King Annette: Radiation Safety Bill — First ReadingText is subject to correctionKing Annette: Radiation Safety Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 10 March 2015. Volume:703;Page:2079. Text is subject to correction.]Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour):Labour will be supporting this bill. In fact as the Minister of Police said when introducing this bill on behalf of the Minister of Health it has been a long time in the making. He also said that it was a much-needed update. But things travel very slowly under this Government now in its seventh year. When I was the Minister of Health I was the Minister who had undertaken the very first regulatory impact statement on this particular piece of legislation which was provided in 2004. So it started in 2002; by 2004 there had been wide consultation across many different groups on this particular piece of legislation to update the Radiation Protection Act 1965. So here we are in 2015 and this much-needed update is getting its first reading. I welcome it.I have to say to the Minister that there is a long list of these bills sitting on the Order Paper that started way back all those years ago when I was the Minister of Health—10 years ago when I was the Minister—and are still waiting. For example we have finally got a bill before the select committee that started way back then the Public Health Bill.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.Hon ANNETTE KING: Mr Deputy Speaker it is always good to see my favourite cousin in the Chair. Before dinner I was raising with the House the need for this bill and the slow pace at which it has proceeded. Going back to 2002 the Ministry of Health undertook a review of the Radiation Protection Act 1965 and then we had a regulatory impact statement which was prepared in 2004 that identified that there would be net benefits from drafting new legislation. At that stage the intention was to extend the scope of the legislation to include harmful non-ionising radiation but the Government decided in 2009 that the current regulatory regime was satisfactory. Of course when we are talking about non-ionising radiation we are including electromagnetic fields including cellphone towers Wi-Fi microwave ovens ultraviolet tanning machines power lines etc. They are not addressed in this bill. According to the Minister they will continue to be regulated under New Zealand standards.This was raised when I was the Minister and when we look at what has happened since then if we look at the inter-agency committee on the health effects of non-ionising fields at the Ministry of Health it says that the research shows that extremely low frequency electric and magnetic fields cause very little harm to New Zealanders. So the fact that it is not going to be regulated under this bill but will continue to be carried out under New Zealand standards we do not oppose. Unless there is strong evidence to do otherwise then we would say that we should continue with the ministry’s current recommendations. Even the World Health Organization with regard to public health risks posed by electromagnetic fields has said that the epidemiological evidence is weakened one by the methodological problems such as the selection bias; and in addition there really is nothing to suggest that low-level exposures are involved in cancer development. So unless we have better evidence than what we have got then we would support continuing to regulate them through New Zealand standards.What this bill aims to do however is to protect the health and safety of individuals and the environment from the harmful effects of ionising radiation—for example apparatus such as X-ray machines radioactive material that occurs naturally uranium and artificially manufactured cobalt-60. That is what the bill intends to cover. The explanatory note also says that this bill will cover the use the transportation and the disposal of ionising radiation—both as I said man-made and also naturally occurring—in quantities above the stated levels. There is a fundamental requirement that stipulates that the radiation use occurs only when the expected benefit outweighs the risk that exposure must be kept as low as reasonably achievable and that prescribed dose limits must not be exceeded. So that really is the guts of what this bill is about.The bill also does enact a number of other things that are important. It enacts New Zealand’s domestic implementation of the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism and the amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material. It also allows for the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to be appointed by the director to undertake activities in New Zealand. International inspectors must be accompanied by an enforcement officer appointed by the director under clause 39 of the bill. So although these international inspectors have no powers under the bill the accompanying enforcement officers do and they would be authorised to exercise those powers to fulfil New Zealand’s relevant international obligations. The bill also introduces a new regime of authorisations for individuals or organisations using radiation material.So it is a bill that has in it some quite heavy penalties for those who contravene the authorisation or other provisions of the Act. It is a bill whose time has come. It is quite a technical bill. It is a bill that probably many people have already gone to sleep listening to me talking about but it is an important bill for the fact that it is about protecting the health and safety of individuals and the environment and as I said meeting our obligations under a number of international conventions.The Minister when he was speaking talked about the use of radiotherapy and how this bill would play a role in that. Of course radiotherapy is one of our foremost treatments for cancer in New Zealand. Ensuring that it is done the right way and the safety of individuals is protected is very important.The bill also as I said does not cover some other areas the non-ionising area and we have before us at the Health Committee the whole issue of the UV tanning machines. Of course this bill is not going to regulate them. They are under standards. I wonder whether this House will have the courage at the select committee to in fact ban those machines altogether. I think that rather than looking at a standard for our UV tanning machines—we do not need to do that—we could actually follow Australia which has already banned them. In fact I am told that their old machines that they no longer use are being transported over to New Zealand for us to tan and burn New Zealanders and lead to high levels of skin cancer—melanoma. It does not cover it. They will be covered by the standards but I would say to this House that we have got an opportunity to go past the standards by coming back to this House and actually banning UV tanning machines altogether.This bill is much needed. The update is much needed. It has only taken since 2004 to get it here in the House today but we welcome it and we will support it.