Salesa JennyJENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker for this opportunity to speak on the Health (Fluoridation of Drinking Water) Amendment Bill. Dental decay is a disease of poverty. Fluoridation of our water is a public health measure just like immunisation and it is something that we should most definitely do. The number of our children who were hospitalised last year as a result of tooth decay was a thousand more kids. A thousand more were hospitalised because of serious tooth decay. We must prevent tooth decay and fluoridation of our water is one way of doing this.Many New Zealanders in Aotearoa New Zealand are just getting by. They are exposed to the brutal winds of the housing crisis under-resourced health and education and a lack of decent work with fair wages. These are ongoing issues that New Zealand must urgently grapple with. Labour stands ready to tackle these issues. This particular bill Labour is very supportive of it. However unfortunately it is one that merely gives a lukewarm attempt to deal with a serious problem that has significant flow-on consequences.Poor oral health strongly affects a person's health generally. There is evidence that connects poor oral health with other chronic diseases for instance cardiovascular diseases diabetes and respiratory diseases. A lot of these diseases are ones that Māori and Pacific communities suffer from; they are as I said earlier on diseases of poverty. There is also an immediate impact on our children. A US study by the American Journal of Public Health reported that children with poorer oral health care are more likely to take a lot of time off school. They are also much more likely to perform poorly in school overall.New Zealand has very high rates of preventable tooth decay. In 2013 for example more than 40 percent of all 5-year-olds and more than 60 percent of Māori and Pacific 5-year-olds entered school already having tooth decay. These are not just statistics; these are kids whom I see in my electorate in South Auckland. These very same children children from high deprivation areas such as Manukau East in South Auckland are far less likely to be involved in primary healthcare services as newborns and as they grow they are much less likely to have contact with oral health or dental health services.I know that fluoridation has been a fraught issue for some of our communities and some of our territorial authorities have gone back and forth on this issue. I also know that in the last local body elections especially in the district health board (DHB) elections some have cynically exploited fluoridation as an issue. However as an electorate MP because this is an issue that a lot of our kids actually suffer from I am passionate about improving the health outcomes for Māori and Pacific and low-income families. I am determined that every child in New Zealand should have the best start in life. This means good health from conception onwards; it means healthy housing; it means access to an education system that is staffed by qualified registered teachers from early childhood education onwards; and it also means having good oral health.Poor oral health can undermine a child's ability to do well at school and it can impact them both in the short term as well as in their long-term health status. Water fluoridation has been endorsed by the World Health Organization the WHO as a successful preventative measure for preventing tooth decay. The Chief Science Advisor here in New Zealand as well as our president of the Royal Society have also found that there were no adverse effects from the fluoridation of public water supplies after many decades of exposure. Both recommended that towns add fluoride to their water supplies. This has also been proven as a cost-effective measure.Expanding the reach of fluoridation to those 1.4 million Kiwis living where water supplies are not currently fluoridated will help lift New Zealand's health status especially for our kids. I urge this Government to show leadership and to put some real measures into the fluoridation of our water instead of palming this off to the DHBs which will not actually start making decisions about drinking water fluoridation until at least 2018. Even our Minister of Health the Hon Jonathan Coleman himself has stated that fluoridation is widely acknowledged by health and dental experts as the biggest initiative to prevent tooth decay. Evidence tells us that children with access to fluoridated water experience 40 percent reduction in dental decay. Labour supports this bill. Thank you very much.