Lees-Galloway Iain: Medicines Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Lees-Galloway Iain: Medicines Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 20 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8800. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to follow such a fulsome contribution from the Minister for Building and Construction Maurice Williamson on the Medicines Amendment Bill here on a Thursday morning during extended sitting hours—a time for non-controversial legislation to be progressed through the House legislation that has broad support from parties around the House. What an appropriate place for this Medicines Amendment Bill to be debated and what an appropriate time because the issues dealt with in this legislation ought to be non-controversial. They ought to draw broad support from across the House but unfortunately to paraphrase Chris Auchinvole it ain’t always necessarily been so. 
The Medicines Amendment Bill does get broad support and it is supported by the Labour Party. We support the fact that the bill streamlines the Medicines Act and amends some specific provisions in the legislation. I think the thing that the public will take most notice of is the work towards establishing the Australia New Zealand Therapeutic Products Agency. Having a trans-Tasman authority to oversee medicines and therapeutic products is a sensible thing that we should be working towards. Of course we have been lurching towards it for some years now but progress has been held up and the politics of that I will address in a moment. 
The other thing that New Zealanders will notice the most is the broadening of prescribing rights. To be honest this is the thing that I am most interested in and most supportive of in this legislation. The ability for in particular nurse practitioners but also other health practitioners to gain prescribing rights I think is an important step towards improving the accessibility and availability of medicines and improving the flexibility of our health system. We know that it can be challenging for people to get access to appropriate health-care and that can simply come down to the availability of appropriate health practitioners. In the 21st century I think we recognise that that does not always have to be a medical practitioner. It does not always have to be a doctor. We received a number of supportive submissions particularly from the Nurses Organisation and other nursing representative organisations for the extension of prescribing rights to nurses and to other health practitioners. There was some opposition. Sadly but predictably it came from the GPs and from the medical fraternity who seem to think they are the only people qualified to deal in health and particularly in medicines. It was not exactly die in the ditch stuff from the medical fraternity. I think they realise that the world has moved on. It was not exactly a strident submission from them but nevertheless that is where the opposition came from. 
As I said this is a bill that is necessary and improves the regulatory framework for medicines. But everything contained in this bill the substance of this bill could have been progressed 5 years ago had the National Party not decided to play politics with this important issue. The National Party withdrew its support for the then Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill which interestingly is the title of the legislation that we are working towards of course but the National Party saw an opportunity to put the Labour Government under pressure by withdrawing its support meaning that that bill could not be progressed. This was not in the interests of good health-care in New Zealand. This was not in the interests of good regulation of medical products. It was not in the interests of good regulation of natural health and supplementary products which we are also going to be dealing with this morning. This was pure politics. When I read last year that the Minister of Health Tony Ryall is in the media’s opinion the best politician on the National benches I thought: “You know what? They are absolutely right.” He is a terrible Minister of Health. He is ruining the health system. He is setting up all sorts of problems for future Governments to have to clean up but my goodness Tony Ryall is a very very good politician. Unfortunately politics does not always make for the best lawmaking or the best regulatory system or for improving our health system but it can make for good politicians. I know that Dr Paul Hutchison agrees with all of this. He will not say so of course because he is whipped by his party but Dr Paul Hutchison agrees with all of this. 
What did the National Party say that Labour had to do in order to keep its support for establishing good regulation around medicines? It was to take away the provisions in that original piece of legislation to do with natural products. Well what is the next bill that we are going to be debating this morning? What did we work so hard on Dr Hutchison to align this piece of legislation with? It was the Natural Health—and now—Supplementary Products Bill which actually shows how political National’s opposition is to actually achieving everything that is achieved in this bill. Five long years ago it could have been done. We could have had nurses— 
Hon Annette King 
: Along with folate. 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY 
: Along with folate as well Ms King says. We could have had a good regulatory framework for medicines. We could have had nurses prescribing. We could have had nurse practitioners particularly diabetes nurse practitioners doing more to deal with the tsunami of diabetes that this country is facing. We could have been tackling that 5 years ago but no National likes to play politics when actually the thing we are supposed to do is get on and govern properly and do the right thing by New Zealanders. This bill and the bill that is going to follow it are both excellent pieces of legislation. It is just such a pity that in this case when the National Government actually for once got off its backside and did something about this bill the thing is that what it did was completely contrary to the interests of New Zealand—it put politics ahead of the health of New Zealanders.