Anderton Jim: General Debate 
Anderton Jim: General Debate 
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Hon JIM ANDERTON (Leader—Progressive) 
: 
 I do not participate very often in these general debates and in just the last couple of minutes I remembered why. What a waste of space that speech by Phil Heatley was.  
Yesterday in question time I asked the Associate Minister of Health Peter Dunne what he had to say about the fact that nearly 3000 young New Zealanders under 5 years of age are admitted to public hospitals to have their teeth removed under general anaesthetic. He said he was very pleased with the fact that they had access to public hospitals to have that done. It really stunned me that an Associate Minister of Health in charge of dental policy would be pleased by that. It almost blew my mind away. He should be deeply concerned about the fact that 3000 children are going to hospital to have their teeth removed. They are the lucky ones I tell members because the others who cannot get in are on waiting lists of between 6 to 12 months. Dr Beaglehole knows a bit about this. He is the senior dental surgeon at the Nelson Marlborough District Health Board. He says that on Tuesdays and Fridays he spends mornings knocking out children with a general anaesthetic so he can fix their rotting teeth. The toddlers and preschoolers are so young they are too little to hold open their mouths long enough to have it done in the regular way and their baby teeth are so decayed that nothing but filling or extraction can save them. This is the procedure that Peter Dunne is pleased is available to these kids.  
We should be asking ourselves what is doing all this. Well members should ask themselves this question: what is the most popular and most sold item in the supermarkets of New Zealand? The answer is a 2½ litre bottle of Coca-Cola. What is the second most popular item in the supermarkets of New Zealand? It is a 1½ litre bottle of Coca-Cola. If one goes into the supermarkets now one sees that they have a promotion for the drinks that make All Blacks—these Powerade drinks. There are 16 teaspoons of sugar in every single bottle. The kids are told to drink it as quickly as they can then they will become All Blacks. No they will not; by age 10 to 18 they will join the 500 type 2 diabetes sufferers that we have at the moment who are between the ages of 10 and 18. As we speak we have about 350000 overweight New Zealanders who are type 2 diabetes sufferers. We have another 90000—roughly a third—who are undiagnosed and we have an epidemic of dental decay that is coming on us like a tsunami because all of the people who are at retirement age now who kept their teeth when years ago parents used to have their children’s teeth taken out for their birthday at age 15 or 16 have to have their teeth looked after. We are making no provision for that.  
Today I launched a dental policy to try to do something about it. In the few minutes I have here I cannot detail it all but I will say just one or two things. I looked at the Australian situation with regard to for example fluoride which in water supply gives over 32 percent more protection to children’s teeth than not having fluoride. If one thinks about what that does in terms of the kinds of operations that Dr Beaglehole is doing one would be inclined to think that it should be a matter for public debate. Eighty percent of all Australians have access to fluoridated water. Even the Queensland state Government which I have never thought of as being overly enlightened had a meeting in Parliament a year ago where the overwhelming majority voted in favour of extending fluoridation from 54 percent of the state to the whole state. They voted for it practically unanimously. They join the states of New South Wales which supplies fluoridated water to 92 percent of the state; South Australia which supplies fluoridated water to 94 percent of the state; and Victoria which supplies fluoridated water to I think 80 percent of the state.  
Here fluoridated water is supplied to 60 percent of the whole of New Zealand. In the mainland of the South Island we have very little fluoridation. So the teeth of the children of the most affluent families in Merivale and so on are much worse than those of the children in South Auckland where they have access to fluoridated water. Are we proud of all this? Do we think something should be done about it? We should have a national policy on fluoridation. We should have it as a national health measure not at a local body level where it is far too easy for local body politicians to hide. In Christchurch recently we had chlorine added to our water which was quite proper because if we had not then we might be suffering from all kinds of endemic diseases as we speak.  
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: What now? 
Hon JIM ANDERTON 
: Chlorine—to clean up the water and make sure it is drinkable. Yet if we suggest adding fluoride which cannot be smelt seen or tasted there is an uproar. I wonder at the double standards of that.  
My Labour colleagues have been good enough to accept this policy as something they will look at seriously for their health policy in the coming election. because I am retiring at the end of this year. I am glad they are doing it and I wish them well.