Luxon ChristopherCHRISTOPHER LUXON (National—Botany): Mr Speaker it's a real pleasure to rise and take a short call on this bill the Health (Fluoridation of Drinking Water) Amendment Bill. It's the first time I've spoken in this House for several months and so—SPEAKER: Welcome back. CHRISTOPHER LUXON: —it's nice to be back and I appreciate that in your own inimical style you'll correct me—SPEAKER: I understand your garden's been going well. CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I heard that too yeah. I saw yours—it looked great. Also can I acknowledge Minister Verrall and congratulate her on getting this job done—it's certainly made a lot easier by not having New Zealand First in a coalition agreement—and can I also acknowledge my colleague Dr Shane Reti who I think has been very passionate at a personal level over many many years around this subject. As we know this is about transferring powers around fluoridation from local government into the DHBs. That was the plan until the DHBs have been disbanded and now it's being directed to the Director-General of Health to take sole responsibility for that. Of course that is part of a broader centralisation and control agenda that we see with this Government whether it be around vocational education whether it be around three waters or whether it be around the Resource Management Act and planning reform and I would put it to you the initial COVID response as well. But it is disappointing for that reason that we didn't get Government support for our amendment which was fundamentally to make sure that the director-general would actually engage with local health officials before making that directive. But having said all of that it's important that we take the rot out of the system we get to the root of the cause and we actually support this bill because it is an outstanding bill that will most importantly generate great outcomes for our young people across New Zealand. I left Pētone Jackson Street—Unilever—and I went overseas for 16 years and I remember leaving London and arriving in Chicago and you are dazzled by the bright lights of people smiling in America with their gleaming white teeth. They make jokes about poor British teeth and the condition of them but the reality is that our situation here in New Zealand hasn't been much better if we're really honest. I remember as a kid getting called and waiting in dread for the loudspeaker to come over to say Chris Luxon can you please go to the dental nurse." in what we knew as the murder house. Away they'd go on your teeth and there would be multiple fillings in each tooth and I don't know whether they got pleasure from it but I certainly know that I didn't. But actually sadly it hasn't improved much over that time. When you think as many of my colleagues have alluded to that 12 percent of under-14-year-olds have had a tooth pulled—100000 kids—and it's actually 17 percent of kids that are Māori and Pasifika it impacts people in the more challenged and deprived situations more than anyone else and those are really sobering and staggering statistics that we need to do something about. So it is awesome that we are coming together in this House to be able to support this bill and do exactly that. Incredibly this is a bill that will deliver outcomes and that's what we're here to do. We're here to get outcomes for the New Zealand people and this is one of those ones that I think gets disproportionate outcomes and delivers for an extra 1.5 million people and it will obviously save us a lot of money in our public health system. So it is a win-win-win kind of scenario. I do want to acknowledge what Dr Kerekere said about the rampant misinformation that has been taking place around this debate. The National Party is backing the science of fluoridation—no doubt about it. We have 60 years of history we have a Royal Society of New Zealand report on it we have our Prime Minister's Chief Science Advisor's advice on it and I want the public to know that it's incredibly safe. It's completely safe and reasonable that we are doing this. So it's good that this is being signed into law. It's probably taken a bit longer than it needed to but it's great that we're getting it done. It's good that we're doing it in a bipartisan way and I commend this bill to the House."