Doocey MattMATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. I wasn't expecting to rise so quickly. I thought the chair of the Health Committee would have had a lot more to say about the select committee process but I could imagine why he would want to sit down as quickly as possible because in fact what the Minister of Health has done today is throw the Government Health Committee members under the bus. They spent hours of Health Committee time debating this bill and passing amendments but the first thing the Minister did was to come out and say that the amendments were wrong. So now she's going to introduce Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) to the House to pass to correct her own caucus members' faults in the amendments. If I was a Government backbencher today I would refuse to get up and speak on this bill purely because the Minister has thrown them under the bus. How embarrassing that your Minister would come out within days of the amendments to this bill being passed to say that they got it wrong and this bill is nothing but another example of the coalition of chaos. It's another back-down bill. Could you imagine that days after the commentary comes back to the House the Minister is already desperately putting up SOPs in defence and waving the white flag because the Government knows they have got this wrong? We saw it last week with the three waters bill—I mean imagine bringing in a bill that amends two other bills already before the House. Now we're at the second reading where the purpose of a second reading is to debate what happened in the select committee and the Minister is already pointing to the committee of the whole House what SOPs she will put up because she knows that Labour has got this bill wrong. I want to acknowledge Dr Shane Reti for clearly articulating the issues in this bill and in fact we didn't need to be here because it clearly came out in the submission process. There was already a bill in place under the last National Government that this Government could have adopted and that would have done a far better job. So it really concerns me that here we are after 16500 submissions—16000 of those were opposed to the bill—and hours of select committee time taken up at the cost of tens of thousands of dollars the Government MPs think they're doing right by their Minister by passing the amendments and passing the bill into the second reading and the first thing she does is wave the white flag and say Look we've got this wrong and we'll have to introduce SOPs." Now look at the overreach in this bill about natural health products. You heard from my learned colleague Dr Shane Reti about the value of natural health products to our economy: $2.3 billion—$2.3 billion to our local economy. Remember a time when the Prime Minister used to talk about returning to bread and butter issues for New Zealand because of the cost of living crisis that we're encountering and yet this Government—ideological "Wellington knows best" "Labour knows best"—is prepared to put a $2.3 billion industry at risk. It makes hundreds of millions of dollars in export earnings it employs hundreds of hard-working Kiwis around the country and because of the regulatory overreach that they are trying to bring in today it will put that at risk at a time of a cost of living crisis when we need to address and make sure our economy is doing well. In an export-led economy which is New Zealand this is what Labour is up to today. So much for bread and butter! It always defaults back to ideology. We've heard from the submitters especially Natural Health Products the peak body in the natural health space. It has talked about the regulatory overreach as being delayed and bureaucratic. How many times have we heard that term every time this Government touches something? Look at the response to mental health: delayed and bureaucratic. Look at the response around the local government reform of water: delayed and bureaucratic. The Resource Management Act (RMA)—oh yes the RMA. What a shambles—the coalition of chaos. So here we are we've got another bill that's an overreach and is delayed and bureaucratic. Now I want to turn my contribution today to one very brave New Zealander Theresa Zame. Now Theresa Zame to me epitomises the belief that one person can make a difference and boy has Theresa Zame made a difference. Theresa's story is that she has stage four lung cancer. She wasn't able to access medicines in New Zealand so she used a compassionate import scheme to access Tagrix from Bangladesh on a script from New Zealand. That cost her $1000 a month. The equivalent in New Zealand would have been $10000 because she didn't qualify for publicly funded medicines which she couldn't afford and in Theresa's own words Tagrix has made a "huge impact" on her health and given months back to her life expectation. Under this bill originally that would have been stopped and not only would that have been stopped but Theresa would have been criminalised. Sarah Pallett: That's why we changed it. MATT DOOCEY: Now the Government member Sarah Pallett calls out "That's why we changed it." No you changed it because Theresa Zame brought a petition with 6500 signatures. She led a hīkoi with Malcolm Mulholland from Patient Voice Aotearoa that turned up on this forecourt to protest against your bill. National was there the Greens were there ACT was there and Te Paati Māori was there. Was Labour there? No they weren't there because they knew they were wrong and here they are now gloating: "Oh it's because of us those changes were made." If it was because of you that would have not been in the bill in the first place so don't you take that one. That was Theresa Zame a brave mother. She calls herself just a lady from "Gizzy". I say that she's strong and she's bold and she led that campaign. One person can make a difference and Theresa Zame made that difference. The reason that bill arrives back today with the ability for people like Theresa Zame to now go on and continue to get lifesaving drugs is because they put up the fight and good on them. This is another reason that this bill comes back into the House as a back-down bill because they have got it wrong. They didn't listen at the start. They were forced to listen when dying people—Sarah Pallett: Rubbish—rubbish. MATT DOOCEY: —turned up on the forecourt—"Rubbish." Sarah Pallett says the MP from Ilam. Malcolm Mulholland one of the most respected patient voice advocates in New Zealand said that under this bill people would die and he is right. That's why this Government was forced into a back-down and already the Minister days after it comes out of the Health Committee throws MPs like Sarah Pallett under the bus and says "The bill is not right. We're going to have to make further changes in SOPs." This is unheard of. This is a shambles. The wheels are falling off this Government. But all of us—120 of us in the House—should never forget that we make decisions that impact people individually in their lives and that's what we're doing today. Thank you Madam Speaker."