Cosgrove Clayton: Law Reform (Epidemic Preparedness) Bill — First Reading 
Cosgrove Clayton: Law Reform (Epidemic Preparedness) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:630;Page:2804] 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Minister for Building Issues) 
 on behalf of the 
 Minister of Health 
: I move  
That the Law Reform (Epidemic Preparedness) Bill be now read a first time. 
 At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be considered by the Government Administration Committee. I also intend to instruct that the committee presents its report to the House on or before 31 July 2006. 
This bill has been prepared as part of the work undertaken by this Government on developing the New Zealand Influenza Pandemic Action Plan. The principal purpose of the bill is to ensure that adequate statutory powers are available to the Crown to properly respond to and manage a major public health emergency such as the threat or actual outbreak of a highly infectious disease whether occurring in New Zealand or overseas. The primary amendments in the bill are to the Health Act. The amendments clarify modernise and where necessary close gaps in the law relating to public health emergencies and quarantine powers. The current provisions are old and were made in the days when ship travel was the most common way in which people arrived in New Zealand. The amendments will ensure that the Act is more responsive to current epidemic and pandemic influenza scenarios. 
In particular the bill adds pandemic influenza to the list of quarantinable diseases contained in the Health Act. This will ensure that quarantine powers can be exercised in relation to pandemic influenza as well as the existing quarantinable diseases of typhoid yellow fever and plague. The bill provides an Order in Council mechanism to quickly add new highly infectious diseases to the list should they emerge. 
The bill modernises the quarantine provisions for aircraft arrivals as current provisions focus more on ship arrivals. It modernises the language used in the emergency power provisions in the Health Act from the time when for example billiard halls and reading rooms were common places where the public would gather. It relaxes emergency provisions to close public places so they may remain open if certain protective and preventive measures are put in place. That could mean for example that essential services such as supermarkets can remain open hence preventing pandemonium. The bill provides for the examination and testing of people arriving in New Zealand who are liable to quarantine as part of triaging based on risk. It updates medical surveillance provisions for people who may be at risk of having or spreading a quarantinable disease and provides for surveillance at large. 
The bill updates emergency requisition powers such as widening the use of premises to accommodate sick people if hospitals are overflowing. Further it provides for the development and implementation of a policy to prioritise scarce medical supplies such as antivirals and any future vaccines in an emergency and to protect health workers and others following the policy. It gives the New Zealand Police enforcement powers to assist statutory medical officers of health in the exercise of their emergency powers in the unlikely event of resistance. Further it enables statutory medical officers of health to redirect aircraft that have landed in New Zealand to another place in New Zealand if that is considered necessary in order to deal with a disease scenario more effectively. It adds a provision to relax certain statutory requirements and restrictions on enactments administered by the Ministry of Health if authorised by an epidemic notice issued by the Prime Minister. For example it will provide the ability to allow competent people to administer vaccinations who may not currently work in a scope of practice that allows them to do that. 
The bill also amends a number of other enactments dealing with matters that may be disrupted by or may need to deal specifically with the consequences of an epidemic. These amendments can be triggered only if an epidemic notice is in force. They include the following: allowing nurses to sign death certificates in certain circumstances if doctors are in short supply; allowing employers to reduce the notice period when requiring employees to take annual leave; allowing overseas people to stay longer in New Zealand if they cannot return to their own countries; provisions to manage parole community service home detention and remand issues; the ability to provide reasonable and necessary relief from compliance with statutory duties where impossible or impracticable to comply; and some minor administrative amendments relating to student loans tax and social security emergency payments. 
Some of the provisions in the bill do require a lesser priority on individual rights than is appropriate in times of non-emergency. That is justified by the need to ensure that members of the community in general are protected from those who may be suffering from a highly infectious disease but who may not necessarily comply voluntarily with normal disease control mechanisms. I am sure everyone in Parliament agrees that New Zealanders should where reasonably possible be protected from unnecessary infection by a lethal pandemic disease and that we must collectively ensure this protection. The Government would wish to see the bill enacted by August 2006 and I commend it to the House.