Kedgley Sue: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill Health and Disability Commissioner Amendment Bill Medicines Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Kedgley Sue: Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Bill Health and Disability Commissioner Amendment Bill Medicines Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
[Volume:611;Page:8628] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party will be supporting this legislation but it does so with some very serious misgivings. The best amendment made to the legislation was the requirement to review the Act in 3 years’ time—a proposal I might add put up by the Green Party. As will many others we will be waiting very eagerly for that review. I am sure that some very important issues needing to be reviewed will be raised when that time comes. 
Certainly we agree about the need for a consistent transparent framework for the registration of health professionals and for robust consumer-friendly and streamlined disciplinary procedures that apply to all health professions. We acknowledge that consumers—or many of them—are disillusioned with the health system in particular the complaints system and that perhaps hundreds of men and women have been frustrated and humiliated and have suffered anguish and distress as they sought to pursue complaints through the health system. Many have suffered intolerable delays in trying to get their complaints through the system. It is extraordinary that in the past up to 14 different agencies have been separately able to investigate the same medical event. So there is an urgent need to streamline the complaints system and we hope that the creation of a one-stop shop recommended by Helen Cull and certain specific things such as the 3-week time frames will help to streamline the investigation of complaints in the health system. 
We also acknowledge that in the past some practitioners have been unfairly taken through the complaints system and that there is a need to protect health professionals from vexatious complaints which can be traumatic time consuming and cause them huge stress and financial loss even if they are eventually cleared of the charges. We believe that the ability of the Health and Disability Commissioner to dismiss vexatious complaints will help to protect practitioners from having to go through unnecessary trauma and stress. 
There are some very positive aspects to this legislation but other aspects of it cause us serious concern. Our particular concern is the degree of control this legislation gives any Minister of Health in this or any future Government over all the health professions in New Zealand. It gives the Minister the right personally to appoint up to 14 members of every governing authority established under the legislation and that power will give the Minister considerable control over the members of all the governing bodies in the land. Every member of an authority who is appointed by the Minister will be in a very real sense beholden to that Minister for his or her reappointment and that will act as a strong incentive not to rock the boat to toe the line and so forth—just as it does with all the appointed members of district health boards. We have noted how the personally appointed chairs of district health boards around New Zealand have sought to keep controversial or difficult issues out of the media and to try to control the members of those boards. That is a very real concern as is the fact that the Minister has the power to resolve any contentious or unresolved issues to do with scopes of practice. The Minister also has the power to decide what will be and what will not be a controlled activity. All those things will have very significant and far-reaching effects. The Minister—and the Minister alone—will make those decisions. 
We were very surprised that United Future did not support our amendment to establish the democratic right to allow up to 50 percent of members of a health profession to elect members of their authority. Electing members of the authority would give members of a profession some sense of ownership over that profession. It would also mean that its elected members would not be beholden to the Minister of Health for their appointments so the amendment would have given the health professions some important independence. 
I am astonished that United Future did not support that amendment as all parties in the House apart from Labour did. The Green Party managed to get an amendment through the Committee stage that says that the Minister may come up with regulations to allow some practitioners to be democratically elected. We will be watching that very closely and looking forward to the Minister promulgating those regulations. That is one of many measures we will be scrutinising in the review to make sure it has happened. 
Like others we have huge concerns about scopes of practice becoming narrow and restrictive. In acupuncture for example—as the previous speaker mentioned—how does one decide on scopes of practice where three different professions are practising acupuncture and how will that issue be resolved without it being to the detriment of acupuncturists who are outside of this bill? That is something else we will be watching extremely carefully. 
One of our overriding concerns is that this bill leaves virtually all the detail of the system to be decided by regulation after the bill has been adopted. It basically gives no parliamentary scrutiny to all of the serious issues that have been addressed today. We have this parliamentary mechanism called an Order in Council which I do not think the public fully understands. It may sound nice but it is a secret mechanism that involves no parliamentary scrutiny. All of these things will be able to be decided by Order in Council without any parliamentary scrutiny and we have enormous concerns about that. 
We are delighted that pharmacy was not deregulated. There was an attempt to deregulate all pharmacies in New Zealand but the Green Party used its influence to oppose that as did all the pharmacies in the land. That provision was contained in the original bill but has been dropped and we are enormously pleased about that. 
Finally we are extraordinarily concerned that acupuncturists—who have been seeking statutory recognition for 20 years and who made very strong recommendations on this bill—are not covered in this legislation. If this bill were focused on consumer protection acupuncturists would have been one of the professions covered. I believe the decision not to include acupuncturists was a purely political decision just as it was a political decision to include osteopaths. Osteopaths were given an assurance at the last election that they would be included and we are delighted that they are but there is no reason not to include acupuncturists. Arguably acupuncturists have a much stronger case than osteopaths because acupuncturists who poke unsterilised needles into people can cause huge harm to the public of New Zealand—more harm than most. Acupuncturists are very aware that unregulated persons can set themselves up as acupuncturists and bring the entire profession into disrepute not to mention the risk of harm to others in New Zealand. 
Steve Chadwick 
: They will get there. 
SUE KEDGLEY 
: The chair of the Health Committee Steve Chadwick who has been very supportive in trying to get acupuncturists together assures me they will get there. I hope she is right and I can assure members that I will be watching this issue very carefully. I am worried that medical acupuncturists who are already covered by this bill will seek to keep out in a patch-protection way those acupuncturists who are not covered by it.