van Velden Brooke; Verrall AyeshaBROOKE van VELDEN (ACT): I wish to turn to page 186 of the Therapeutic Products Bill all the way through to 188 talking about costs. Now we know that this new regulator is going to impose a lot of costs on to companies and individuals who will now be wanting to regulate their products. It seems like there's quite a lot in here and I know that a lot of New Zealanders are also quite concerned about the cost of living; the cost of everything seems to be going up.When I've been out talking to industry leaders across the board who'd be captured by the Therapeutic Products Bill they've suggested this goes all the way from your medical devices like your hips and your knees through to software new technology all the way down to your shampoo and your hand soaps. Every single little thing that you can think of even if it might be a toothpaste could be regulated under this bill. Now my concern is that this regulator will impose these costs which will then have a flow on effect of increasing the cost to consumers in New Zealand for very basic products that they never thought could be actually captured by the Therapeutic Products Bill but might be. But I also note that there are quite a few formulas about how the fees and levies will be set and there are principles for cost of recovery but it also says that The Minister must not recommend … regulations be made imposing a fee or levy unless satisfied on reasonable grounds that" it's in accordance with all of these other parts of the bill and that "the fee or levy is otherwise appropriate and proportionate."I'm just seeking from the Minister a guarantee that people will know—people on the ground New Zealanders who are actually struggling—that this bill is not going to impose such a huge burden on them or such a huge cost that it will actually flow on to basic goods that they need in the rest of their lives; things like toothpaste shampoo hand soaps. Can the Minister actually guarantee New Zealanders that this regulator won't impose such high costs that they will actually feel that effect in their daily life?Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Minister of Health): I am thrilled to see that that member shares my concerns about the cost of medicines in New Zealand and perhaps I've found a new-found friend in support for this wiping of the co-pays of medicines for the public in New Zealand which is an excellent matter to address the cost of living. Yes we canvassed in the parts of the debate that ran last night these issues around risk proportionality of regulation as an important way of keeping the costs and burdens of regulation down where they are not appropriate and indeed we canvassed the ways in which products such as cosmetics could be excluded where appropriate but not as an entire class because there are some areas where regulation of them is necessary where they have a therapeutic purpose. We also talked about the different classes and how there could be different approval processes depending on their risk. Indeed a number of formulas are used and criteria for determining the appropriate levy and a fundamental concept in this bill is the idea that the burden of regulation is in proportion to the cost. So I can assure that member that there are protections in that place.BROOKE van VELDEN (ACT): I'm very happy to hear that from the Minister. I just wondered when you touched on the fact that you'd talked already about cosmetics and that there are some that you don't believe should have a high cost imposed on them versus others whether you can give any form of example about which types of cosmetics you deem appropriate enough to be exempt and which ones you don't.Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Minister of Health): Indeed I did during that section of the debate on the relevant part.BROOKE van VELDEN (ACT): It's always helpful if the Minister could actually articulate that because not everybody all the time is actually watching Parliament TV so it's actually nice to have those things clarified. But if I may I'm also interested in knowing a little bit more about the set up of this rongoā Māori advisory committee. So the committee it says consists of members appointed under section 367 and "the joint Ministers must appoint the number of persons that they think is appropriate to be members of the rongoā advisory committee." Can the Minister give any sort of guidance as to how big they think this committee could be? You know we see bureaucracy we see so much waste throughout all of Government and things can grow and grow and grow and we see the number of bureaucrats even hired under this Government just grow and grow and grow. Is this deemed to be a committee that should only have one or two or three members? Or is this a committee that will actually end up being you know 20 30 40 people and it just becomes a large committee where nothing actually gets done and people just sit around all the time? You know is this actually going to be useful? Has the Minister considered what an appropriate number would be to actually get things done?Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Minister of Health): In the response to the questions by Dr Kerekere I have already outlined the function of the committee. I have outlined the limited set of circumstances in which we believe it would be used which I think is probably the major influence on the costs of regulation in the committee and I do wonder why the member draws particular attention in this instance to "people sitting around all the time" when it is a committee for the purposes of advancing Māori interests.BROOKE van VELDEN (ACT): I'm happy to answer that. It's because under this Government we've seen a number of cases of very poorly thought-out pieces of legislation. We've seen a number of advisory boards being created we've seen a number of working groups which have created reports that go absolutely nowhere so that's where the concern comes from. This Government likes to just pass things over to other people but actually fails to get things done. So of course there is a concern about added layers of bureaucracy. There's a concern about people just sitting around and not actually achieving what is set out in legislation—not actually achieving anything that helps with policy development. We know that this Government puts in place lots of working groups that never actually saw the light of day. The reports were made. Nothing happened to them. So we are cynical. We are cynical about more advisory boards being created by this Government."