Law Reform (Epidemic Preparedness) Bill — Second Reading 
Law Reform (Epidemic Preparedness) Bill — Second Reading 
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Law Reform (Epidemic Preparedness) Bill 
Second Reading 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Health) 
: 
 I move  
That the Law Reform (Epidemic Preparedness) Bill be now read a second time 
. I thank the Government Administration Committee for its unanimous agreement on reporting this bill back to the House and for the work it put in. I acknowledge the chair and my own colleagues who sat on the committee. This major cross-party support is a reflection of the seriousness of the risk and of the time and effort of the members of the committee. 
This bill is part of New Zealand’s planning for any pandemic we may face particularly from a mutated bird flu that affects humans. There are two main foci of the bill. The first is to ensure that legislation is sufficient to manage the health risks associated with the outbreak and spread of disease and in particular infection control. The second main focus—for which New Zealand has shown leadership in the world—is planning for the disruptions to society that may occur from a pandemic. The Law Commission supported this focus and provided constructive suggestions to the committee to ensure that the legislation could work well. 
In relation to health management medical officers of health will have clearer and more modern powers to deal with communicable disease at the border and in an emergency. The key to knowing whether people need to be isolated or quarantined is the ability to ask them questions particularly at the border. The bill enhances that ability. Complementary to that is the clarification of the right to examine and test people in order to determine whether they are infected. The rights of people in our communities have to be weighed against individual rights. The bottom line is that people in our communities deserve a good degree of protection from being unnecessarily infected with a dangerous disease so some of the measures in this bill will infringe on the personal liberties of some individuals in order to prevent them from unnecessarily infecting others. The select committee has agreed to that. The bill does not however require compulsory medical treatment. Most people with a dangerous disease will choose treatment; if not the powers in the bill allow them to remain isolated while they remain infectious. 
The key part of the bill is the epidemic notice issued by the Prime Minister when a disruptive pandemic threatens or has arrived. The Minister of Health must have agreed that it be issued and the Director-General of Health must have given a written recommendation. The notice has to be gazetted and tabled in the House. It lasts for 3 months at the most but can then be extended. Parliament must meet within 7 days of the making of the notice unless it would be too risky to parliamentarians’ health to do so. The select committee raised a concern that this bill does not deal with the situation of an epidemic possibly occurring during an election period. Addressing that concern involves amending the Electoral Act and Constitution Act. The Government expects to have legislation drafted for that purpose by the end of June 2007 at which stage we will need to debate or decide whether to introduce it. 
The epidemic notice triggers some special powers such as the emergency provisions of the Health Act. Those powers mean that people in our community can be isolated quarantined or medically tested when they need to be. Premises may be closed. Public gatherings may be prohibited. Land buildings vehicles medicines and other things may be requisitioned to help communities with those affected by the requisitioning having rights to compensation. 
The issuing of an epidemic notice will trigger the ability to make modification Orders in Council. Those notices must also be gazetted tabled in the House and kept under review. A modification Order in Council can adjust statute law so as to make laws more workable in the crisis that New Zealand faces. Two examples of such adjustments would be allowing health professionals to work across occupational boundaries in order to provide health care for sick people and the ability to be flexible in relation to the payment of benefits under the Social Security Act. 
Those modification orders can be made in advance in which case they are called prospective modification orders or they can be made during the period of an epidemic notice in which case they are called immediate modification orders. Prospective modifications orders will allow advanced scrutiny of the orders by Parliament. Those orders must go no further than is reasonably necessary in the circumstances. The Ministry of Health is beginning the process with other departments of making prospective modification orders. Immediate modification orders are a last resort. They will receive enhanced parliamentary scrutiny and there is a truncated disallowance process of 6 sitting days. We will amend the Standing Orders to make the disallowance motion debatable and for it to be given priority on the Order Paper. 
Modification orders cannot amend the Bill of Rights 1688 the Constitution Act the Electoral Act the Judicature Amendment Act 1972 the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act or the epidemic preparedness legislation itself. Our judiciary is given the power when an epidemic notice is in force to modify the rules of the courts in the interests of justice taking into account the effects of the epidemic. 
I am extremely pleased that we have this legislation before us and I look forward to its continued passage through the House. I thank the very many people who have contributed to it. 
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki-King Country) 
: 
 I thank the Minister for his comments with regard to the Government Administration Committee. This was a rare opportunity for Parliament to be involved in legislation that had no politics in it at all. A completely multipartisan approach was taken to how we could get the best result which is not something that we all engage in on a regular occasion. This Law Reform (Epidemic Preparedness) Bill was probably one of the most difficult bills that any select committee will ever have to deal with—that is trying to strike the balance between the amount of executive power we must give to any Government in the event of a pandemic and trying to keep a check and balance on that power with regard to parliamentary scrutiny. Certainly in the initial draft the executive would have had substantial powers. The Minister has spoken about that in his comments earlier. 
The bill was referred to the select committee on 9 May 2006. The closing date for submissions was 6 June 2006. We received considered and heard 18 submissions from interested groups and individuals. We also received briefings from the Law Commission. We received advice from the Minister of Health the Ministry of Health the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet the Ministry of Justice the Minister for the Environment the Minister for Social Development and Employment the Department of Labour the New Zealand Police the Inland Revenue Department the Department of Internal Affairs and the New Zealand Parole Board. So members can see that the select committee did not rush to a conclusion without taking the necessary advice from a number of people. Even then it was difficult to establish which Acts would need to be amended by this legislation. As the Minister said the primary Act was the Health Act 1956 but there were many other Acts. 
All sorts of problems fell out of the various discussions such as what would happen if there was a pandemic during the period when Parliament had been prorogued and we were in an election cycle or even if it occurred after an election when a new Government had been elected but had not been sworn in and it was not possible to meet for safety reasons. So I am pleased that the Minister has said that further work will be done and further legislation will be brought forward to look at that situation. The other issue that the select committee considered for some time was the length of time required. It was decided that a 3-month period once a pandemic had been gazetted was a reasonable time for the necessary actions to be taken and hopefully was about the right time for the country to get through whatever ailment it might have had inflicted on it. 
The bill is intended to ensure of course that the powers that are needed in those circumstances would be provided. A range of human rights issues and natural justice issues spill out of that aspect. The Law Commission under Sir Geoffrey Palmer advised us on a number of ways to try to bring about a balance between executive power and the powers necessary to react to the situation. We hope we will never need this legislation but if we do need it and we have not got the balance right many people will have an opinion on not only the work of the Ministry of Health and the advisory team but also the work of the select committee when the event takes place. The bill will ensure that should there be a human outbreak of avian influenza or a similar disease capable responses will be put in place for that situation to be dealt with. 
 The bill seeks to address some of the gaps in the Crown’s statutory powers under the Health Act as I said before. It also revokes certain provisions in the Health (Quarantine) Regulations. That was essential because if one has notice from overseas that there is potential for a disease to be heading our way then the necessary precautions have to be taken at the borders. The Minister said in his comments that people can be detained and questioned and suchlike but that they cannot be compulsorily treated. Obviously most people who had one of these highly contagious diseases would want themselves to be treated but some may on religious grounds or for whatever other reason—maybe they have no faith in the system—decline that treatment. Those people can be detained in quarantine but they will not be treated by force. That seemed like a reasonable compromise in that regard. 
Notification cannot come into force unless first of all it comes from the Prime Minister and the Minister of Health both under the direction of the Director-General of Health in writing. We think that is a reasonable compromise. One of the things that was suggested and teased out in the select committee was a wartime-like Cabinet—a multiparty Cabinet. I suspect although it would be difficult to legislate for this that in the event of a pandemic there would be multiparty or cross-party discussions and the meeting of Parliament that is needed to ratify any such decision clearly enforces that to some extent anyway. The issue of Parliament meeting was a much-debated issue including where that might take place. The Governor-General has the power to decide that Parliament can meet wherever it is deemed to be necessary or safe to do so. It does not necessarily have to be in Wellington. There are also many safeguards in regard to who the Prime Minister the Minister of Health or in fact the Director-General of Health may be in the event that all those who hold those warrants are incapacitated as a result of some disease. 
On balance after lengthy consideration and also after consulting with the Regulations Review Committee on a number of occasions and bringing in legal advice from the Parliamentary Counsel Office the select committee has decided that this is about as good a shot as we could get at the legislation notwithstanding the issues the Minister has addressed that are still outstanding. We think that the Parliament should support this legislation going forward and make sure that New Zealand is well prepared in the event of a pandemic. 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 I am pleased to speak in support of the Law Reform (Epidemic Preparedness) Bill and want to echo my colleague’s comments about the constructive approach of the Government Administration Committee in working together on this bill. 
The bill is a critical part of New Zealand’s strategy to manage the effects of any pandemic that threatens New Zealand. The bill is forward-looking in that it not only establishes arrangements to manage the health effects of a pandemic but also enables other laws to be modified to manage other significant disruptions to Government or business activities that may arise from a pandemic. 
The widening spread of the H5N1 strain of avian flu means there is now a significant risk of another human influenza pandemic. Although we hope that will never be something we have to face history tells us something different. Last century New Zealand had three widespread influenza epidemics—in 1918-19 1957 and 1968. Like many in this House I grew up with stories about a family member who died in that early flu. My grandmother used to talk about her young Uncle Dan who went off and fought in the First World War made it home safely and then died in the great flu as she called it. Right up until my grandma died she mourned the loss of Dan. I never knew him but I witnessed the lasting grief that a pandemic can cause one family let alone the thousands who suffered during that dreadful flu. 
Although H5N1 may not be the one that eventually causes the next pandemic one will eventually arise. That is why this Government has introduced a whole-of-Government work programme to ensure that if a pandemic reaches our shores we are ready to deal with what could be some of the most serious social and economic challenges we have faced in recent times. 
The select committee was very conscious of its responsibility and also that a bill of this nature—that can use wide powers in emergencies—must have checks and balances. We were grateful for the advice of the Law Commission and Sir Geoffrey Palmer who assisted the committee with these issues. The bill now includes a number of measures to ensure that necessary emergency powers are established to deal with any future pandemic while at the same time including suitable checks and balances to ensure that those emergency powers are used appropriately. I commend the work of the Government Administration Committee and the Law Commission for their advice. 
My colleagues the Minister of Health and Shane Ardern have already described the checks and balances in the course of discussing this bill but it is worth spending some time focusing on these safeguards. The checks and balances provide that the Prime Minister can issue an epidemic notice only with the agreement of the Minister of Health and with the written recommendation of the Director-General of Health. An epidemic notice must be presented to the House of Representatives. If Parliament is not sitting when an epidemic notice is issued Parliament must be called together within 7 days of the notice being issued. An epidemic notice will remain in force for only as long as is necessary. The Prime Minister and the Minister of Health on the advice of the Director-General of Health must continue to be satisfied that the effects of an outbreak of a stated infectious disease are likely to disrupt significantly central government and business activity in New Zealand or the stated parts of New Zealand. 
The Prime Minister may issue an epidemic management notice to modify other laws only with the agreement of the Minister responsible for the administration of those laws. Where possible Orders in Council to modify laws when an epidemic notice is made should be prepared in advance. These advance orders can then be tabled in Parliament and referred by the relevant Minister to the Regulations Review Committee before being sent to Cabinet in accordance with current practice. Where orders to modify laws have not been made in advance of an epidemic notice and it is found to be necessary to modify certain laws immediate modification Orders in Council can be made. 
The bill establishes an amended scrutiny and disallowance process for Parliament to review immediate modification orders made after the epidemic notice. A modification order made under the bill may not modify the Bill of Rights 1688 the Constitution Act 1986 the Electoral Act 1993 the Judicature Amendment Act 1972 or the New Zealand Bill of Rights 1990. These laws govern fundamental rights and freedoms that can be amended only by primary legislation. The Prime Minister is required to declare by notice in the  
Gazette 
 which parts of an epidemic notice are no longer needed. 
The bill offers a measure of reassurance in the face of a threat posed by potential pandemics that we have this legislation enabling us to respond as effectively as can be planned and in doing that to know we have struck a responsible balance between the powers needed and the rights and freedoms of our society. We all have a responsibility in New Zealand to New Zealand families to do everything we can to prepare for this possibility. The select committee took this responsibility seriously and worked in a very constructive way to improve the bill. 
The unanimous report shows that MPs from all parties on the committee were committed to ensuring that New Zealand has sound measures in place to mitigate and manage the effects of any pandemic while at the same time ensuring that the wide powers that could be assumed under the bill are subject to parliamentary examination. 
The architecture of the bill has been simplified: it has greater clarity as to what will happen when an epidemic occurs; it ensures parliamentary scrutiny remains; and the ambit of the powers and restrictions are clearly stated. 
I congratulate the members of the select committee on the manner in which the consideration of this important bill was conducted and have great pleasure in supporting it. 
BARBARA STEWART (NZ First) 
: 
 On behalf of New Zealand First I rise to support the second reading of the Law Reform (Epidemic Preparedness) Bill. This is a very important bill that hopefully never ever has to be implemented but it is one of those measures that New Zealand must have in place. In order to implement this legislation there must be a pandemic facing New Zealand whether it be bird flu another fatal influenza or some other serious disease outbreak. It is a serious situation and one that New Zealand is definitely not immune from. 
In the event of any pandemic all of the people in New Zealand will be looking to the Government for a speedy response and leadership through this crisis situation. It is absolutely essential that the Government has the law and the power to respond in a timely manner. The last thing that is needed is a disorganised response by the Government or health officials. We must be organised for any crisis of this magnitude. We also need to manage the health effects on New Zealanders and the impacts on essential services and businesses and various Acts did need to be amended to ensure that the response would be prompt. As previous speakers have said it is a balancing act between individual rights and the greater rights of all people here in New Zealand. 
This legislation is timely. It is far better to have a plan that can be implemented prior to any event such as this rather than have something hastily put together when an epidemic is upon us or right on our doorstep. As we have heard from previous speakers we know that any flu can speed rapidly throughout New Zealand with devastating consequences. 
We must commend the Government for planning ahead to help communities and the Government Administration Committee for the bill that has been returned following select committee consideration. We note that substantial changes have been made to the bill by the select committee and we understand that some of these changes were made with the assistance of Sir Geoffrey Palmer. We must applaud the select committee for the fact that this is one bill that has no minority views recorded in the commentary. I think that shows us that the pandemic threat such as bird flu is far too important for petty party politics to come into play and it needs measures such as all of these that are outlined in this legislation. 
We were interested to see that a problem situation regarding the sitting of Parliament had been identified—from memory I do not think it was in the first bill or discussed prior to this bill coming back from the select committee—and that action is now being taken to decide on the process and the procedure for dealing with such outstanding and essential matters. This is the time that this type of matter needs to be identified—not when an epidemic is upon us. 
I was very interested to see that there has been very little media interest in the bill since it has returned to the House for its second reading. Prior to the first reading there was a lot of media attention but this has now totally abated. Obviously everyone is quite happy with the outcome. 
Over the winter months New Zealand First was very pleased to see all of the information and the material issued by the Ministry of Health advising the public about the necessity for family preparedness. Over the winter months I know that very many people right throughout New Zealand did prepare themselves with food and any other items that would be necessary. I even heard of one family that had a whole range of seeds that it wanted to plant in the spring in case there was an epidemic over the winter months and seeds would have been in short supply. No doubt everyone will need reminding again next winter about the need to stockpile because I know for a fact that many people are now working their way through the cans of food and the items that they had stockpiled prior to the winter. We always must be aware too that some families on fixed incomes will be really challenged to stockpile food and other items so we must make sure that this aspect is covered in the legislation. 
New Zealand First looks forward to discussing the Committee stage of this bill. We believe that the bill appears to cover all of the situations that could arise if such a pandemic did occur. The bill covers many Acts and amendments to those Acts that would be affected. New Zealand First supports this bill. As a country we have no option but to be totally prepared. It is not something that we can just think about it. We must be prepared. As a member of the Health Committee I am looking forward to receiving further updates next year on what preparations have been made by the Ministry of Health. 
Recently I was interested to read that a mutation of bird flu identified overseas will not respond to the specific drug that has been stockpiled in many medical cabinets and by many district health boards. This means that a plan will need to be continually updated as developments occur. We believe that this is a very important bill and we are very pleased to support it. 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party is supporting this bill. I sat on the Government Administration Committee for most of the critical discussions of the bill. It was a very good committee. I do not think I have ever seen a bill that has had such a substantial change and a change in a very good direction as a result of the discussions at the select committee and as a result of the departmental advice changing week by week and people taking into account the submitters and also the very useful advice by the Law Commission in the person of Sir Geoffrey Palmer which all pushed the bill in a very good direction. 
If we look at the bill and look at the bits that have been struck out and the bits that have been added I think we will hardly find another bill that has passed through this Parliament that has gone through such changes. For example turning to the critical sections of the bill in terms of the orders giving powers and potentially restricting different pieces of legislation and freedom of movement four pages—clauses 4 to 9—have been struck out and 12½ pages have been added. The 12½ pages that have been added have a lot of important qualifications—important for civil liberties and good order being maintained through the period of the pandemic. 
For a start one good change was to restrict the orbit of the bill to quarantinable diseases which covers just four diseases—cholera plague yellow fever and added to that avian flu. The powers granted under this legislation cannot be used more generally and that is an explicit contrast to the approach in some other jurisdictions like the United Kingdom where they use generalised emergency laws. As those laws are so generalised they can be used in a wide range of situations and can be abused whereas here there was a care that when we grant such powers they should be very restrictive in terms of what they are applied to. 
One of the functions particularly as a result of Sir Geoffrey Palmer’s intervention and the theme that ran through the way the bill unfolded was to restrain executive power or put parliamentary controls over executive power including the concept of recalling Parliament within 7 days to be able to judge regulations that were brought in to be able to go through a regulations disallowance process and for any member of the House explicitly to be able to stand up and move a motion to turn back a regulation if he or she saw it to be exceeding the powers necessary. 
All that was added to the bill and it is very good as was the concept of having advance regulations made out so that if bird flu broke out we would already have a whole lot of regulations that had been tested in the regulations review process before anything happened and only limited additional regulations would have to be added at the time of the outbreak of bird flu. Leeway was given to add regulations at that point because it is very hard to judge exactly which laws need to be modified a bit. Bird flu by its very nature affects so much in society particularly freedom of movement both at the border and of course to stop infection from spreading. 
 I think one of the themes that came through from the medical advice was that the population is affected less if people can be kept away from the infection be kept at home and have less interaction with society during the peak of an outbreak. The power of a virus declines over time and if people can be kept away from it a lot of lives can be saved in the meantime. If that level of restriction on freedom of movement is to be imposed and if people are to be encouraged not to go to work and where possible not to mix in large crowds that slows up the whole legal process in society. So a whole lot of regulations will be affected particularly those that have times by which documents are supposed to be submitted etc. That runs through the whole legal system. 
There are very strong qualifications in clause 9 about which regulations would be brought in at the time of an outbreak. It would have to be proven that it was impossible or impractical to comply with the normal course of events—say the deadlines in particular laws—and that the regulations were reasonably necessary in the situation. So that is quite a strong qualification. Also the concept in terms of the advance regulations is that there would be a stepped process. As bird flu arrived and as the outbreak grew—if it did grow—then the regulations could be tightened up in a stepladder manner then as there was a decline in the outbreak the impact of those regulations would be reduced step by step. That phasing in and phasing out of regulations is a good approach. 
There is also a recognition that the fundamental human rights of our society—from the Bill of Rights 1688 through to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act made in this Parliament in 1990 and the Habeas Corpus Act 2001—cannot be breached. Some petitioners were worried about other Acts being explicitly overridden in the bill. A number of these Acts such as the Holidays Act 2003 the Resource Management Act and tax Acts were specifically chopped out of the bill. That is good because some submissions—from unionists for example—thought that there was a bit of a bias and that their particular legal entitlements were being overridden in this bill. Obviously in an outbreak there would have to be flexibility about when people took holidays and things like that but there should not be at the beginning of things a bias against workers’ entitlements. I think the union movement will be very happy that those particular provisions have been taken out of the bill. 
Often I and other members of the Green Party stand up in this House and criticise a bill as being a breach of human rights but I think that in this case while we are dealing with a situation whereby various restraints have to be put into the way the Government and the law operate the bill has gone through an extremely thorough process. I commend the members of the Government Administration Committee the advisers from the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Justice the human rights people Sir Geoffrey Palmer the Law Commission and the submitters to the select committee for working so well together to turn this bill upside down and to come out with a very good product. 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Speaker kia ora tatou te Whare. Three weeks ago the warning bells rang when Professor Paul Zimmet said that left unchecked diabetes could make all Polynesian races extinct before the end of the century. In the uproar that followed I was reminded of the message from an early colonial administrator here in good old New Zealand who said that his role was to “smooth the pillow of a dying Maori race” because there can be no denying the fact that the ferocious epidemic of diabetes raging through our communities right now may indeed decimate our Pacific way of life. So in turning to this bill we raise the urgent need to ensure that in preparing for an epidemic Maori are targeted and included in the response and I turn here to the history and demographics of influenza in this land to give us a clear reason why this is so very important. 
About 100 citizens of Aotearoa have died every year of influenza—every year that is except 1918 the year that the so-called plague of the Spanish lady overran our country and killed more than 8000 people. Of those Maori died from flu at a rate more than seven times higher than that of non-Maori. Indeed Sir Peter Buck said that in 3 months influenza killed more Maori in Aotearoa than were killed in all of the military campaigns of Gallipoli France and Belgium in World War I. Every Maori community bears the scars of lives lost to the black plague. I refer to black not as in “black is beautiful” but as in the black colour of the skin of victims dying from a lack of oxygen. 
The stories are truly gruesome. People queued to be sprayed with zinc sulphate—they called it fumigation but it did not stop the flu. Cinemas churches halls schools whare hui whare kai and all the places where people gathered were closed. Families were left isolated for weeks and people stopped visiting for fear of catching the disease. The Ellerslie racecourse was turned into an emergency hospital Victoria Park was turned into a massive morgue and special trains were enlisted to haul bodies out to Waikumete Cemetery for burial. One of my tupuna in Whakapara was delegated to live alone in a cemetery to bury his relations. One of Rangitane’s main hapu lost 75 percent of its population to the epidemic. Otorohanga’s two hotels were turned into hospitals one for Europeans and one for Maori and Princess Te Puea herself was called in to carry coffins up the river for burial. 
I have taken the time to remind the House of the 1918 flu epidemic because in many respects it was Aotearoa’s forgotten disaster during the world’s worst-ever recorded pandemic of influenza. Such a pandemic could just as easily happen again in a world where low standards of health overcrowding poor diet and bad housing mean that a disproportionately high Maori death rate in any pandemic is guaranteed. 
So I acknowledge the enduring patience and commitment of people like Kathrine Clarke of Hapai Te Hauora Tapui NgaireWhata of Te Korowai Aroha and Dr Lorna Dyall from the division of Maori health at the University of Auckland for highlighting the desperate need for full and frank communication with Maori communities. Our people have many many questions and nobody is giving them any decent answers. Will our marae be closed? Who will care for our kaumatua and kuia? What will happen to our tangi which Te Arawa Maori Trust Board’s AnaruRangiheuea has described as being our most important cultural practice? Will we even get our loved ones back? Will coffins be sealed? Can we meet to grieve? Can we hongi? 
We cannot allow our future to be driven by fear ignorance and a lack of information. We will not allow our pillow to be smoothed out by this epidemic. There are steps that we can and must take and crucial to our survival must be Maori participation at all levels of emergency planning. A good place to start might be simply putting the word “Maori” into the bill. The bill talks about anxiety around parliamentary sitting days the question of whether to recall Parliament during an emergency and the need for flexibility in legal proceedings but for some strange reason it does not even mention the race of people that is most likely to be decimated by a flu pandemic. 
Maori have been calling for a body that can directly access Maori leadership make immediate use of Maori infrastructure and recruit Maori health workers to engage with iwi and with Maori communities. In fact developing a plan to respond to an epidemic with Maori interests at its very core is a matter of urgency that Maori must be actively involved in if we are even to have a future. We must use our history and our expertise to plan wisely and we must mobilise all of our resources and creative talents to protect Maori interests and Maori well-being. This is essential not just for the future of Maori but also for the proper development of our whole nation for if Maori are to commit to the growth of Aotearoa then Maori must also be an integral part of a strategy for its survival as well. 
A hundred years ago the Maori population was 40000 and thought to be close to extinction. One hundred years later we are more than half a million and in another 50 years fully 33 percent of all children in our great nation will be Maori. We have survived the threat of extinction in our past and we owe much to the vision and impact of leaders such as TahupotikiWiremuRatana Te PueaHerangi and Sir Peter Buck who responded to the savage impact of the Spanish flu tuberculosis malnutrition pneumonia goitre diseases leading to child mortality and a host of other infectious diseases by fighting for the right of our people not just to survive but to thrive. 
Parliament has a chance to demonstrate the kind of courage shown by Maori leaders of yesteryear by ensuring a proper education and information campaign to manage the possible effects of an outbreak of avian influenza or of any infectious disease capable of becoming an epidemic. The Maori Party will support this bill in the hope that the Minister will listen that Parliament will consider its solemn duty to care for all citizens and that we politicians will display the courage needed to ensure that those who will suffer most are not bypassed in this legislation or in the bureaucracy responsible for putting it into effect. Kia ora tatou. 
Bill read a second time.