Salesa JennyJENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): Thank you Mr Chair for this brief call on the Health Practitioners (Replacement of Statutory References to Medical Practitioners) Bill; it is a mouthful. Labour is very very supportive of this bill. However it has taken such a long time for this bill to get on to the Government's legislative agenda. Nursing organisations and leaders have been advocating for over a decade for the removal of legislative barriers for nursing practitioners to undertake the full range of duties that they are capable of. It is really important that legislation keeps up with the evolving roles of the health workforce and that we empower rather than impede our health practitioners to use the skills and the abilities that they have. The nursing review after the first reading of this legislation noted that the functions covered by the seven Acts that this omnibus bill is addressing include signing death certificates taking blood specimens from drunk drivers declaring people unfit to drive prescribing controlled drugs and signing sick-leave certificates. The current legislation means that nurse practitioners can sign ACC forms and sickness benefit forms but right now they cannot sign certificates for ordinary sick leave from work. A nurse practitioner after this legislation goes through is very very useful especially for our rural areas. This legislation will have a significant impact on our rural services. The bill will allow several things. First it will allow health practitioners with the required competencies and knowledge to perform more statutory functions. Secondly it will make it easier for the public to access statutory health services. Thirdly it will allow our health workforce to use their knowledge and skills. Lastly it will facilitate innovative services and efficient use of practice. Part 1 of this legislation deals with the Accident Compensation Act 2001. The rehabilitation plans under this Act will have a wide range of health practitioners who would be able to contribute to an ACC claimant's rehabilitation plans. The effect of this amendment in clause 4 of the bill is that health practitioners leading the coordination of provision of treatment or rehabilitation to claimants will be given the opportunity to participate in the preparation of a claimant's individual rehabilitation plans. Clause 4(1) will now insert a new paragraph (c) into clause 7(3) of the schedule and this would add any health practitioner providing treatment to the claimant:" to the list of people to be given the opportunity to participate in the preparation and costing of a claimant's rehabilitation plan. We agree that this is really needed. We now have over 50000 nurses in New Zealand registered with the Nursing Council of New Zealand. We have looming GP retirement with about 44 percent of them about to leave our medical profession in the next 10 years so it is really timely that we allow our nursing practitioners to be able to assist in this manner and to be able to put their clinical services in and assist our health services. We know that the health service has been underfunded over the last 6 years by a lot of money. We also know honourable Minister that quite a lot of our health practitioners especially our doctors are going on strike I believe beginning tomorrow at 20 district health boards (DHBs)—is it tomorrow or is it next week—partly because of this underfunding in the DHBs. So we totally agree with this particular legislation giving nurse practitioners more to do especially because they are skilled and able to do so. Thank you."