Lees-Galloway Iain: Crown Entities Reform Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Lees-Galloway Iain: Crown Entities Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 23 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2331. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to relieve Mr Auchinvole from that arduous task of trying to address Part 1 of the Crown Entities Reform Bill. I would like to speak to Part 1. This is the part that the Labour Opposition is most supportive of and in fact I anticipate that we will support this part of the bill. We cannot say the same for other parts but we will support this part of the bill. It is the part that establishes the Health Promotion Agency by amalgamating the Alcohol Advisory Council (ALAC) with the Health Sponsorship Council. Although a number of submitters to the Government Administration Committee established some reservations about that—especially folding ALAC into another organisation at a time when Parliament and New Zealand are acutely focused on the issue of alcohol harm and what we can do to reduce our alcohol-related harm—most submitters were supportive of the establishment of the new Health Promotion Agency. It is a single agency that will focus on public health initiatives and the promotion of health and well-being. I note that one of the amendments that the select committee made to the bill was to add the words “and wellbeing” after the word “health”. I think that was a wise amendment by the select committee. In fact a Health Promotion Agency should be about maintaining encouraging and fostering the conditions for healthy lifestyles for good overall well-being in a population. 
I notice that a lot of the rhetoric that goes with this piece of legislation is that it is New Zealand’s first attempt I suppose to implement the Ottawa Charter. Kevin Hague spoke about this a little last night. It is an aspect of the Ottawa Charter but I think it is a very limited one. It certainly does not by any stretch of the imagination implement the entire Ottawa Charter. This is the health promotion part of the Ottawa Charter but the Ottawa Charter also talks about the environment the community the public health policy settings and the fact that that goes beyond the health system and it goes beyond what we do in hospitals and doctors’ surgeries—indeed what we will do in the Health Promotion Agency. It goes into all the other policies and decisions that Governments make such as whether we should have more pokies in our community such as whether we should get rid of programmes like Healthy Eating - Healthy Action which support good nutrition and physical activity amongst our young people. In that respect I think that some of the Government’s changes that it has made over the last 4 years are somewhat counter-intuitive. Although we absolutely support any intention to implement the Ottawa Charter—and this is part of it—in so many other ways the Government has actually run in a completely contrary direction to what the Ottawa Charter actually suggests. I do not think the Government can congratulate itself all that much on its efforts to implement or even adhere to the principles of the Ottawa Charter. That is really what a lot of the submissions on Part 1 were about.  
People were concerned that the amalgamation of these organisations might take the focus off the efforts to reduce alcohol-related harm and of course a lot of the efforts to reduce alcohol-related harm are to do with the environment in which alcohol is available and the environment in which alcohol is consumed. In that respect Parliament is regarding the Alcohol Reform Bill which many of the submitters to this piece of legislation argued was not as strong as robust or as forthright as it could be. That is a debate that we will have on another day. The Cancer Society submitted that part of the Health Promotion Agency’s core business should be addressing the issue of alcohol sponsorship in the same way as the Health Sponsorship Council was originally established to address tobacco sponsorship. That is certainly an issue that I would like to see the Health Promotion Agency consider in the future. That issue is how do we look at adjusting the environment in which alcohol is I suppose perceived not just by young people but by all people in New Zealand and the way that alcohol is so closely related to the sponsorship of sports and other community organisations? I think particularly of students associations and the close relationship between the alcohol companies and the students associations.  
Grant Robertson 
: Very close.  
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY 
: Very very close; you are right Mr Robertson. I think that that should certainly be part of the Health Promotion Agency’s core functions which of course are established here in Part 1. 
The other aspect that I would like to touch on briefly in Part 1 is the question of the ALAC levy which of course will continue more or less in its current form except that the levy will now go to the Health Promotion Agency. But this legislation sets out the parameters under which that levy can be spent and it will be hypothecated directly into alcohol-related activities and alcohol harm reduction activities that the Health Promotion Agency will be carrying out. A number of submitters particularly the Smokefree Coalition submitted to the select committee that there was an opportunity to go down the same pathway for tobacco and to have a hypothecated tobacco levy that could be used for health promotion activities that reduce the harm related to tobacco. I know that the select committee considered this and ultimately rejected that proposal and certainly it is something that requires far more consideration than would be available if a member was to put up a Supplementary Order Paper in this debate. It is certainly not something that I propose but I think it is an idea that has merit and ought to be considered. Perhaps the Health Promotion Agency could consider and report back to the Minister and to Parliament about the possibility of introducing a tobacco levy that is analogous to the alcohol levy specifically to be used for health promotion activities. 
We know that there is already a considerable excise tax and we have heard in the media that the Government is considering increasing that again tomorrow when it announces the next Budget. However although that is considerably larger than the amount of money that is already spent on health promotion activity the costs associated with tobacco use are not solely to do with health promotion activities. Of course most of the costs related to tobacco use come from the cost of the disease the cost of lost productivity and the cost of hospitalisations and care for people who end up getting smoking-related diseases and suffering from smoking-related diseases. That cost is significant and many people would argue that it actually outweighs the excise tax amount that is taken. So that is an option. It is not in this bill and I am not proposing it as a Supplementary Order Paper but I do recognise that the committee gave some consideration to this and I hope that it is something that Parliament can come back to at some point in the future. 
As I said overall with some reservations the Labour Opposition is supportive of Part 1. We look forward to seeing the Health Promotion Agency engaging in a range of health promotion activities to reduce not only the economic costs associated with the burden of disease but also the social costs particularly those diseases which are utterly preventable: the diseases associated with alcohol the diseases associated with tobacco and the diseases associated with poor nutrition and poor physical activity. Those are the diseases that will be the greatest burden on the health system in the years to come and those are the diseases that we have an opportunity to step in and do more about now. The Health Promotion Agency is just a small part of that. This needs to be something that the Government considers across all its policies. I reiterate our concern on this side of the Chamber that many of the policies that have been introduced by this Government over the last 4 years run absolutely counter to the concept of maintaining healthy lifestyles and maintaining well-being across the population of New Zealand. If the Government is not prepared to do more in that policy sphere then we are going to burden the health system with unnecessary costs we are going to burden society with unnecessary disease and that I think is a very short-sighted and unfortunate approach.