O'Connor Simon: Radiation Safety Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Connor Simon: Radiation Safety Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 03 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9382. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): It is becoming quite a habit to follow after the Hon Annette King. I am particularly pleased that Labour and I believe all parties are supporting this bill in the House.The Radiation Safety Bill today in its third reading is a relatively simply piece of legislation by its nature but complex in its details. I say it is relatively simple because as a piece of legislation it really is here to do two things. One is just to update the domestic regulations structures and operations—the logistical elements if you will—of how we deal with radiation and we will come to the whole ionising and non-ionising element in a moment. There is the domestic side that the bill seeks to update and then there is the international side.Just to touch on the international side quickly and briefly. New Zealand in so many ways has chosen to oblige itself with a variety of international agreements on a whole lot of things. One of them is around the likes of radiation and the management of radiation. As has been pointed out by other speakers in this debate and in the past the current radiation safety Act—or as it is actually known the Radiation Protection Act—was passed in 1965. The treaties that were about and other things have changed since then and so this bill brings us into line with international agreements. It is something that we as a Parliament are required to do if you will if we are going to maintain those relationships. Importantly too it means that we will accord ourselves with the various principles of the agencies. Some of them are monitored through the UN. So that is quite important.I will just state for the record that this bill does not affect the nuclear-free legislation of New Zealand or any of the disarmament Acts. That sometimes gets raised with me and others but this bill is dealing with ionising radiation and what we are talking about—think of the likes of magnetic resonance imaging and think of X-rays. That is the sort of area that we are talking about.We are also talking a lot of things medical. Most radiation sources in New Zealand are down two sides or two camps. One is research. If you go into any of the universities of New Zealand there will be radiation sources often used in the science departments and the medical departments. The second area where you will find a lot of devices and I think there are about 4500 licences—in other words 4500 instances where radiation sources are able to be used. The other big player bar research is medical. So obviously there are the scanning technologies and often technologies for the treatment of various cancers. Brachytherapy comes to mind and ionised or radiated metal balls that are used in order to destroy cancers. You have ionised iodine often used for the likes of thyroid cancers and so forth. So that is what we are talking about there.There has been plenty of debate and some part of me—a very small part of me—will miss the constant discussions in the Health Committee about ionising and non-ionising radiation. None of us are nuclear physicists but I have to say after all those discussions I feel far more comfortable about the distinction now—but it is only somewhat tongue-in-cheek when I say that I will miss those ongoing discussions. Look I am not going to get into the science of it but needless to say with the advice that we are given and which I and I think all members understand the distinction is very very clear between things and also in the nature of the examples that are given. We heard it from the previous speaker Annette King. You know the likes of non-ionising radiation—we are talking about the likes of sunbeds and Wi-Fi and power poles and so forth OK? It is quite a distinct difference between that and the irradiating of metal objects as in brachytherapy and so on.So we understand why and I think it is important for people out there to understand as well that just because this bill does not cover the likes of power lines and Wi-Fi and the like does not mean that there are not regulations and guidance around it. There is plenty of that through other legislative measures. That is quite positive in and of itself.The select committee itself was very constructive. I think we realised very early on that we were at one level out of our depth here in the scientific knowledge. But one of the great things about select committees is that we actually have two ears two eyes and one mouth and we used those I think exceedingly well to listen see and speak to the officials. So once again I want to acknowledge their work and advice and speaking personally acknowledge them for actually taking sometimes very complex ideas and breaking them down in a way that I could understand. I think that helped us as a committee move forward. I think what we have done was very collegial and as previous speakers have indicated has brought a very good bill back to this House.In concluding because we have spoken on this many many times I just want to touch on a few of the changes that the select committee brought forward. One really important one is particularly for users in medical fields dental and otherwise. We put in a new clause to say that basically if someone has a licence they can have someone else work under their supervision. OK there are a few nuances around that but basically if I were to read it an unlicensed user can use a radiation source while they are under the direct supervision of someone else. So again licences must be given to someone who is going to use the radiation source. Ionised iodine and brachytherapy treatments—as long as the source user and the holder of the licence has given permission then someone else is able to be guided through that process.For those who are military minded be absolutely assured that the legislation as proposed here at the third reading does not prejudice the rights of national security or therefore of our defence forces. There are other rules that assist there. Also importantly initially in the bill we just talked about enforcement officers. We did go through that quite carefully to make sure that people understood that the likes of the police chief fire officers and others can have some jurisdiction in this space if something was to go wrong.Finally the importance of codes of practices has been written into the bill and that links me back to where I started which is around the whole thing of how this is updating our international obligations. In doing so we were able to tap into international best practice which informs our codes of practice. So this is a good bill. It has been worked on very well by the Health Committee. I think we can be very happy with the progress of this bill and I commend it to the House title and all.