Tinetti JanJAN TINETTI (Labour): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. Not being on the Health Committee this has been a day—when I found out I was going to be speaking on this bill—of really looking into it and finding out exactly what this bill stood for and I have to say that I do actually congratulate the member Parmjeet Parmar on the intent of this bill. You cannot argue with the intent of this bill and we as Government understand that. We know that this bill seeks to improve the health and social outcomes of our young children—of some of our most vulnerable. But the way to deal with our most vulnerable—and here is a fundamental difference between Government and Opposition—is not just to legislate. Just to legislate is not the first option that you go to.I would actually like to commend the work of the select committee in really digging into this and this is a perfect example of how powerful select committees are in this Parliament. Select committees are able to go in and really work out what are some of the best approaches to working with our most vulnerable in our country listening to the experts listening to the people who know. One of the things that I've been doing today is going through those submissions that the select committee had the privilege to listen to and there are a couple of the submissions that I actually want to highlight here tonight which have pointed out that that legislative approach is not always the best way of actually dealing with our most vulnerable people. It is not the first port of call.The first submission that I want to point to is from the New Zealand Medical Association who really agreed—again like we do—with the intent of the bill. It thought that the intent was good—it's what we need to look at towards how we're going to be dealing with our young children our babies and getting them enrolled with a GP. But Rather than pursue"—I'm just quoting from their submission—"a legislative approach to improve newborn enrolment rates we suggest that it would be useful to gain a better understanding of … reasons why some regions and populations have lower newborn enrolment rates." Automatically going to—this is me saying that now not them—the legislative way of dealing with it straight away is not actually going to find out the fundamental root causes of why some demographics and some regions have low enrolment rates of their newborns. That information has to be found out first. You can't automatically go to putting legislation in place because that's not going to change those fundamental root causes.They go on to say in their submission "We believe that a quality improvement approach incorporating education and improved communication between all parties is preferable to a legislative approach to this issue." and certainly as we've heard from all of the speakers here on this side of the House tonight that is already happening. That work is happening with the district health boards and their approach to newborn enrolments and is the reason why we are seeing such an increase in that particular area.Another submission that I want to highlight—which follows on from that and follows on from the previous speaker Marama Davidson as well—is that from Hāpai te Hauora. They talk about whether the legislative approach is always appropriate for Māori. First of all what we have to do is actually make sure that we understand why there are lower rates of enrolment within the Māori population. They talk about how going straight away to that legislative approach may actually be fundamentally a bad approach for our Māori population and they have huge concerns. Again though they do talk about in their submission how the intent of this legislation is good but actually could be more harmful in the end.I think that those submissions need to be listened to. That's exactly what we have done on this side of the House. Also my colleague Dr Liz Craig talked about the submission from the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners—people who deal with this on a daily basis are telling the select committee that the bill is not necessary.We believe in a quality improvement approach. It is happening. We want to see that work continue but this bill does not do that so therefore we do not commend it to the House."