Street Maryan: Medicines Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Street Maryan: Medicines Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 20 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8803. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to speak on the Medicines Amendment Bill and I take some pleasure in doing so but I would have taken even greater pleasure in doing it 5 years ago. The member who has just resumed his seat Paul Hutchison who chaired the Health Committee—I have to say in an extremely able way and I have no beef with him about that at all—saw fit to take a flick at the previous Labour Government and its innovations in the health area which was completely unjustified and it would be remiss of me to allow that to go unchallenged in  
Hansard 
. So I would ask that member to recall the cut in prescription fees the cancer control strategy the breast-screening programme and all the other helpful innovations that the Labour Government undertook in the health portfolio in the 9 years that we had the privilege of being on those benches. 
In the course of those improvements that we were making to the health sector we proposed to bring in a Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill which oddly enough is exactly the same name as the bill that this Government is going to move on to in due course. But I remember distinctly from that time—it was my first term in Parliament and I was on the Health Committee—Tony Ryall playing complete politics with the health of New Zealanders. He thought that he was on to a winning thing by joining with people under a series of red umbrellas out on the forecourt of Parliament to protest about natural supplements and the regulation of natural health supplements. In the process of his doing that the bill was split into two parts but even so the now Minister of Health could not at that time in Opposition bring himself to advance something that was going to be for the good of New Zealanders and this delay in managing innovative measures of prescribing and of using our health workforce lies absolutely on that Minister’s head. On his head lies the responsibility for the delay a good 5 or 6-year delay—6 years now—in bringing these innovations to this Parliament. So I do not want to hear any more about the wonderful Minister of Health when people realise that his siding with Sue Kedgley which he did only on the basis of politics and not on the basis of being committed to the issue that she raised—which had validity it is true. He engaged with the Green Party in a way we have never seen him do before or since and saw that this was a way that he could score some political points at that time at the expense of New Zealanders. I have no compunction about sheeting that responsibility home to this Minister who continues to call himself the Minister of Health when in fact he should be called the “Minister of Illness”. 
We are supporting this bill because it started with us and so we support it. We support the idea that there be regulated but extended powers of prescribing. When the Health Workforce New Zealand group started to look in the last few years at just how scopes of practice might be amended or adjusted to incorporate additional functions and tasks that was greeted with applause from us. That is a sensible thing to do. If we are looking to maximise the appropriation that goes into health and at the same time ensure that what is delivered through the health appropriation is for the benefit of the greatest number of New Zealanders then this is a good proposal. 
Extending powers of prescribing however must be done only with the imprimatur of this House and with regulatory oversight by this House. People in New Zealand must have confidence that if they are going to get a prescription from a nurse or a nurse practitioner or an optometrist or any other designated prescriber then that person is competent to fulfil that task. And that competence must be regulated must be monitored and must be scrutinised and in the end it becomes the responsibility of this House. We could have had this 6 years ago—6 years have gone by when people have still had to pay their $39 $42 $45 or sometimes $54 to go to a general practitioner just to get a script that could have been given to them by somebody who was appropriately qualified and regulated to do it. So for the last 6 years people have been paying unnecessarily for consultations with their general practitioner when quite frankly somebody else could have done that job and that is the responsibility of this National Government and the responsibility of the National Opposition before it. 
We undertook the development of the delegated prescribing protocol when we were in Government. We think there is strong support for the general proposal across health professionals and also across the New Zealand public who understand that they should not have to pay twice: once to go to an ophthalmologist and then to go to somebody who has prescribing rights to get the medication and the treatment they require. This will allow for more timely access for patients especially in some of our more diverse community and rural settings and that is really important. National could have delivered “Better sooner more convenient care” 6 years ago to people in rural communities and provincial areas had it not decided to play politics with it instead of recognising the merit of the bill that we were passing even when we divided it into two so that the issues around natural health supplements could be addressed separately and the Green Party’s concerns could be addressed properly in that regard. But no “Better sooner more convenient care” was not on their minds when Government members were in Opposition. Opposing was on their mind when they were in Opposition. 
So we support this bill. We welcome it. We think it is important that there is a more comprehensive overhaul of the Medicines Act. In fact it could have been done more comprehensively. This bill remains an interim measure. I think that that is also a sign of inadequacy. In fact the whole thing should have been done at once but now we are passing an interim measure that will have to be revisited again shortly and that is a shame. It is kind of a waste of Parliament’s time but hopefully the Government will sort itself out and we will get there in due course. Both this bill and the one that follows it the Natural Health Products Bill have our support and we wish only that we could have voted for them some years ago. Thank you.