Blue Jackie: Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill — First Reading 
Blue Jackie: Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:636;Page:7087] 
Dr JACKIE BLUE (National) 
: 
 This could have been a proud day for the New Zealand Government but it is not. The Government has wasted a golden opportunity. The Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill which introduces legislation to establish the Australia New Zealand Therapeutic Products Authority could have been a first with true multiparty support cooperation collaboration and agreement. But that has not happened and Annette King the Minister in charge of this bill is to blame for that. Her dismissiveness and lack of consultation has shown no bounds. She has refused to consult the National Party every step of the way. The Hon Tony Ryall informed us today that Annette King considered that handing over some overheads to two National MPs was consultation. What a joke! 
I have been a member of the Health Committee over the last year and on numerous occasions we have invited Annette King to personally address us on this bill. She refused to do so on each and every occasion. Not once did she appear before the Health Committee. I have been so concerned about her indifference to this bill that in a parliamentary question I asked her whether she had been requested by the Health Committee to personally brief the committee on progress regarding the issues surrounding the proposed Australia New Zealand Therapeutic Products Authority and if she had how many times she had been invited for a briefing. I asked whether she had briefed the committee and if she had not whether she planned to do so. I also asked her why she would not want to brief the Health Committee. Three weeks later I received a nonsense reply which was that it had not been possible to obtain the information required to enable her to address that question by the due date. What a joke! The answer was really simple: she had never been to the committee and had no intention of addressing it. 
The response from Annette King goes to prove that this Minister has not taken seriously the concerns of Parliament’s own Health Committee of thousands of New Zealanders and of the hundreds of fledgling natural health-care businesses. The Minister has ratified the treaty without the mandate of this Parliament and against its wishes. This bill which had its origins under the last National Government was a good idea. But sadly there has been a lack of consultation and the Government like most things it gets hold of has made a complete hash of it. 
Our National Party is most concerned about the inclusion of natural health-care products. We consider that the Australian natural products industry is one of the most highly regulated of those industries in the world. Forcing its rules on New Zealand businesses will serve only to increase the cost of products reduce consumer choice and hurt many businesses. National believes that natural health products should be regulated but that this legislation is not the answer. The Government has been attempting to introduce this legislation for years but until recently it has not been successful. It did not have the political clout or numbers to do so but it is clear that it has now done a deal with New Zealand First. The thousands of New Zealanders who will have choice taken away and the hundreds of businesses that will be affected by compliance costs and bureaucracy can thank Winston Peters for the fact that they will have to keep on fighting against this restrictive legislation. 
It did not have to be like this. Only 6 weeks ago on radio Winston Peters reaffirmed his party’s opposition to the bill and if he had kept his word this bill would not be being debated today. In the lunch break today there was a rally against this legislation. It was a very sad sight to see Winston Peters defending his betrayal of New Zealanders to the crowd. They could see through him by a million miles. He did not convince anybody; he was booed and jeered. The fact is that the Labour Government had to offer a bribe to New Zealand First. It had to offer a 50 percent subsidy on complementary medicines in order to get the parliamentary numbers for this bill which goes to prove that this regime was far too expensive to begin with. The 50 percent subsidy is for only 5 years and then what will happen? Let us make no mistake that businesses will face escalating compliance costs after that. 
The Minister has gone against the recommendations of Parliament’s Health Committee. In December 2003 the Health Committee recommended that the Government strengthen domestic regulation as the most appropriate method of governing complementary health-care products in New Zealand and that it pursue a mutual recognition regulatory option rather than a joint agency with Australia. Yes 3 years ago the Health Committee recommended that a local solution should be sought for complementary health-care products. That is what the industry wanted. Four years ago the New Zealand health industry presented Medsafe with a low-cost economically viable full-recovery regulatory system that was acceptable to the entire industry. Sadly that was not accepted and the only aspect of mutual recognition in the whole of this bill is the one that the National Party insisted on—that is for medical devices. A number of medical device companies in New Zealand export internationally and as a result they already have to adhere strictly to rigorous international licensing regimes. It is absolutely appropriate that those internationally respected licensing bodies are recognised by the proposed trans-Tasman agency. 
In 2004 the Health Committee again reported on the treaty. The National Party provided a minority report stating: “We consider that the Government should not have gone ahead and signed the treaty when the main finding of the Health Committee inquiry into complementary healthcare products was that a proposal to regulate complementary healthcare products jointly with Australia ‘should not proceed’.” We have not changed our position; we have stayed steadfast in keeping the same position. New Zealand First also wrote a minority report stating it had three concerns. The first concern was one of sovereignty. The second was that complementary medicines should be treated separately. The third concern was about how the proposal would impact on small businesses. What a complete U-turn there has been by New Zealand First! The complementary medicine sector had every right to feel sold out and betrayed by this Government and New Zealand First. This regime will be costly restrictive and unnecessary. 
National is not prepared to jeopardise the viability of hundreds of small businesses or the choices of thousands of consumers. Annette King’s handling of this issue has destroyed any chance of cross-party support. There has been no consultation with other parties in the developmental stage and she signed the treaty against the wishes of other parties. Her handling of this issue has jeopardised a significant improvement in trans-Tasman governance. National is opposing this bill in principle. Annette King has negotiated a bad deal for New Zealand. We believe that for complementary medicine there should be a low-cost local solution. National believes that New Zealand should harmonise with Australia only when it is in New Zealand’s best interests to do so. This Government is selling out small businesses in New Zealand and taking away choice from thousands of New Zealanders.