Chadwick Steve: Natural Health Products Bill — First Reading 
Chadwick Steve: Natural Health Products Bill — First Reading 
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Hon STEVE CHADWICK (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to take a quick call. I am absolutely gobsmacked today at the flip-flop in politics. It is interesting that Minister Coleman is leading this and is keeping Tony Ryall’s hands away from the introduction of the Natural Health Products Bill today. I will start by quoting Mr Ryall in 2006 when he led a campaign to undermine the Labour approach at that time. It began much earlier in 2002 with an inquiry. He said that the agency that would regulate health care products which we all agreed was required would be “costly restrictive and unnecessary”. Well is that not funny? 
I congratulate Sue Kedgley in the House today on having her bill before the House today. I call it her bill. 
I do not believe for a minute that National is tolerating the process of this low-cost regulator. We know that the Minister of Health has completely flip-flopped and he has done that under the leadership of John Key who confused the public at the time. John Key was right behind Labour’s legislation at the time but then he suddenly changed. That was because Tony Ryall went to him after a cross-party meeting and said: “For politics pull your support for what Labour is proposing.” and he was so spineless that he pulled his support. That confused both the industry and the public at the time. 
Everyone in this House knows that we had an inquiry. That was a valuable process. We all reached the conclusion that we agreed that these products needed to be regulated. We were moving on this. But I say to the Greens that I have some cynicism that once we have this bill through National Ministers through the trans-Tasman relationship will move to fold this regulatory agency into the Australian agency. Mark my words. I may not be around to see that happen but that is exactly what National wants to do. Those members know that it is more cost-effective they know that they would have a pan-regulator that would cover the Pacific Asia and New Zealand. That is what they want to do. This bill is just a little bit of pandering to the Greens to get their support. 
I congratulate Sue on the bill. We will support its referral to a select committee. It will be interesting to hear from the industry. It will be interesting to hear about the costs to the industry of having a stand-alone regulator. We have heard that there will be a cost of $1.1 million to set up the regulator $1.8 million for operating costs and then $36 million every year to maintain it. So let us just watch what it costs the industry which will have to pay fees to license their products. Therefore let us hear from the industry on that basis. 
Dr Paul Hutchison 
: You’re scaring the public again. 
Hon STEVE CHADWICK 
: No we do not scaremonger actually; we wear our hearts on our sleeves. We always wanted to move with a regulator. This country has lost 5 years of economic benefits that it would have had from having a regulator. We were moving on it and it was canned by National. 
We will monitor the costs we will monitor the industry responses we will monitor the way that this regulator is set up and we will be watching very closely what happens with our trans-Tasman partnership. We support this bill’s referral to a select committee. We look forward to those responses.