Wall Louisa: Health (Protection) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWall Louisa: Health (Protection) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 27 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:4079. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Kia ora. Lau Afioga le Fofoga Fetalai. Kia ora. I am a proud member of the Health Committee and I want to echo my colleague Annette King’s kōrero earlier about how this committee is working. It is a very productive committee. I think that a lot of the discussions that we have are incredibly important because we are talking about a health system that we want to help design and to ensure meets the health needs of all New Zealanders. Essentially the Health (Protection) Amendment Bill covers two areas. I am going to touch a lot on one of those areas but briefly the first area is about protecting the public from the risk of the spread of some infectious diseases. I think that what we did in the committee was have quite an interesting discussion about what some of those diseases should be. Obviously the bill wanted to introduce tuberculosis to the schedule but there was much debate about whether or not hepatitis C should be added. Obviously because of that we had discussions about other diseases that we think should be monitored because the spread is actually causing an adverse effect particularly in some communities. The second area that the bill covered was really about protection from the harm associated with artificial UV tanning.I am going to spend the majority of my contribution talking about the ban on solaria or UV tanning machines because I think the evidence was actually incredibly compelling that 18 is in fact not the right age to have set if we were going to protect the largest number of New Zealanders. I want to agree with my colleague Annette King when she said that the World Health Organization is categoric in terms of UV tanning machines causing cancer. From the evidence that the World Health Organization has gathered in fact 35 years should be the age that we ban the use of UV sunbeds if we were going to set an age. That is part of the discussion that I think is still ongoing. Essentially we have set it at 18 years because once you are over 18 you are an adult and the State ceases to care about you. This is even though we have got overwhelming evidence that the use of these devices is harmful to you and in spite of 2000 more New Zealanders getting diagnosed with melanoma every year and over 326 of us dying because we get melanoma. So in spite of all the evidence we set the age at 18 because up to the age of 18 you are a child and as the State we will protect you. But if you are over the age of 18 you are on your own and you make your own decisions. So if you are not as informed or if you practise UV sunbed use because you think it makes you look attractive and you want to be browner or whatever it might be we say that that is your choice.What we in the Opposition say is that it actually should not be your choice because at the end of the day there are alternatives. If you want to get brown you can spray stuff on you these days right? So if you are doing it for cosmetic reasons there are actually alternatives that are not going to kill you. What we said was that actually given that there is an existing by-law—Auckland Council has one that already bans under-18-year-olds from using UV tanning machines—the effectiveness of this piece of legislation is essentially going to benefit only 25 percent of the sunbeds that are out there. Auckland Council made that decision and the other interesting submission from my perspective was from Palmerston North City Council. It made a decision as a council. It made a decision because it had some evidence from a dermatologist a woman called Louise Reiche—I hope I am pronouncing her name correctly—that in the MidCentral District Health Board region the rate of melanoma is 51.55 per 100000 people. The national average is 39.12.So as a council it got actively involved in this piece of legislation because it was relevant to the council and also there was a case of a young 16-year-old Jessie Anitoni who got cancer. There was a lot of publicity I guess in that community about the effects of UV tanning machines so it was very clear that it wanted central government to ban them. Rather than having every local council in the country going through a process of banning these machines it wanted us to take responsibility as central government and enact a piece of legislation that was going to benefit the community—the public good. This is because when you look at who actually benefits from using UV sunbeds there are some cohorts of New Zealanders who do such as those who suffer from seasonal depression and are actually prescribed to go and have some UV sunbed treatments and also people with psoriasis. So actually there is a medical rationale for using UV sunbeds that we agree with. In fact it would have been exempted in terms of a ban because it was to be used in a medical procedure. Those beds are actually in hospitals and they are available to people who need them.So I think that the decision that the committee made to set the age at 18 is really not in the interests of New Zealanders. It is not in the interests of the 326 people who die from melanoma every year and the over 2000 New Zealanders who get diagnosed with melanoma every year. If we had been brave—and I do not even think that we would have been brave. In fact Australia and Brazil have already banned UV sunbeds because they realise that it is bad for the community and for the citizens of their countries. Are their rates higher than ours? Actually they are not. We have higher rates than Australia. We have higher rates than Brazil. So this really was I think one of the critical decisions that the committee made—the decision not to ban them—because we think that that would have somehow sent the message that we were being nanny State we were telling people how to live their lives and we were not allowing them to be adults and make decisions for themselves. Well actually no. Our responsibility as legislators is to protect the people of New Zealand and when we have evidence which is overwhelming that says that the effects of UV sunbed usage is so detrimental and that there is nothing to be gained from it then I think it is incumbent on us to act. I have not given up hope. I want to acknowledge that my colleague Annette King has got an amendment that wants a progressive system over a period of time that will mean that in 5 years there will be no more UV sunbeds. So we are not going to take them away immediately but we want to phase them out progressively and let those people find the spray-cans if they are doing it because they want to look lovely. They can go to the chemist and buy those and look all brown and people will think that they have been in the sun. They do not need to sit under those sunbeds and actually harm themselves.The only other thing I wanted to cover was that I was really interested in the discussion about what is ionising and what is non-ionising. What I want to highlight in my take-away from the ionising/non-ionising debate is that I understand that non-ionising is actually low frequency—it is not as intense. But what I also got from the discussion we had with the experts was that it is about the compound effect. It is about the compound effect so how much is too much? If you go and have these sunbeds once a week once a fortnight once a month—actually what is the frequency when the compound use of these things actually has the same effect as ionising radiation? That was not clear. I am clear about what is ionising and non-ionising because associated with UV radiation are cell phone towers Wi-Fi power lines and all those things. They are in our environment. I understand that. We live with those. But what we did not get to do was to consider that if this is non-ionising with a compound effect then actually maybe we should limit the frequency. So are we going to say: “OK you are over 18. You can make up your own mind but actually you can use these things only once a fortnight. If you use them more than that the compound effect is like using ionised radiation.”? So that is my contribution to this debate. I look forward to an ongoing discussion because I am hopeful that the Government is going to support Annette King’s amendment. Nā reira tēnā koutou katoa. Talofa lava.