Kedgley Sue: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill — In Committee 
Kedgley Sue: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:611;Page:8162] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 The clause that members have been referring to which calls for a review of the Act in 3 years is arguably one of the most important clauses in the bill. We had to fight very long and hard to get that clause in. When I suggested that we needed to have some parliamentary scrutiny and ability to review the legislation because there were so many new and unresolved issues in it the officials were totally opposed to such an idea. What we see in this bill—and it is a pattern that I have noticed in a number of bills recently—is the Government setting up a broad overarching framework then it leaves all the implementation monitoring etc to regulation and it ensures that there is no parliamentary scrutiny. This bill is one of those where the Government has attempted to have a broad overarching framework with absolutely no ability for parliamentary scrutiny. The vast array of issues such as scopes of practice and so forth are all to be determined by regulation which means without any parliamentary scrutiny. 
We had a major fight with the officials to get the clause inserted requiring that there be a review. The only reason we managed to get it—and I am delighted that I managed to put this provision up and that it gained support—was that we referred to the Radio New Zealand and Television New Zealand bills that are similar but which require parliamentary scrutiny after a number of years. 
Thankfully we at least have this provision. Maybe some officials are hoping that we might quietly forget the clause that it might go away and we might not require the review to take place but I can assure them that some members have already diarised this provision and we will be waiting very eagerly for the review. 
I will be looking very closely at a number of issues for the review. The first issue is the whole question of whether the Minister has allowed elections to be held for those professions that wish to hold elections for their governing authorities. There is a clause which once again we managed to get in that stipulates that the Minister may make regulations to allow elections. The wording is a little bit vague and we did hope to strengthen it here tonight but unfortunately United Future and the Government would not support us. However there is a provision that regulations may be issued and we will be watching the implementation of those regulations extremely closely as I am sure will the professions that are seeking to have elections. Indeed some of them may wish to go to the Regulations Review Committee if they find that the regulations empowering an election are somehow not issued by the Minister. We will be looking at that clause very very closely to make sure that the Minister does issue regulations that will allow those professions that wish it to have elections. 
 Another thing that the Green Party will be looking at very closely is the progress or lack of progress with acupuncturists. I have made the point many times that if this bill were genuinely about public safety and consumer protection then one of the first professions that we would be regulating under it would be acupuncture. Arguably acupuncture can cause grave harm to members of the public if needles are not sterilised or if they are put in the wrong parts of the body. Great harm can occur to members of the public for which reason acupuncturists have been beseeching successive Governments for two decades to bring them under statutory regulation. They have made impassioned and very professional submissions to this bill pointing out all the reasons that they need to be brought under this legislation. Unfortunately their pleas have been ignored by the Government and I cannot figure out why.