Lees-Galloway Iain: Medicines Amendment Bill — In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Medicines Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 19 November 2013. Volume:695;Page:15055. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): As my colleague Annette King outlined the Medicines Amendment Bill is an excellent bill. It is a very good bill that not only streamlines our prescribing processes and streamlines the way in which we approve medicines and medical devices but also improves access to health care particularly primary health care. It will improve people’s access to medicines. It will make it an awful lot easier for many people particularly people with chronic conditions to be able to access the medicines they require which is clearly the reason why the National Party has held it up for so long. That must be it. It is such a good piece of legislation which improves access to health care. That must be why the National Party has held it up for so very very long.Here is a little bit of history for those who are watching at home. The National Party has actually known all along that this is a good piece of legislation. It knows that this is the right thing to do but back in 2007 the National Party—and in particular Tony Ryall—saw a political opportunity. People may or may not remember a gentleman by the name of Gordon Copeland. Gordon Copeland was elected to this Parliament as a member of the United Future party. He decided to leave the United Future party despite being a list MP whose only mandate to be here was the fact that United Future had gained a certain number of party votes and that its leader had managed to win an electorate seat. So Gordon Copeland was here as a United Future member he decided to leave and he made it his life’s work to oppose the Labour Government on absolutely anything he could—Hon Ruth Dyson: When he remembered to vote.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: —when he remembered to vote. He did remember to vote against this legislation which improves access to medicines in primary health care. The National Party members thought to themselves: “Aha! With his vote opposing the Government if we decide to oppose this we can actually stop the Labour Government achieving something that is enormously positive for the people of New Zealand.” So rather than doing the right thing rather than having the interests of New Zealanders at heart and rather than doing something that would improve the health of every New Zealander the National Party chose to play politics and it blocked the Labour Government from passing this legislation.That was bad enough frankly but when National got into Government the election was done and the little political power play had had the effect it was looking for—it was just one of the things that led up to the 2008 election. National was now the Government it had the opportunity to act and it had the mandate to act. This bill the Medicines Amendment Bill—which of course is exactly the same legislation that Annette King introduced but it got rearranged slightly and reintroduced in the name of the Hon Peter Dunne—was introduced on 13 October 2011. So it took this Government almost an entire term of Parliament to introduce the legislation. It then got its first reading after the 2011 election in February 2012 it came back from the Health Committee in August 2012 and it finally got its second reading in March this year.So here we are in November—Hon Annette King: Under urgency.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: —under urgency and suddenly this piece of legislation has become tremendously important to the Government. It is so urgent that it has taken the Government only 5 long years to get to this point. And now it is suddenly so urgent to—John Hayes: Remember the 9 long years.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: —pass it through its Committee stage to get to here. John Hayes just tried the “9 long years” line—John Hayes just tried the “9 long years” line. We could have had this done when Labour was in Government but your party Mr Hayes blocked it. Your party stopped it happening. It played politics over it. That is what it did Mr Hayes. It put the health and well-being of New Zealanders to one side to play politics. You should be careful with your interjections Mr Hayes.On this side of the Chamber we wholeheartedly support this legislation. We think it is a great pity that it has taken so long to pass this legislation. It has actually outlasted the Hon Peter Dunne. That is saying something quite significant—that it has managed to outlast the Hon Peter Dunne. But this is good legislation. Annette King has covered the fact that it is the interim phase before we get to the joint regulator. But frankly I am more interested in the prescribing rights—the fact that this bill widens and deepens prescribing rights for many health practitioners. I am particularly interested in that because of the fact that so many people do not have adequate access to primary health care. General practitioners are tremendously important. They will always be an incredibly important component of primary health care but we simply cannot provide the primary health services that we are going to need in the future if we totally rely on general practitioners to be the sole bastion of all prescribing rights.We do need to move towards more nurse-led clinics. We need to give nurse practitioners—Sue Moroney: Paul’s fainting.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: —more opportunities. I am looking forward to Dr Paul Hutchison’s contribution on this legislation. We do need to make greater use of our highly qualified highly educated nursing workforce and in particular the nurse practitioner workforce. That is the only way we are going to provide the primary health care services that New Zealand is going to need and in particular that is how we are going to reach into those most deprived communities that simply do not have the primary health facilities that they need.Dr Hutchison will have heard me talk about this at the Health Committee recently. If you map the location of primary health care services against the deprivation index you get an almost perfect correlation. The most affluent parts of any community have an over-abundance of general practitioners and the least affluent—Hon Ruth Dyson: Do people get more sick in those communities?IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: I am not sure that people get more sick. Maybe money makes you sick—I do not know. But people in the most affluent areas have an over-abundance of general practitioners and the people in the least affluent areas have minimal or sometimes non-existent services. It is those people who need primary health care services the most and who often have the most challenges in terms of access. I am thinking about things like transport and the affordability of going to your doctor. So that is why we need to pass legislation like this and do many other things to free up our health workforce to be able to provide the level of care that New Zealanders demand.It is an absolute tragedy that this bill is the thing National chose to play politics over. This is the kind of legislation that sits on the back-burner for 5 long years and then finally gets passed as part of an urgency motion early on a Thursday morning. I think that speaks volumes about where this Government’s priorities lie. I think it speaks volumes about this Government’s priorities. I know that had Dr Paul Hutchison been the Minister of Health under this National Government this bill would have been a priority. He would have progressed it much sooner than now. There is a gentleman who will be missed from this Parliament because he brought some sanity to the health policy of National.