Government will fund the costs of regulatory policy advice compliance and monitoring and start-up costs. When we began work on the bill our aim was to set up a scheme that protected consumers and ensured that products were safe and true to label but that was not so onerous that it would put a whole lot of natural product businesses out of business. I think we have achieved that and I am delighted that the bill is strongly supported by the natural health industry. It is a flourishing industry with about 450 companies and we want to ensure that the industry continues to flourish. 
I believe that the Green Party has made the legislation better—considerably better—by our involvement in helping to negotiate the bill. We have worked closely with officials and listened to submitters and I think we have an improved regulatory system. This demonstrates the value of small parties like the Green Party having an input into the policy and legislative process. It implements the promise we made before the last election that we would work with whoever was in Government to try to progress key issues that we thought were important such as natural health care. It is satisfying that having led a campaign to defeat the previous trans-Tasman regulatory scheme which we thought was heavy-handed and undermined our sovereignty we have been able to work constructively on what we think is a much better alternative. 
More and more New Zealanders are turning to natural health products to keep themselves well. The Green Party strongly supports natural health care. Indeed I believe that we are the only party in the House that actively supports natural health care and wants to see it integrated into mainstream health. We worked with Labour during the last term of Government and secured funding for a small unit to investigate how natural health care could be integrated into mainstream health but I believe sadly that that work has virtually been suspended over the last few years. The Green Party wants to see in New Zealand what exists in other countries overseas: traditional health care like acupuncture and naturopathy being recognised and accepted throughout our health system. We want to see natural health practitioners working alongside nurses and doctors using whatever treatment is judged to be most effective and to see natural remedies and treatments being offered in public health organisations and hospitals. 
This may sound radical but I remind members that many policies that we have advocated and that have been dismissed as being radical at the time are now widely embraced in this House and by the public: climate change peak oil capital gains taxes and many others. So I hope that our vision for natural health care being implemented into the health system will in time be accepted by this House. 
Finally I will say that some have questioned why we need any regulatory scheme at all given the low-risk nature of natural health products. The reality is that more and more natural health products are imported into New Zealand and some are imported from countries with a poor safety record. So it is important that importers in particular know that we have a regulatory scheme that requires every product sold in New Zealand to be safe and true to label. The other thing is that the law needs updating. The present law means that making claims is illegal and it does not cover many products. We hope that this bill will be widely supported and will progress rapidly through the House. We will be listening very keenly to submitters on the bill at the Health Committee. Thank you very much.