Williams PotoPOTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): I just want to make a further short contribution to this piece of legislation. As my colleague has indicated it really is a sensible piece of legislation that tidies up a whole lot of aspects of the modern workforce. We know that we have had medical practitioners develop in a whole range of ways and nurse practitioners have been with us for some time. Their ability to work across a range of skill sets has needed to be defined and then provided for within various pieces of legislation. So it is useful and appropriate that we are debating this piece of legislation to ensure that over those significant pieces of primary legislation that nurse practitioners in particular will work across we are given the ability to define what those areas are and what those scopes of practice will be. To be very clear in order that a health practitioner a nurse practitioner in particular can work in these scopes of practice they must comply under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act and that means not only must they fulfil the requirements of training and expertise and have the appropriate training required but they also must have a current practising certificate. So their workforce development must continue to be updated and upgraded in relation to the types of work that they are going to be required to be undertaking. It is important to realise that the scope of practice has become so broad for our doctors and our primary health providers that it has become a requirement that we have had to allow our health practitioners to work across various scopes of practice. As I mentioned before there are some important aspects of this that relate to areas that I have worked in prior to coming to the House in particular in the area of mental health where the ability to prescribe medication and administer medication is one of those health and safety issues that we in the mental health area wanted to ensure that we got absolutely right. Medical misadventure due to the administration of incorrect medication or the administration of medication that was at the wrong dose or taken at the wrong time was one of those things that we really wanted to avoid. So ensuring that we have staff who are trained to the appropriate level and that their scope of practice is measured and reviewed and that they have a current practising certificate is very important. The other area that I want to perhaps discuss and talk about is with regard to the ability to ensure that mental health assessments are conducted in a timely way. It is often very important that those people who are in the middle of a mental health episode are able to have those assessments completed so that they can get into treatment straight away. Often this is to ensure that they are not at risk of harming themselves or other members of the public so it is important that we provide opportunities for that to happen. The scope of practice around nurse practitioners being able to do that rather than requiring psychiatrists to do that is very important in this regard. We are supporting this piece of legislation. It is good. It is about time that it came to the House and we will be supporting this bill in its passage through the House.