Newman Muriel: Health (National Cervical Screening Programme) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Newman Muriel: Health (National Cervical Screening Programme) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:615;Page:11274] 
Dr MURIEL NEWMAN (ACT) 
: 
 Part 2 is the heart of the bill. It sets out the mechanism for establishing the database carrying out the screening procedures analysing the samples and referring on the results. Then of course the next stage is the treatment of women. I would just like to say to the Minister in the chair that on behalf of the 1 million New Zealand women who are to be enrolled in the programme I hope the shambles that presently surrounds the treatment of women with breast cancer does not occur to women who have been identified as having positive results with their cervical smear. It is very worrying that we have to send people who have such a serious illness to Australia to be fixed and that we cannot treat them here in New Zealand. 
In the discussion that the Minister has had during this debate she has referred to this programme as being gold plated. I hope she will not live to regret that statement because I know that other national registers have very easily become a shambles. In the time I have been in Parliament we have debated a number of opportunities to establish national registers to sort problems out but they are always fraught with difficulty. If the Minister is promising New Zealanders that this will be a gold-plated programme then obviously we will hold the Minister and the Government to account on that. 
The first thing I would say to the Minister is that I am very disappointed that she has failed so far in this debate to do what I called for her to do the last time I spoke: to explain exactly what steps she intends to take between now and 1 July this year when this legislation gains the royal assent and comes into force so that we can have some idea of the planning that is going on within the ministry to ensure that on day one this programme is launched with the minimum of problems associated with it. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: Would the member please come back to Part 2. 
Dr MURIEL NEWMAN 
: Mr Chairperson we are talking about the implementation of the cervical-screening programme. I realise the Minister has been complaining about what I have been saying but in the debate on the previous part I did ask the Minister to put her plan on the record by sharing with the Committee exactly what she intends to do on day one after this bill gets passed regarding the steps she will take to ensure we do end up with a gold-plated cervical cancer screening programme. 
The concern that my colleague Heather Roy who sits on the Health Committee had was that in the original plan the Government was to set up implement run and evaluate the National Cervical-screening Programme. The ACT party believes that it would not be very good to have the Government doing all that and at an absolute minimum there should be an independent audit. We suggested that some of those services could be contracted out but I realise this Government is ideologically opposed to private sector contracting. However the bill does put down the way that the audit group review committee will be established and I note the Minister is in charge of appointing people to it. I would like the Minister to explain—and again I think this is a very important point—how we can be assured there will be some independence if the appointment process is up to the Minister and what the difference is between having a committee that is established by the Minister and the Government running the review itself. I realise there is a difference but I think it would be positive to put that on the record.