Hague Kevin: Radiation Safety Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHague Kevin: Radiation Safety Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 03 November 2015. Volume:709;Page:7642. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KEVIN HAGUE (Green): I begin as some others have by thanking the officials who served the Health Committee and the other select committee members. I thought it was a very useful and collegial way of approaching the bill. I will come back to the contribution made by the officials towards the end of this contribution but I also want to say thank you to the submitters. The submissions were small in number and my experience is that that usually—not always but usually—indicates a fair degree of satisfaction with the content of a bill. Indeed most of the submissions were at least broadly very supportive of the bill with some minor amendments.The bill sets out to do three main things. It does some modernising and the changes made to the penalty regime for example are an example of that aspect of the bill. It brings New Zealand’s domestic legislation into line with international agreements and standards to which we are party—in fact to which we have been party for some considerable time. As Annette King has noted the reform is indeed somewhat overdue. The other thing that it does is reflect the changing circumstances. In 1965 as others have spoken of—it was a major theme as I recall of the first reading debate about this bill as to what 1965 was like. But at that time in relation to radiation safety—actually I went to The Sound of Music the movie as well. It is a great film and I heartedly endorse it for your education.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): The member will get out of the hills and back to the bill thank you.KEVIN HAGUE: So in 1965 the sources of ionising radiation were generally in the control of easily identifiable individuals. One of the things that has occurred in the intervening time is that that is less and less the case. And in general—Hon David Parker: General MacArthur.KEVIN HAGUE: As I continue the suggestions of themes from 1965 are flooding in from other members around the House but I will not be distracted by that. I am going to focus on the bill. But one of those changes has been the change from identifiable individuals to institutional settings: hospitals universities and research institutions. One of the things that this bill does is create a machinery for accountability in those circumstances.My major concern with the bill has been over this issue of whether it should also continue to include only ionising sources of radiation or also non-ionising sources in its scope. I guess there are a number of reasons why I was concerned about that issue. First of all the original recommendation as Annette King has said was for both ionising and non-ionising radiation to be covered by the bill. So it seems prima facie that that is what we should be considering.Secondly the Health Committee in particular as Louisa Wall has mentioned has been particularly exercised—and was at the time that we were considering this bill—by sunbeds and solaria which are sources of non-ionising radiation that clearly were the source of considerable harm. And of course non-ionising radiation covers a variety of sources. It covers visible light ultraviolet light radio frequencies and indeed some other parts of the spectrum. So the potential harm from those sources suggested that non-ionising radiation should also be in the scope of the bill.I guess the other reason that I was inclined to think that both should be included was one of administrative efficiency. My background is in hospital administration. It is regular for a magnetic resonance imaging machine to be in one room and to have X-ray machines in the room next door. One is the source of ionising radiation and one is the source of non-ionising radiation. It seems inefficient to have totally different regulatory regimes to control the use of the radiation sources in those machines. I was very interested in the evidence that the committee heard on that topic. I guess I was reassured somewhat by the fact that the submissions that we did receive did not suggest that it was necessary to combine the two into one Act. In fact there was only one submission that made that suggestion and that submission seemed to being a little off beam in its contents whereas all of the authoritative submissions that we received agreed that the scope was correctly restricted to just ionising radiation.There are effectively two options for regulating both ionising and non-ionising radiation. One is to have a single Act that covers both in its scope which would then have to have separate regimes covered under the umbrella of that Act to cope with the different effects of the different types of radiation. The other approach is to take the one that we currently have which is to have an Act that deals with ionising radiation only and have other regimes—through standards and regulations and in some cases other statutes—to deal with the non-ionising sources. The committee has chosen to go down the second of those and there are several reasons for that.Others have spoken about the difference between ionising and non-ionising radiation but what I particularly want to highlight having perhaps been the one who most strongly raised these concerns in the first reading debate is that the effects of the different types of radiation are so strikingly different. In particular ionising radiation interacts with the body by penetrating the body and producing large numbers of ions or charged atoms and in consequence we measure ionising radiation by the absorption of energy by body mass. Mass is the unit we use to describe ionising radiation. On the non-ionising side we measure the impact by the heating effect on the surface of the body and that is where the risk of non-ionising radiation lies. These are quite different types of effects and so if we were to combine them in a single Act we would still need entirely different regimes within that Act to accomplish the regulation that we need.That is not to say that the standards and the regulation that we have for all sources of non-ionising radiation are fit for purpose and I certainly want to see a programme of modernising of those also. I would support Louisa Wall’s suggestion—which the Ministry of Health had no objection to in fact—of relabelling this bill the “Ionising Radiation Safety Bill”. I think that that would provide some clarity.It is this point of clarity and education that I want to finish on. As other members have said the Health Committee was extremely well served by the fantastic advice that we had from health officials. But the New Zealand public also needs that same level of education and science literacy that was delivered to the Health Committee. I am a person who does have a physics degree and the thought of speaking in the second reading and revisiting this legislation and rereading our report makes my head hurt so let us think about the New Zealand public and actually put our minds to educating them about scientific principles. Thank you.