Tirikatene Rino: Health (Protection) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTirikatene Rino: Health (Protection) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:11039. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): I am pleased to take a call on Part 2 of this bill. I do want to speak in support of the Hon Annette King’s Supplementary Order Paper 80 and I am very disappointed that the Minister of Health will not be supporting her Supplementary Order Paper because this was an opportunity for us as a Parliament to draw an end to the use of suntanning beds. We could have gone far and we could have done things for the public good for public health but sadly it seems that we are not going to be heading that way.I would like to go into the provisions of Part 2 and in particular clause 13 which inserts new section 114 “Ban on providing artificial UV tanning services to persons under 18 years” as part of new Part 5. In particular subsection (2) says: “The owner or operator must not provide artificial UV tanning services to a person under the age of 18 years.” That is the age limit that has been applied but I am really surprised that when we look further to subsection (5) there is provided within the legislation a defence—a defence to a sunbed operator administering or providing services to an under-18-year-old.I would have thought that if we are going to make it an offence under this part of the legislation let us make it a strict liability offence. Let us not provide a defence because we are actually letting that operator off the hook. We are letting them off the hook because there is a statutory defence. They do have a defence for putting an under-18-year-old on a sunbed but I believe that this needs to be much more strict. Even though the defendant has to prove that defence it still should not apply because the harm that we are hoping to prevent through this legislation—well the sunbed operators can get away with it. They can get away with it effectively so we should make it a strict liability offence. There should be no defence. If an under-18-year-old is put on sunbed then is an offence—that is an offence—committed by whoever is there providing those services. So I think that is a shortcoming.There is even the idea of infringement notices if we carry on through the new Part 5. To me infringement notices seem like a slap on the back of the hand with a wet bus ticket. That is what they are. If we look at who actually issues these infringement notices well it could be an environmental health officer. Do we really expect local authority officers to be going around and issuing these infringement notices—actually making the relevant inquiries necessary to be sure they are able to issue these infringement notices?The whole suite of provisions around these so-called proportional measures is just an outright nonsense. It really is. Really what it is doing is providing people in the suntan industry with a lifeline. There is no real strict punishment. It is allowing them to carry on and effectively do what they do. As I mentioned it even allows them to continue to provide their services to under-18-year-olds and effectively to be without fault. I think we need to send a much stronger message—we have the opportunity to do that with Mrs King’s Supplementary Order Paper—because those measures are not effective.