Moroney Sue: Radiation Safety Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Radiation Safety Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 03 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9389. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour): Well here we are—finally we get to the third reading of the Radiation Safety Bill. I have had the privilege I think of speaking on every single reading of this bill despite the fact that I was not on the Health Committee and was not able to hear any of the—Scott Simpson: The member was robbed.SUE MORONEY: Robbed of being on the select committee. You are quite right—it was a select committee that I had been on in another term of Parliament but not during this one. So I did not get the benefit of the advice from the officials but I take the members’ word for it that the officials should be thanked for the very good information they provided during the deliberation on this important bill because it does bring us up to speed.I have had it suggested to me that the reason I have been on the speaking list every time on this bill is that my own children have broken enough bones to have enough X-rays that I should know enough to speak on the bill on this matter. I just want to dispel that myth to start off with. Yes there has been the odd time that my boys have been robustly playing their chosen game that they are passionate about—basketball—and they may have ended up having X-rays. But the problem has not necessarily been the issues associated with this bill but this: could the Government please bring a bill before the House that would stop bones being broken on statutory holidays? That is the problem I have had—every single bone that has been broken in our household seems to happen on a statutory holiday and that is when you have to pay the most to actually get the bone X-rayed. So if you can fix that please I would very happy.But that is not what this bill attempts to do and neither should it. It is actually a bill that brings New Zealand’s practice up to speed with international best practice. I do want to support what the Green member Kevin Hague raised in his contribution. It would be good to think that we had a process in place so that when Acts become out of date when technology and our scientific knowledge has moved on to the extent that we know about dangers that we once did not know about there would be some automatic scrutiny of Acts that ensured we did not just have to wait for some Minister’s office to notice that the Act had become horribly out of date or for something to go badly wrong before we realised that such an Act had become out of date.The last time this Act had attention was 50 years ago. I think in one of my previous contributions to this debate I may have said that it has been as long in the making as I have been on this earth-ish because I never declare my actual age but I am sure people can go and look that up for themselves. I mention this because the technological advances and the scientific knowledge that we have made over the course of my lifetime explains to me the reason why I am a little worried that it took so long before we reviewed this Act again and perhaps we should have processes in place to ensure that we do that in a more timely fashion. None the less we are here now.This bill does repeal and replace the Radiation Protection Act 1965. So in fact the Act is a little younger than I am—a little younger. One purpose of the bill is to enable New Zealand to meet its international obligations under a range of international treaties relating to radiation protection radiation safety and security and nuclear non-proliferation. That is important because New Zealand has—not always—on many occasions led on non-proliferation of nuclear issues and so it is rather surprising that we have taken so long to update this legislation.Labour does acknowledge the necessity of updating legislation such as this in order to keep pace with the technological advances and changes. Annette King tried to amend this bill to change the title of it so that it was more correct because the legislation that we are debating does not cover all forms of radiation. In fact it covers only the ionising radiation form. So those are the ones that we are familiar with when X-rays are taken.I guess alongside accompanying my children for X-rays from time to time—not too regularly—that the other time that I come across X-rays and the use of them is when I go to the dentist. Is that not a bit disconcerting when you are having an X-ray taken at the dentist and everyone else in the room bolts while you sit there and have the X-ray? I often do sit there and think: “Gosh should I be bolting as well? Is the harm that can be omitted that bad that all of the other people in the room are dashing before they go somewhere and push the button remotely?”. In times gone by people such as the dentist and the dental technician would have stayed there and they would have been in the same environment. But of course what we now know is that regular exposure—not the irregular exposure of me having an X-ray once in a blue moon but the regular exposure—of those workers in their workplace to that health and safety hazard is no longer acceptable and so we have these new systems in place to deal with this.So on the one hand our health and safety legislation in the workplace has kept apace of these changes but this Act which we are amending today when we are debating the Radiation Safety Bill has not kept apace in the same way. We do support having a high level of compliance with international best standards and we do support our commitments to international treaties.The bill does cover not only the use of ionising radiation but the transportation and the disposal of ionising radiation both man-made and naturally occurring in quantities above stated levels. The fundamental requirements stipulate that radiation use occurs only where the expected benefit outweighs the risks that exposures must be kept as low as reasonably achievable and that prescribed dose limits must not be exceeded. So these are important factors when we think about the fact that it is our children who are exposed to this ionising radiation and that it is older people who are frequently exposed to these because probably they are the two groups who are most exposed to X-rays over the course of their lives. So it is very important that they are protected with that statement.The enactment of the bill will complete New Zealand’s domestic implementation of the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism and the Amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material. It allows for the International Atomic Energy Agency international inspectors to be appointed by the director to undertake activities in New Zealand and international inspectors must be accompanied by an enforcement officer appointed by the director under clause 39 of the bill. So it introduces a new regime of authorisations for individuals or organisations using radiation materials. [Bell rung] I was anticipating this being a split call but no other member wants to share the call with me so I think at this stage I will just simply reaffirm that Labour supports this bill and commend it to the House.