SpeechKEVIN HAGUE (Green): To refresh my memory of what this bill is about—it seems to have taken a very very long time to come back. Interestingly the first part of the bill which deals with the powers of medical officers of health and modernises that regime actually drew those sections largely from the Public Health Bill. When I was refreshing my memory about this bill I noted that in my first reading speech I spoke about the fact that the Public Health Bill was reported back to the House on 26 June 2008 and at the time of the first reading of this bill the Health (Protection) Amendment Bill the Public Health Bill stood at No. 34 on the Order Paper—in other words towards the lower end of the Government's priorities. Modernising public health legislation was not a priority; and if it was not a priority then it is even less of a priority now because the bill has now entirely disappeared from the Order Paper. So the other changes that were intended with the Public Health Bill are now presumably lost to this Parliament at least until there is a change of Government.Jacqui Dean in her contribution just now put her finger on something that has always puzzled me which is: how did it come to be that these powers of medical officers of health in relation to communicable diseases were placed in the same bill that actually dealt with the regulatory regime that should apply to sunbeds? These two matters actually relate to quite different types of control and if one were to be regulating sunbeds there are some other matters that could also be regulated at the same time if one took an objective perspective on controlling some of the risks of non-communicable disease to New Zealanders. One thinks particularly of the food environment for example.So I have had a very interesting personal experience in my work career that related to the issue of the powers of medical officers of health. When I was the chief executive of the New Zealand Aids Foundation I had to deal with a couple of situations where we had become aware of a person who had HIV engaging in multiple and frequent behaviours that posed a risk of transmitting that HIV to other people; and no amount of conversation with these two people seemed able to change their behaviour in any way. So on that occasion I sought advice from the Ministry of Health and asked: What are the measures that the ministry could recommend to me that I could take that would reduce the risk of transmission to other people?". The ministry took a while to provide some advice and the advice that it provided in the end was fairly equivocal but what it amounted to was that there is one power in law that medical officers of health have had since the Health Act which is one of those very longstanding pieces of legislation. They have pretty sweeping powers that aim to detain people indefinitely with very little in the way of checks and balances on their human rights and that is about it—you know that was the power that was available under New Zealand law.Since that time I have been a very strong advocate for modernising that provision because although that provision might be necessary in the most extreme case there are many less extreme cases in which some degree of exercise of power by the medical officer of health would seem to be appropriate and necessary without going to that length and while retaining greater recognition of the human rights and indeed civil rights of the individual whose liberty or freedom is in some way being constrained. I had some significant involvement in the drafting of the clauses that appeared in the Public Health Bill and so it was with some sadness that I saw that bill languishing—and it is with some relief more than pleasure that I see this bill finally moving through its third reading and becoming law today.I want to say a little bit about sunbeds because the decision made by the Government to retain sunbeds and restrict them just on the basis of age really flies in the face of the evidence that the Health Committee heard and it is contradictory to conclusions that other Governments have made when faced with the same evidence. The select committee heard some extremely powerful evidence particularly from Consumer New Zealand. Consumer New Zealand referred to the mystery shopper surveys that it had undertaken with providers of these solaria services. What it was particularly looking for was the extent to which the regulation and the guidance that the Ministry of Health had provided for the industry were actually being relayed to customers of the industry. And the answer was: hardly at all. This was not just a one-off intervention on the part of Consumer New Zealand; in fact it has held a number of mystery shopper surveys of the industry and I guess the Government's position might be supportable if those surveys had showed some kind of progress—perhaps not complete implementation of the regulation by the ministry and perhaps not perfect education of clients using those services but at least improving it. It does not.Despite the best efforts presumably of the Ministry of Health the industry is still not complying with regulation. It is still not providing information to the clients of those services that would enable them to make an informed decision—as Jacqui Dean has just spoken about—about whether or not to use a service that actually poses to them a significant risk of skin cancer. So in a situation where consumers of a service cannot in fact make that judgment for themselves—they simply do not have the information—and the industry refuses to meet its obligation to provide that information how should a Government respond? Sunbeds offer—in almost all cases apart from a very small number of medical uses—no actual benefit to their users and they pose a very substantial risk that the industry is not willing to mitigate. That is a case of market failure. That is a case where a responsible Government would step in to protect its citizens and this Government should have done that."