Stewart Barbara: Health (Protection) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStewart Barbara: Health (Protection) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 06 November 2014. Volume:701;Page:734. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]BARBARA STEWART (NZ First):I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to take a call on the Health (Protection) Amendment Bill. New Zealand First supports this bill. We believe that the changes that the bill makes are very timely. The bill makes a great number of changes that are needed to the public health system. We knew that there were concerns about the way the current legislation was not meeting the needs that health professionals were identifying so this is very timely. Of course like others on the Health Committee I am looking forward to working further on this bill.Firstly I would like to speak to the first section of the bill which deals with tracing people who have an infectious disease or who may have been exposed to one. There is nothing surer than the fact that we need timely data on this. It will reduce the need for people to wonder about whether or not they have actually contracted a disease. We know that the voluntary involvement in reporting is not really good enough. We know that people are travelling far more than they ever have and if there is a disease that they may have been exposed to or have picked up and brought back to New Zealand we need to know fairly quickly. We have got the example of the Ebola disease. We appreciate that the Ministry of Health is focusing on this and taking measures to try to ensure that New Zealanders are not exposed to it and that if somebody comes into the country who has contracted Ebola we have got some system in place to actually deal with it. That is what needs to happen.Previous speakers have listed the wide range of diseases that are contactable to the Ministry of Health. We believe that some people may consider these rules too strict but they are essential to the health of New Zealanders which we totally support. In particular the bill requires that medical health professionals keep private the details of all of those with infectious diseases to the fullest extent possible. We believe that this will be a real challenge but we appreciate that New Zealanders definitely need certainty with their health care. So we will be interested through the select committee process to see exactly how this is going to happen. In New Zealand First we support preventative measures rather than reactive measures and this is really a good start in this field. We are pleased that this bill is one of the first on the Order Paper—or pretty soon in the first bracket of Parliament—because action needs to be taken.Again we are very happy to see that the Government has decided to take some action on tanning salons tanning services and sunbeds. We can credit that to Dr Hutchison and timely written questions from New Zealand First. We believe that it is timely to ban sunbeds for people under the age of 18. I recall a few years ago going to a tanning salon trying to get the golden tan that New Zealanders like. The lady told me that no I would not get the tan that I thought I was going to get; that I would stay instead with my vegetable tan—red as a beetroot and peeling like an onion. I did not expect to get that from a tanning salon. So we think that this is a small step forward and we welcome it but we do not think it really goes far enough because every Australian state has now either banned or is planning to outlaw these commercial sunbeds. We know that Australians have one of the highest rates of skin cancer in the world.We previously asked the Hon Tony Ryall whether or not he planned to follow the Australian example. The answer that we got back was no he had no plans at that particular time. So we are very happy to see this coming through. We know that there is absolutely nothing in New Zealand that checks and regulates these sunbeds apart from voluntary guidelines. We know that there needs to be monitoring of sunbeds as to the intensity of the light that the beds are emitting and the length of time that people actually spend in them. But nobody has ever measured the light so whether or not they are at the recommended rate or higher than that rate is totally unknown.The total registration rate for melanoma has decreased in New Zealand by 13.4 percent between 2001 and 2011 but unfortunately the mortality rate has increased by 12.3 percent. We know there needs to be more action to reduce this number and banning sunbeds would be a very significant step towards that. Skin cancer is one of the most common cancers in New Zealand and we all need to be taking action to help reduce that particular rate. I know that when we were over in Australia as a previous speaker has mentioned we were surprised to see that all of the workers outside were totally clothed. There was no bit of skin exposed to the sun over there. It is something that perhaps we may need to consider here in New Zealand.The bill also makes a number of administrative changes that will streamline legislation. Most noticeable of course is the inclusion of tuberculosis as an infectious disease under the Health Act 1956 and the consequent repeal of the Tuberculosis Act 1948. The facts show that cases of multidrug-resistant TB have been trending upwards for some years—the last 15 years in fact—largely driven we believe by the increasing number of migrants who are coming into New Zealand and the fact that there is no real check on whether or not they have this multidrug-resistant TB. So we would be most interested to see whether streamlining and repealing the Tuberculosis Act have any positive changes on the TB rates in New Zealand.In New Zealand First we have always been supportive of ensuring the best possible health care for New Zealanders. We believe of course as I said earlier that preventative measures are better to achieve this than the reactive measures that we have come to expect from successive Governments. So New Zealand First will be supporting this bill as it is working towards protecting the health of all New Zealanders and we look forward to hearing the submissions at the select committee and working further on this particular bill. Thank you.