Bond RiaRIA BOND (NZ First): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First and my colleague Barbara Stewart to speak on the first reading of the Health (Fluoridation of Drinking Water) Amendment Bill 2016. The current position of councils is that the local authorities fund drinking water supplies from rates and they are responsible for the decisions on fluoridation.I just want to kind of cut to the chase and say up front that New Zealand First will be opposing this bill. I am not here and neither is New Zealand First to debate whether we fluoridate or whether we do not in our communities. We are leaving it up to the communities themselves to decide that. What we are here today in the House to do is talk about the amendment in this bill. It amends Part 2A of the Health Act 1956 and the other provision of the amendment is the fact that there are two offence provisions should the water supplier actually breach these provisions. Also the fact is that this bill will actually need to look at in detail the ongoing consequential issues because we are going to have to look at amending the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000 as well.The reason why we are opposing this bill is that primarily locals know what locals need best. Fundamentally this bill is shifting decision making from local councils over to district health boards (DHBs) and I do not think that this has been addressed in the House enough so far by previous members. I want to discuss the fact that this provision of movement of powers from local councils to DHBs—we need to consider the fact that over all of our DHBs currently in New Zealand they are actually sitting there $65.5 million in the red. That is $65.5 million in total deficit for DHBs around this country. New Zealand First does actually wonder and stresses too about further burdening our DHBs by having this provision of decision making moved from local councils over to DHBs.New Zealand First does believe this is a contentious issue and that the final decision should be made by the people of New Zealand by having a referendum primarily because consumers have the democratic right to decide what is in their drinking water by referendum. It is up to local councils to enact those changes. We have already seen around the country a number of local councils take up this issue of holding a referendum. I can see that in Thames Coromandel Hamilton Hastings and Whakatāne they have actually made movements to do this. However with the Whakatāne District Council the council went against what the referendum actually preferred.In reality with the shifting of the responsibility from local councils over to our DHBs to manage this New Zealand First believes unequivocally that locals should actually get to decide that there should be a local referendum held and that that referendum should be binding. We believe that it is a continued theme from this Government to remove the democratic right of locals to choose for themselves. This bill—although I understand the intentions are actually good and it is about oral healthcare it still does not remove the fact that there is a familiar pattern of removing the rights of locals to have a referendum and decide for themselves what the position is for their community.I want to also add that what I did think about when I was reading through this bill was the fact that this bill provides two offence provisions. The Associate Minister of Health Peter Dunne himself answered a question that I was going to ask and that is what if they are a private water supplier to the council? How do they fit under this provision? The Associate Minister answered the question so eloquently which basically said that all private water suppliers that are used by the council are actually Government-owned. So what we need to look at is the fact that this is an issue. One of the offences actually carries a maximum penalty of up to $200000 but if a private provider commits an offence then they get away with it scot-free because apparently this area is outside of the scope of the bill. If they commit an offence they get away with it scot-free and do not have to pay up to the maximum penalty of $200000 and for every other offence after that initial act there is a $10000 offence penalty for those breaches. So these private water suppliers are absolutely getting away with not having to worry about being penalised not having to worry about committing an offence and there is no responsibility for that side of the suppliers back to this Government and back to our ratepayers. That is a huge concern.I also looked at the fact that—what is this bill really telling us? I have come to the assumption from taking a little bit from other speakers in the House today that really the Government does want compulsory fluoridation and is simply hiding behind their DHBs to actually enforce it. I say that the Government needs to be up front and take responsibility for compulsory fluoridation itself. On that note we do look at the fact and know that the Ministry of Health does currently hold all of the scientific evidence on the fluoridation of drinking water and that is fine—that is fine and I have got that. The issue here is why then is the Ministry of Health not providing the information to local councils? What is so hard about the left hand talking to the right hand in this instance? There is clearly an issue there and I think that the Ministry of Health should be required to actually give local councils and the public all of this information on fluoridation in their area to allow the people to make their own informed decisions via referendum. As I said at the start I am going to cut to the chase and say that New Zealand First is absolutely opposed to this bill because it takes away the decision-making process from locals to decide what is best for locals in terms of who holds the provision of power to actually be the overarching decision makers on whether to fluoridate or not. I do think that yes this bill actually—and the issue—is a hot potato and quite simply passing the buck from one to the next is not good enough. We do think that the public need to be fully informed; we do think that the public have a right to take this into consideration and that each area should actually be holding a referendum and make it binding. Thank you.