Menéndez March RicardoRICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you Mr Speaker. I think this bill isn't so much about the number of pages it has or the level of red tape. Ultimately I think most of us recognise that it is important to have a robust regulatory framework for things like medicines medical devices natural health products and active pharmaceutical ingredients which most of us use either currently or at some point of our lives. It is about supporting good public health outcomes.In this journey I do want to acknowledge the Health Committee; the officials; Minister Verrall who I acknowledge took on this bill and its life form and that that's always a challenge for any of us—as someone who took on the health portfolio halfway through the passage of this bill. I want to particularly acknowledge submitters and campaigners particularly those campaigners that are fighting for Tiriti justice for patients' rights for taking on big pharmaceutical companies and making sure that we have the balance right in this billThe changes that have happened during the course of the debate I think can be attributed to the strong grassroots campaigns that were centred on good public health outcomes and evidence-based policy. I acknowledge that for us there will need to be a continuous debate with the passage of this bill about whether the stuff that has now been left to regulations will serve the needs of our communities.There will always be that tension about whether we could have protected rongoā properly in primary legislation or whether we want to create a kind of regulatory framework for that. Equally for things like banning direct-to-consumer advertisement whether we missed the mark on following international best practice by entrenching it in primary legislation or whether we again want to leave it to regulatory frameworks.We do have examples recently of where leaving it to regulations has created tensions particularly in the medicinal cannabis framework where we then subject our Public Service to not being necessarily properly resourced to deal with the tensions between lobbying from different groups particularly those more well-resourced groups. I think this is why sometimes we do need to look at making improvements in primary legislation which we attempted to do.I think there could have been more work around the Supplementary Order Papers to perhaps have a more cross-party approach to this. It's unfortunate that we didn't get the chance to and the Supplementary Order Papers do enough cross-party work to I guess take it away from the political football and centring it more on what is the best outcome that we can achieve for our communities.But I do want to push back on the argument that the issue with this bill is the red tape that it creates. Because actually there are many instances where there are harmful medical devices that are still out there and being used in our communities. I think of particularly surgical mesh. That is an example of a medical device that its banning is well overdue and this bill will create an avenue to finally put an end to the use of surgical mesh.I think therefore we can't just cast a blanket statement about whether this bill will be good or not based on whether it's creating regulations or otherwise; but rather we must take a nuanced approach and understanding that yes there will be scrutiny post the passing of this bill to ensure the regulations are working as intended but that we can also celebrate the opportunity to actually finally put an end to some of those more harmful uses of certain devices or products that do create a risk for our communities.Finally I think I want to again acknowledge that it will be with the force of patients advocacy groups Tiriti campaigners and people who are calling us to not let big pharmaceutical companies drive this conversation to continue scrutinising this bill together. I think we will need to work together as a Parliament to support officials and resource officials to do the work that they need. I think that will be the debate to come in the next few years.So the Green Party will be supporting this bill but with the caveat of us maintaining that really really close scrutiny to ensure the regulations work. Kia ora.