Severin ToniTONI SEVERIN (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. I'm actually flabbergasted—because this is such an important bill—that our colleagues across the House are taking such a short call. Now if you were sitting in the Health Committee that I was and listened to all the people that had given their stories about how this bill is going to affect their lives—and we had over 16000 as we said submissions and we listened to I think close to 300 or 200 and something in that time and it was a huge range of submitters. Now ACT is actually going to oppose this. The reason why we're going to oppose it is that this bill that is 256 pages still has more questions than answers. Now how can we help New Zealanders to have better medicines and better treatment when medical companies can't even understand how this going to affect New Zealanders?Now also we're going to be creating regulatory reform secondary legislation and we need regulators to be able to assist with our medicines and natural health products. Now what red tape and what cost is that going to put on these companies that create and bring in these products and where are these regulators coming from? We already have a staffing problem. Again are they going to be qualified? Are they actually going to understand what they are going to be regulating? Now this is why I said this lovely bill has still got far too many questions than answers.Now we're all for the Medicines Act 1981 and for the 1985 regulations for the dietary foods to be updated because they are outdated. Anyone who has worked in medicine knows that these things need to be updated. But how do we do it? You needed to listen to the concerns. Even in the pages pack when you read from our doctors and natural health medicines people who have written about it like one stakeholder—Patient Voice Aotearoa—about the Therapeutic Products Bill. Now he states in an article that happened on 22 June 2023 after this was reported back that New Zealand patients access 2.3 million medicine packages under this section—this is section 29 of the Medicines Act—it's an unknown. This is a concern because this is a huge section which is people with cancer and rare disorders that get particular medicines imported for them that isn't already on our sheet. Now this is a huge concern. I know we managed to get some changes but there are still so many unanswered questions. There are still too many questions. You talk to the medical councils you talk to a lot of people—like the burden that may cause companies to simply fly out of the New Zealand market because of reducing the medicines because of the unanswered questions that we have in this bill. They say Wait till the next piece comes out. Wait till the secondary legislation comes out we will have more answers." But all that we see is that it's just going to hold up our medicines. We believe that if a medicine has been approved in the US Australia and it's been over there for many years been working well we should be looking at approving them here—Sarah Pallett: We are.TONI SEVERIN: —fast—but we're not doing it fast enough. This is the problem: we're holding up medicines here in New Zealand.Then in the medical text thing the concerns—a series of concerns about regular overreach and lack of alignment with international best practices. Now that was sent to us just two days ago. These are the people who understand what's going on in this bill. These are the people that are supplying our doctors and nurses and hospitals with the technology that we need. They are still saying just two days ago that they still have serious concerns of overreach and burdens. What else is going to be happening slowed down to give good practices?We're in a cost of living crisis. It's already bad enough for many of our patients to get hands on medicines let alone having to add more regulation and red tape. Yes in select committee we did talk about rongoā we kept asking questions "When are we going to hear back?" We said "Oh wait for the Crown to come back to us." So now we've finally heard that it's going to be a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP). Well that's fine but it would have been nice for us to have had the same information as the Government because I feel that the majority of us in the select committee would have been very happy for that SOP to be actually added in the bill; at least we would have had the say during that process.Now the thing is that we here in ACT go "The new regulator is it following these questions that must be asked: what is the problem this bill seeks to solve and will this bill solve the problems?" Well we don't think it's going to solve those problems; we think that all it's going to do is make it even harder. And then what are the costs of this scheme proposed and do the potential benefits outweigh them? Well we don't know. We get told "Wait till the second legislation then we'll know." But already how many regulators will we need? There are three parts to this therapeutics bill. It's medicines. It's medical devices. It also brings in dental. It brings in surgery. So even those who are waiting for transplants it's all encapsulated in this bill. And then we have the natural health medicines. So it's three huge industries within our medical profession being dragged into one and we still have more questions than answers.Now who will bear the costs and will they be fairly shared? Now that is the biggest question for the majority within the industries that help us. That's not just natural health medicine but that was also the medical companies that come in and do trials. It was also the medicines that get brought in as Dr Shane Reti said for free—companies that bring it in for free and pass those medicines on especially within special cases that are rare or cancers that are very rare. So we just see that all this bill is going to do is tie up our medicines.And also like software everything changes so rapidly. So how fast can these regulators keep up with changes?So we say: let's go back to the drawing board. We even heard from the medical profession that submitted on the original bill which was before my time and they said that it was better than this bill. It had its problems but it was better. So why did they have to draft a whole new bill? Why couldn't we take what was good in the previous bill and improve it? Why keep reinventing the wheel and making things tougher on New Zealanders? We have just been flabbergasted.We had the Government yelling at us that it's all—Hon Member: What a load of hoo-ha.TONI SEVERIN: —exactly but it's not. We're talking for patients. Those who work in the medical field know that more regulations and more red tape is just going to hold up bringing new medicines and bringing new technologies to New Zealand.We even had the Dental Association during one of the submissions say that under the bill everybody who had to have a new filling would have to be registered because it's an individual piece. So is that being changed? Or if someone had to have something slightly modified for themselves that would have to be registered.There's still as I said a 256-page bill and there are still more questions in it than answers and it is not fair on New Zealand. We've just gone through one huge health reform and now we're trying to throw this on top of it. How about we get all the ducks in a row and make sure we're looking after everybody especially the patients of New Zealand; they are the ones who are going to be let down. Businesses of New Zealand that export overseas they are going to be let down. We're all for changes because things change quickly but let's stop putting more burden on New Zealand citizens and raising costs by putting more red tape and bureaucracy on our bills. This is what this bill does. We have to form a regulator and who are they going to be; what expertise? Those are the questions that we would like to be answered. How many are going to have to be employed? We oppose this bill."