King Annette: Medicines Amendment Bill — In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKing Annette: Medicines Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 19 November 2013. Volume:695;Page:15059. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai): Labour will support this bill the Medicines Amendment Bill. It is an interim measure it is a sticking plaster it is a patchover until the Government progresses the Australia New Zealand Therapeutic Products Agency which was to be set up under a treaty that was signed between Australia and New Zealand in 2003. So it is not a comprehensive overhaul of the Medicines Act but a couple of little measures to progress it along the way after being delayed by political posturing for almost 7 years. Why was there a need in fact to even look at a joint agency? I did mention some of this in the Committee stage. We needed to resolve a special exemption for therapeutic goods under the Trans-Tasman Mutual Recognition Arrangement in a manner that facilitated trans-Tasman trade and to enhance Closer Economic Relations (CER) between Australia and New Zealand. You see it was one part of CER that had not been resolved in the late 1990s and the New Zealand system and the Australian system for regulating therapeutic goods were so different that it necessitated a special exemption. That special exemption was given in 1997-98.We were then required to work on getting rid of this exemption and we could have done it in three ways. It could have been a mutual recognition a permanent exemption or a harmonisation of regulation. It was decided by the then National Government in 1999 when the New Zealand and Australian health Ministers agreed that they would go down the harmonisation track for regulatory requirements for therapeutic goods as the best option under the Trans-Tasman Mutual Recognition Arrangement. So the then Minister of Health Wyatt Creech started the process towards having a joint agency between Australia and New Zealand. That was when the National Party had members of Parliament who were sensible and who were prepared to look at the trade issues and the health issues and to progress them in a sensible manner. But unfortunately when there was a change of Government and a change of spokespeople the bill became nothing more than a political plaything for the then National spokesperson on health who is now the Minister of Health. And play with it he did to the extent that he was able to delay the passage of any part of this bill until today under urgency.Maryan Street set out a very good record of what happened when she was a new member of Parliament coming into the Health Committee with Tony Ryall there as the Opposition spokesperson and watching how National had gone from supporting an agency in Government to opposing it when in Opposition. The irony of this—and I amsure members who were on that committee will understand the irony—is that the bill on the Order Paper that will set up this agency the very bill was in my name in 2007. Not one word of it has been changed. The very thing National members railed against which they went out on the street and argued against—and said that it was evil it was bad and it could not be done—is the bill that is No. 47 on the Order Paper. My name was taken off and Mr Ryall’s was put on. Well what an irony that is. It must be one of the biggest U-turns and pieces of political cant that I have ever—Hon Trevor Mallard: An S-turn.Hon ANNETTE KING: It is an S-turn—an S-turn. Well it is; I think that is right.Hon Trevor Mallard: Two U-turns.Hon ANNETTE KING: Yes it was an S-turn and it very much suits this particular Minister.You see the shame of this is that many of the good things that are in this bill could have been done all of those years ago. I agree with my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway that we have got some wonderful health professionals in New Zealand. With the changes made to prescribing in this bill these health professionals could be out there providing enhanced services—particularly in rural and provincial New Zealand and in specialised areas of health—but they have been held up because it was not important enough to pass. But under urgency today we now need to pass it in a hurry. It makes a nonsense of this Government’s legislative timetable but it makes an even bigger nonsense of its hapless Minister of Health who for purely political reasons held up this joint agency.I will be interested to see whether the Hon Christopher Pyne who is now the Leader of the House in Australia and the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott who gave so many concessions to New Zealand to ensure that we had a fair deal will be prepared to sit round the table and give those concessions back to us again. They are going to say: “Hey can we be sure that you will do it this time?”. I think that they will be very reluctant to go down this track unless there is some assurance. The assurance that we can give the Government is that we will not be playing politics with the joint agency. We will be looking at the greater good for New Zealand. That is what this Government ought to do. All I can say is shame on Tony Ryall. This delay is his delay.