Yang Jian: Medicines Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Yang Jian: Medicines Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 28 February 2012. Volume:677;Page:615. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr JIAN YANG (National) 
: 
 First of all I must say I appreciate my colleagues on the Health Committee. We have quite a few doctors there. I am one of the doctors but I am not a medical doctor. I am a PhD so I am still learning— 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: A real doctor. 
Michael Woodhouse 
: Yes a real doctor. 
Dr JIAN YANG 
: A real doctor! As an immigrant I appreciate of course the health system in New Zealand. Based on my experience in China you may understand why immigrants like me would appreciate the health system in New Zealand. The Chinese have doctors. They are called Chinese medical doctors whom we called lang zhong. They were not licensed doctors in those days.  
In 1949 when the Communist Party came to power it started to set up a new system we called barefoot doctors. Basically we recruited educated young people to come to some kind of training and then we sent them to rural areas to make sure that peasants would have some kind of medical services from the Government. In those years of course the Chinese were poor. The Chinese Government was trying hard to make sure that the Chinese people would have some kind of basic medical treatment. It was very basic. The barefoot doctors walked through the countryside door by door and provided this very basic medical treatment.  
In the end of course the Chinese people started to have more medical colleges and more and more qualified doctors. These days in China you will find many hospitals but each hospital is always full always crowded simply because there are 1.3 billion people in China. It is a huge population. It is very hard to take care of all these people although there are many doctors there. So what happens in China is that you have to have good connections to make sure you can be treated timely and the Chinese Government has to make a huge effort to invest in medical services. Still it is very very difficult for many Chinese to get the proper treatment unless you have a lot of money to buy better services. 
In New Zealand of course the National Government is committed to delivering high-quality modern public services within a tight Budget while reducing back-office costs. We understand that we have done extremely well in training and in having more doctors and more nurses. The National Government has invested hugely and made a huge effort trying to increase the number of doctors and nurses. And we did and it has been very successful. We all know that all New Zealanders deserve a public health service they can rely on and with more doctors and more nurses we can do this. Now we give more power to nurses to prescribe medicines and that will make things even better. We appreciate New Zealand’s health system but we can make it even better by reducing the paperwork and by giving more authority to nurses and other medical officers.  
This Medicines Amendment Bill is another step in National’s drive for better sooner and more convenient health-care. We also must remember that we are going to have a larger population dependent on health care. In the next few decades the number could double. We cannot double our hospitals nor can we double the number of doctors and nurses in New Zealand. Therefore this bill is a creative way to improve our health system and medical system. Thank you.