O'Connor SimonSIMON O'CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I am pleased to take a call on the first reading of the Newborn Enrolment with General Practice Bill in the name of my colleague Dr Parmjeet Parmar. I am hoping if I am not being presumptuous about the vote that this bill will come to the Health Committee and we can give it our consideration. I think the intention of this bill is excellent. I think the way it has been initially drafted is very good but I would say too that there is some work that we will as a committee need to do to tighten this up. I think that is actually quite appropriate in a select committee process and we have often found that with members' bills. I can think of an organ donation bill recently where we had to do some work on it and of some other members' bills that have come before us.No one here will disagree about the importance of our young ones—in fact I find it a little refreshing. Today I have just come from a talk on the other side of life if you will around issues of death so actually it is a real refresh to come into the House at the moment and talk about new life—it is quite fantastic and a nice contrast. No one would disagree that we need to look after our young ones and one of the best things we can do in healthcare and particularly in the primary care space is to get our young ones—our newborns—enrolled as quickly as possible. It informs a relationship which often becomes enduring but primarily it is important for the health of the child.We know already—in fact there has been some argument that we should be trying to pre-enrol children particularly so that they can get their pertussis injections early. This bill obviously does not go that far but what it is doing is saying that once a baby is born the lead maternity carer must basically send in a request to a general practice and say that this baby has been born and needs to be enrolled and the general practice then has a time limit imposed on it to reply in order to say yes or no. Anyone who is involved in the health sector—and I do acknowledge my colleague David Clark—will know that some general practices have full books and in fact a number of GP practices have very full books; some do not. It is really important that the parent or the parents know whether the child has been enrolled or not. I suppose that begins to set up part of the problem that we face in this dynamic.Currently when a child is born the lead carer—more often than not if not almost exclusively these days a midwife—will put that baby's name into the National Immunisation Register. That is an excellent thing in and of itself but in many ways the parent or parents begin to lose a little bit of control at that point. So once the baby's name is in the register if it is declined—so if a general practice says Look we'd love to take little baby George on but we're too full."—that is never really informed back to the parents nor is it informed back to the midwife. So there is always a chance that the child effectively gets lost in the system and the problem that happens there is that really when the child becomes sick—which is not of course something that we want—it is only then usually that a parent or parents will seek out a GP and seek out a practice and seek to get assistance.That is particularly important when we come back to the whole question of vaccination. So of course we are talking about not only looking after the child for a health need but actually getting it its vaccinations at the right time. It is not that you absolutely need to get your vaccinations on the exact day but generally when we say there is a 3- or a 6- or a 9-month vaccination that is when it should happen for the child.So Dr Parmar's bill is addressing this. It is fixing up a process issue I would suggest. Again as I said at the start it is asking that the lead maternity carer identifies where the parent wants to send their—[Bell rung] Sorry Mr Deputy Speaker—point of order.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: You have got 1 minute. SIMON O'CONNOR: One minute? Sorry I was never sure whether it was a 5-minute or a 10-minute—oh yes the clock. Right thank you Mr Deputy Speaker. The key critical element here is that the lead carer informs the general practice. They identify with the parent what they want and they inform that general practice. The general practice then has 2 weeks I believe—2 weeks—to either affirm or decline the decision. Really importantly I think and really critically within this bill it is—[Interruption] Oh really critically in this bill—sorry I am getting mixed messages from across the House here which is a little bit concerning to me. But anyway—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: They do not look very mixed to me.SIMON O'CONNOR: Look the critical element is that actually the general practice needs to inform the parents of whether their child is or is not actually enrolled in the programme and that ultimately enables the child to get the care that it sufficiently—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am sorry but I do not know what it will take to make the member sit down other than me standing on my feet."