Goodhew Jo: Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill — First Reading 
Goodhew Jo: Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:636;Page:7089] 
JO GOODHEW (National—Aoraki) 
: 
 I rise also to oppose the Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill along with my National Party colleagues and others on this side of the House. My opposition to this bill will focus on the barriers to health-care options that this bill brings to Parliament and the people of New Zealand—those of cost and choice. The bill will impose significant costs on small and not-so-small businesses within the framework of therapeutic products. New Zealand has a 95 percent reliance on small to medium enterprises or businesses to keep the economy of this country chugging along. It is an unwise Government that does not take notice of how important those small businesses are to New Zealand. Those same businesses have been hammered repeatedly by compliance cost burdens in the last 7 years. It is no wonder the small businesses that will be affected by this bill are crying foul. 
Before the supporters of the bill can claim otherwise I want to assure the House that I am not supporting the sale of unsafe products to members of the public but as is so often the case this Government charges on blindly ignoring the risk of unintended consequences and without due care to prevent this legislation from bringing some businesses to their knees. This bill should be called the “Therapeutic Products (Anti-small-business) Bill”. 
This bill will create a barrier to health-care options by reducing choice. Choice reduction will follow the inability of small niche products to survive the processes and costs associated with this bill. National’s opposition to this regime is because of its costly and restrictive nature. National is not prepared to jeopardise the viability of hundreds of small businesses nor the choice of thousands of consumers—in fact over a million consumers. Small-business owners in my electorate have pleaded with me to oppose this bill. They know that their viability is at risk and just as important is their concern for their clients. I have had lists of people who rely on being able to access a product that works for them. I have been offered those lists but I have taken the word of the business people who have talked to me. 
It is time perhaps to ponder for a moment or two on Annette King’s performance on this issue. She truly has destroyed the opportunity for a cross-party approach to solving this issue for New Zealand. 
Dr Jackie Blue 
: There was no consultation. 
JO GOODHEW 
: We had Labour-style consultation. We could have ironed out some of the fatal flaws in this legislation but Labour did not take up that opportunity. 
Dr Jackie Blue 
: No consultation. 
Darren Hughes 
: That’s not true. 
JO GOODHEW 
: Let me tell members more of the history. The Health Committee made repeated attempts to garner more information about this bill but those attempts failed. Speaking as a member of the select committee I tell Mr Hughes that that is the truth. Such was the lack of consultation by the Minister. 
Darren Hughes 
: Did you ask a question like Jackie Blue did? 
JO GOODHEW 
: Jackie Blue has told this House that she asked the question and got a nonsense answer. What more could we expect! Annette King signed the treaty against the wishes of other parties. This bill is Annette King’s pride and joy. This is something for which Annette King has authorised the spending of millions of dollars over the past few years and she really does not want to see it fail. So she had to call in some very big favours. 
Darren Hughes 
: It’s called consultation. 
JO GOODHEW 
: From the minor parties New Zealand First and United Future I suspect that that is not proper consultation but arm-up-the-back style consultation. Annette King’s handling of this bill has been more about her philosophy of getting it through and less about meeting the needs of New Zealanders. Had the Government listened to New Zealanders it would not have ignored the interests of small business. 
But I must applaud the Government for having listened to New Zealanders in keeping the direct-to consumer advertising in the bill. But it is not enough. This anti-business Labour Government and chums—United Future and New Zealand First—have ignored the powerhouse of New Zealand those small businesses They ignored the guidance of the Health Committee not once but twice. The committee twice advised against going ahead with this joint-agency concept. 
The timing of the introduction of this bill has been described as sneaky and done under the cover of the silly season. That is a pretty fair description because it has come at this end of the year but Annette King’s tactics will not stop National members taking every call available to us to protest about this bill. 
I have already said that the New Zealand Health Trust has the numbers. It has quantified the impact of this bill and has talked about the over 1 million consumers who will be affected by lessened choice and increased costs. My colleague Tim Groser has rightly spoken about CER and we want to refute the suggestions that our stance is anti-Australian. Of course it is not. Tim Groser is eminently qualified to understand the intricacies of what this means for New Zealand. He correctly described the Australian Government’s approach as a bureaucratic mindset and a sledgehammer approach. He also correctly alluded to the changes in our health services which make complementary health-care options therapeutics the choice of thousands of New Zealanders. 
National feels very strongly that New Zealand must not subsume its own identity by handing over control to an agency that is of course—the size will determine—dominated by Australia. New Zealand should harmonise with Australia only when it is in our best interests. We do not want to sell the family silver. We do not want to be subsumed by Australia but rather work with Australia for the benefit of New Zealanders rather than to sell them out. 
Dr Jackie Blue reminded us that mutual recognition was the recommendation made in 1993 by the Health Committee. That recommendation has been ignored in favour of this bill. We were reminded of the minority report that came out of that Health Committee and I speak of the New Zealand First minority report which has been consigned to the dustbin. I do commend Barbara Stewart from New Zealand First for how well she dances on the head of a pin! After not supporting the bill in the select committee poor Barbara Stewart has had to accede to her colleagues’ wishes and do a flip-flop a U-turn. How painful that must have been. It is not enough that the New Zealand First member was rolled by her colleagues; she has also to live with the fact that her leader Winston Peters trumpeted on radio that his party had stopped this bill in its tracks. 
The “Prince of Spin” attributes of Winston Peters have resulted in an aggressive about-turn. We know the spin the New Zealand First leader has put on this. He says that it is someone else’s mistake not his. Oh no not his! But then an aggressive response to describe a flip-flop or U-turn on Mr Peters’ part is not necessarily surprising. How uncomfortable he must feel to have portrayed himself as the saviour of the users of complementary medicines and now to have to show that he was leading them astray! 
As a former nurse I am certainly not advocating or supporting that the risks that currently exist—however small—for the users of therapeutic products and medicines be ignored. I make the plea that we be given something that keeps the costs down and does not kill the businesses. 
I see this bill as a real risk to our health system. Many New Zealanders will end up at their general practitioners as some of the alternative therapies that work for them disappear from the market. This prospect is frightening many people and they have come to see me in my electorate office. Many of them are elderly people who rely on and trust these products to give them symptomatic relief. 
I also commend Tariana Turia who has exposed the lack of consultation that has been inherent in the long preparation of the bill. As a new member I have been interested in how many emails I have received strongly opposing the bill. So I join with my National Party colleagues in strongly opposing this bill.