Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. I'm pleased to reassure the Minister of Health in the House that the National Party will continue to support the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Amendment Bill despite being mortally wounded by the Minister's comments that perhaps we took too long in reviewing this Act. I would suggest to the Minister that actually as he now knows legislation is given certain priority and I think it's pertinent that the previous Government was so busy—so busy—with so many things on the Order Paper that it just didn't have room for this noble but some would argue dull piece of legislation to get up before the House. I might also note that this Government has no such problem. Indeed not only is it now up but we are here considering it at second reading just a year into their short tenure on the Treasury benches.Hon Dr David Clark: We're getting through the work. No mucking around.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Yeah well no mucking around with the things that don't matter.The 14 amendments in this bill are necessary and appropriate and have been thoroughly examined and I must say I was something of a tail-end Charlie into this select committee because I didn't arrive there until after this bill had had its first reading and indeed the initial submissions by officials—Hon Dr David Clark: The member's contributions were still appreciated.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: It was quality not quantity Minister indeed. But I did enjoy actually getting to know the members through the submissions on this bill and was encouraged though not surprised because the Health Committee of which I was a member in the 49th Parliament has that reputation for working quite collegially through these important pieces of legislation.Now Madam Assistant Speaker I hope you'll indulge me while I segue slightly into another matter of business that the select committee had at the same time because it's very pertinent to our examination of this bill and the reasons why it was quite important and that was a petition of Margaret Dynes which has now been reported back to the House—a tragic case where her daughter was diagnosed with cancer and passed away I think in 2013 or 2014. Her petition among other things called on the House to ensure a more robust method for members of the public and consumers of our health services to be able to make complaints through to a body that is governed by the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act. We listened to a heartbreaking description of the journey that her daughter went on and her whole family and friends and nobody who listened to her submissions and saw her photos could fail to be moved by that tragic circumstance. While we carefully considered those things and we haven't been able to do all of the things that she wanted to do we were able to reassure her that through this bill there was going to be a mechanism for lay members of the public to be able to make complaints directly to the regulatory authority. I think that represents a significant improvement and one that we were certainly given a very real-world reason why that was necessary and appropriate.The Minister mentions the collection of workforce data and I was struck by two things. One was actually the lack of energy around an understanding that some of the regulatory authorities had to the view that they had a responsibility to make a meaningful contribution to our understanding of our health workforce—so I think this is a really important development—but also quite how complex that is. We heard from the Midwifery Council of New Zealand I think that the number of people registered on their database is not actually a very good proxy of the number of people actively in the profession at any one time. So it may well be necessary to continue to refine the categories of membership of a health profession in order that we can have a better handle on who is active who is retired and who has changed professions but could still with a bridging programme come back into nursing or midwifery or anaesthetic technicians or whatever the profession might be. I think this is an ongoing challenge for the sector and the Government to ensure that we actually get a better handle on who is in the workforce how old they are and what their intentions might be because otherwise we are flying a bit blind. What we understand and grappled with the Government on is that it is a very very important issue facing us going forward.I'll touch on just a couple of the other things that I thought were very important in our considerations. I do want to acknowledge the Minister's very careful consideration with the select committee of the importance of making sure that the suspension of someone's practising certificate balanced the rights of that person to natural justice I suppose—if one wants—but also the right to protect the public from a prima facie case where there is a significant material risk of harm. I know the select committee members were pleased at the level of engagement we had on that important issue.I guess the last thing I would mention is the silence in the bill on a practical matter around what would happen if two responsible authorities merged. Indeed one reading of the bill as it was first introduced was that actually there would need to be a reregistration process that we felt was unnecessary in the circumstances where this was a structural technical merger and we are pleased to recommend a change to the bill to ensure that if two authorities amalgamate then the registration that exists of a member of either of those two continues until the renewal requirement of their practising certificate.There are a few others—I'll leave that to other members of the House to discuss—but I think it was a very good example of a collegial select committee. A dull but worthy piece of legislation—congratulations to the Labour-led Government. We continue to support it.