Williams PotoPOTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): I actually want to start my contribution where the member Simon O'Connor who has just resumed his seat has left off and just talk about I guess what happened 14 or 15 years ago when the conversation in the health sector was about the competencies that someone required in order to do a good job. I remember the conversations that were held when I was working in community health and community mental health about the extraordinary work that nurses in particular were capable of doing—that their scope of practice was such and their training was such that they could be engaged in a wide range of health provision. It was at that time that the then Minister of Health was introducing the discussion around the ability to train nurses to take on higher functions and take on the roles as nurse practitioners. I remember the discussion very distinctly. Nurses were very much in demand because of their scope of practice and their ability to work in such a significant way and they were being taken to do other work kind of outside the clinical practice in a way. A lot of them were taking roles as managers of services particularly health services and there was a real pressure on the New Zealand health workforce to be able offer a range of services that were at a level that was sufficiently high enough to be challenging for certain practitioners but were not those duties specifically of a medical practitioner or a doctor—but getting pretty close. I recall the discussions that happened at that time. So it has taken us some time really to catch up with the actual practice that is happening in the community—or what should be happening—and this legislation I think has brought us to a place where we can now address what is current practice in New Zealand. I think we have kind of missed an opportunity to futureproof ourselves in terms of what will be future practice for these practitioners with the advent of the advancement of technology. But what this legislation does do is that it actually allows for the scope of practice to occur as it should do. So nurse practitioners are the ones most often quoted but there is a range of other practitioners for whom we can now encourage a range of career pathways. Specifically they are going to be able to legally conduct some statutory functions that have been denied to them in the past. We have already heard the examples of being able to sign death certificates. What they will also be able to do—and this is important in the mental health field—is conduct assessments where psychiatrists or psychologists are not available to conduct those assessments. That is really important when we have situations—say for example the police may have picked someone up or someone has become unwell and is having an episode and they are unable to get to a psychiatrist or a psychologist quickly. Health practitioners will be able to conduct those assessments and be able to have people into treatment relatively smoothly and quickly. There are some other examples—for example the assessment of children with regard to health practitioner roles within the care environment for Child Youth and Family and one or two other aspects of their job. The report back from the Health Committee—and I do want to commend the work of the select committee. It often has very complex issues to deal with and this was also relatively complex legislation. The report back from the select committee recommended some changes: defining what a nurse practitioner actually does which includes what type of practising certificate they must hold and that they are governed under the Nursing Council and the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act; changes in terminology from doctor's surgery" to "medical centre"; and various other things particularly under the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act—the ability to actually be the provider of those assessments. The previous speakers have actually outlined the significant parts of this legislation and how it amends the eight pieces of principal legislation. I do not think there is much more that I need to contribute to this debate. We are happy for the bills to be passing into legislation and we commend them to the House."