Reti ShaneDr SHANE RETI (Deputy Leader—National): I rise to strongly support this bill and congratulate my colleague Todd Muller on bringing this bill to the House. I do have some experience in this domain. I completed my postgraduate Diploma in Dermatology in Wales and then practised for 20 years as what's called a GPSI" GP with a special interest in dermatology. So I have probably seen my fair share of sun-induced and other sorts of cancers and other lesions and I'm very pleased to see this sort of proposal in front of the House.I've been intrigued and privileged to manage sun-induced conditions for a number of years melanomas which I've heard my colleagues speak about which are clearly influenced by the sun; and non-melanoma conditions the ones that most people have. I'd also just mention that there are some conditions that are very photo-sensitive. Lupus erythematosus for example is very sensitive to the sun and you'd be wanting people with that to be using sunblock as well but the cancers are the main lesions that we want to be attending to. And of course these talk to the properties of UVB and the more ubiquitous rays and then the less defined UVA and I'll talk about that a little bit further when we get into the sunblocks. Sunblocks generally work in two basic categories. They're reflective or absorbent. The reflective ones basically look to bounce the sun's rays away. So that's what the zincs and the titanium oxides do—they're reflective sunblocks. Their trade-off is that they're a bit gluggy. They block the pores on the skin. That's what you see the cricketers wear—you've heard of the zinc and various other things. But that's their mechanism of action—they're reflective. They bounce the sun's rays away. The others are absorptive and what they do is they absorb the sun and use the energy of the sun to break chemical bonds and form two three or four inert chemicals. I know that at one point in time there was some concern around whether those inert chemicals could themselves be troublesome but that hasn't proven to be so. I'm talking about things like PABAs the para-aminobenzoic acids and those sorts of things. They were very very common in the early years for sunblocks and even today you'll still see them.This bill specifically talks to the SPF. We've heard people talk about how that's assessed and it's quite right. You apply sunblock to skin that is exposed and not exposed a certain layer—2 milligrams per millimetre as I recall—and then you basically irradiate them and look for where you get minimal redness and compare the time to get minimal redness in an area that is covered and an area that is not and you do a formulaic division and that gives you the SPF. This mainly talks to UVB. UVA is not quite so clear and in fact we use something called persistent pigment darkening to determine what the UVA category is. As you'll see UVA comes into the broad sun spectrum sunblocks—less easy to measure but primarily SPF is talking about UVB and I'm sure we'll hear more about that in select committee.The author of this bill notes that when products failed to quote consumer reports they failed significantly. A number of them were rated at 50+ and when they were independently tested they turned out to be about 20+ so not even close—actually half of what they were promoting. I think when we focus on the SPF factor in this bill it strikes me that it's not a bill of science. It's a bill of consumer affairs because it fundamentally says that what we want is for you to be honest with your labelling honest with your claims honest with your statements. You do need to have the laboratory certification to back up the statements you're making. We've made the comparison with what they do in Australia. We have a voluntary code which is clearly not working. Australia has mandated it. But if we look across the world it's also widespread as to how they regulate sunblock. The European Commission doesn't let you label sunscreens with an SPF less than six but everything greater than six can be called "broad spectrum." As we commented between ourselves and Australia we do have some consistent standards; it's just how we apply them that is different. The USA through the Food and Drug Administration has a completely different range. The real difference tends to be around the broad-spectrum which is the UVA component.I'm sure we'll hear more about all of this and maybe even get to apply some of them in select committee. I'm really looking forward to that coming. This is a really good consumer affairs bill. This is just about honest trading. The science is well known the science is accepted and it's very timely for this bill to come to the House.One recommendation—as everyone is sharing their moments—is that I've said to my daughters for a long time that the cheapest Botox they will ever use is sunblock. Use it during the winter use it during the summer. I generally say to them "Choose your favourite moisturiser and then find something with at least SPF15 in it" because I find that cosmetically they don't get concerned about blocking the sun—you know put your sunblock on and you'll get acne; all that sort of trade-off and I think they've been pleased. And I used to say to my patients as well that the cheapest Botox they'll ever use is sunblock.So I'm a strong supporter of sunblock. I look forward to this bill coming to the select committee. It's an excellent bill. Thank you Todd."