Lees-Galloway Iain: Health (Protection) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Health (Protection) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 27 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:4092. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): I must say it is a pleasure to hear that the Health Committee is still operating with a constructive and mostly bipartisan approach. As someone who was a member of the committee for 6 years I must say that I miss that committee. I understand that under the chairmanship of Simon O’Connor it is doing well.Sarah Dowie: I’m hurt. You’re on TPR—I’m hurt.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Well Sarah Dowie we have got an interesting select committee tomorrow so we will cross that bridge when we get to it—more interesting for you guys than it is for us I must say. But it is good to hear that there is a convivial mood at the select committee and it was good to hear that we can have a bipartisan approach to some of these health issues and how constructive it can be. I am pleased that the member who was speaking previously Barbara Kuriger was enthusiastic about the bipartisan approach—a new member who delivered a very good 10-minute speech; well done.This bill does a number of important things—a number of important things that I think as some of my colleagues have pointed out could have been introduced quite a long time ago if the legislation that included these aspects and others had been supported by the National Party back when the Labour Government introduced them. So we could have been 7 years ahead of where we are right now if we had had that same bipartisan and constructive approach back when National was in Opposition. It is a shame that we did not have that same bipartisan and constructive approach.This bill does a number of things that I know the National Party has had some issue with in the past. It increases the range of infectious diseases that are notifiable; it improves the management of individuals with infectious diseases whose behaviour puts other people at risk of contracting a disease by providing new management options including directions issued by the medical officer of health court orders and urgent health-risk orders and interventions; and it strengthens the legislative provisions for contact tracing of people who may have an infectious disease or may be exposed to one. All of those measures require a degree of I suppose a person having to divulge information about themselves. It may be uncomfortable for people to divulge some of that information but it is really important for public health for our community and for our collective health that those individuals are expected and are now required under this legislation to offer up that information.The New Zealand National Party has not always been a big fan of this approach. I go back to the minority view expressed in the report back on the Public Health Bill which was the Labour bill that was introduced by Annette King that contained many of these provisions as well as others. Under a paragraph entitled “Forced disclosure of health information” National had this to say: “The bill in requiring disclosure of health information creates a provision for non-Government health care providers to mandatorily supply information to the Ministry of Health beyond what if any is already voluntarily provided. This has potential to create significant costs for these non-Government providers (such as private hospitals general practices and Māori health providers) and funders (such as health insurers) without reimbursement. For example the cost to private hospitals of employing specialist coding staff to supply surgical data by purchase unit or diagnostic related group to the ministry will not be insignificant. The ministry advisers even acknowledged that it may take considerable time for providers to collate requested information. Providers and funders could be required to provide confidential financial and business information in the name of ‘advancing health knowledge health education or health research’.”It goes on. It goes on to talk about National’s concerns about people having to divulge information and health providers having to provide such information the costs that would be related to that and the impact on people’s individual freedom to maintain that information. That was one of the somewhat spurious reasons on which National based its opposition. This is not new. We have seen the National Party do this a number of times where it sees a political opportunity to make political attacks and to undermine a Government whether or not that actually is in the interest of advancing the well-being or the health of New Zealanders.The fact that 7 years on we are hearing from members about the wonderful bipartisan approach that has occurred at the select committee and the fact that these are all important measures to improve the public health I think absolutely reveals the appalling political games that the National Party played with health when it was in Opposition. It is just true. Some newer members are looking over at me shaking their heads a little bit. Well this might be a history lesson for them. They might not have been aware of this but actually time and time again in the 6½ years that I have been in Parliament we have actually debated and passed nearly unanimously in most cases legislation that the National Party in Opposition vehemently and loudly opposed because there was some group out there that it was trying to appeal to or even if there was not a group out there that it was trying to appeal to but it just saw an opportunity to undermine the Labour Government. That was all it was about.Brett Hudson: The unions elected your leader and you talk about people being beholden to groups. What a joke!IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Well there you go. That is the level of debate. That is what Brett Hudson thinks is an important contribution to make to a debate about public health. He is wrong of course. He obviously actually has not understood how the Labour Party works but what we are talking about here Brett Hudson is advancing the public health and well-being of New Zealanders and the fact that the National Party plays politics—the fact that the National Party plays politics around these things. It is great and it is fantastic that we are doing this and that the select committee in its bipartisan and constructive approach has actually come back expecting that even more information will be devolved including sex date of birth National Health Index number—all things that are going to be useful in terms of bringing under control notifiable infectious diseases and advancing the public health and well-being of New Zealand. I just come back to the fact that we could have done this 7 years ago—we could have done this 7 years ago. But what does the National Party do with all this stuff? It always plays politics.I had a look because I am not on the select committee any more at the departmental reports and I found that there were two departmental reports—one on infectious diseases and one on the issue around sunbeds—both of which were nearly 100 pages long. There were numerous submissions and there was obviously a lot of evidence to go through. It would appear that for the most part the select committee in its bipartisan and constructive approach has taken an evidence-based approach to these issues including the issues around the link between sunbeds and melanoma. I noticed one of the reports that the select committee received noted that there was a strikingly high rate of university students who use suntan beds. Those would be university students I assume who are over 18 and who are possibly in their early 20s who are using these beds. It is concerning that these young people are perhaps using these beds in an unregulated environment not being fully aware of what the long-term impacts might be of using those beds.It is good to see that Parliament is working together to do things that are constructive that take a long-term view of health and that are about maintaining health and well-being to try to prevent disease further down the track particularly around melanoma. It is good to see that for the most part the Government seems to have followed the evidence. There are some small differences of opinion between this side and the other side of the House about how far it went in following the evidence but for the most part this side of the House is very pleased to see the continuing passage of this legislation. We are just so disappointed that it has taken 7 long years for National to finally see sense.