Verrall AyeshaHon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Associate Minister of Health): Mr Chair thank you very much. It's a pleasure to speak to the House in committee tonight on this very important bill. I think it's worth just recapping some of past events because it's been some time since the bill was last in the House. Just one of the things that I reflected on in our second reading debate most recently was that I think every party that spoke in the debate agreed on the importance of fluoridation as a health intervention to make sure that all people but particularly young people are able to enjoy good oral health. In a time when many important health interventions are subject to misinformation I thought it was a heartening reflection on the state of our democracy that all parties would align themselves with science on such an important decision.To recap the journey of this bill the Health (Fluoridation of Drinking Water) Amendment Bill came to Parliament and was submitted in 2016. It sought to respond to the request of territorial authorities to take the decision making from a local government setting into a health setting because the territorial authorities were often lobbied very vigorously on decisions about fluoridation and they felt poorly resourced to be able to respond to those questions.At the time of this Parliament the bill had already been to the Health Committee and it had had extensive hearings in the past. In this Parliament what the Government has sought to do is to move decision making from district health boards as in the original bill to the director-general and we've done that to seek a nationally consistent approach. We know that currently we have a patchwork of different approaches across the country with only 50 percent of the population having access to water supplies that are fluoridated.We also wanted to give the decision to an official who is resourced and equipped to make the decision and take the science of fluoride away from being from being litigated in every part of the country. So that is the purpose of Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 38 that was referred to select committee. I want to thank all the members of the select committee who considered the bill. They were focused on the—sorry that considered the SOP because the select committee hearing was just on that matter and I appreciate the time in which they applied themselves to those questions. Of the submissions that they received in relation to the issues in the SOP the majority as is documented in their report favoured the approach that we're outlining in this SOP—that the decision maker should be the director-general—and mostly from the perspective of promoting national consistency. I notice the select committee has also made a very helpful suggestion that the director-general should consult with the Director of Public Health. Our intention is to support that SOP as well. It's a very constructive suggestion and of course it reminds us that there may be situations in the future where the director-general is not a public health physician and the opportunity to get that extra advice from someone specialist in public health would add to the consideration that these issues are given. So I'm very happy to take questions from members on the SOP and the bill.