Andersen GinnyGINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker for the opportunity to speak on the second reading of the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Amendment Bill. While it's important that we've discussed tonight around having reviews and having a greater process in place the underlying benefit is for the public of New Zealand to have greater confidence in the health services that they're receiving. That can be delivered through this bill by having transparency and increased access to information about the services that they're receiving and that gives us a health system that's more robust and it gives us a public that's more likely to benefit from the health services that are on offer.The key area which looks into it at the beginning of the bill is the performance reviews that can be carried out as a result—five-yearly performance reviews—and carried out by an independent reviewer with criteria and oversight by the Ministry of Health. The importance of performance monitoring is it provides ongoing improvement of the health system. So if there are issues that are going on that are not right then that's able to be picked up reviewed and rectified in order to give that greater public confidence in our health system. Performance monitoring through the reviews will help that and it will also help greater consistency across responsible authorities.Part of what I already mentioned is information transparency related to competence and discipline. This is where the Health Committee received several submissions in this place. Some of the submitters recommended enabling responsible authorities to act immediately to suspend a practitioner's practising certificate without notice or to alter the scope of their practice where there is risk of serious harm to the public. But it's important to balance that up and after consideration of the submissions the bill now allows responsible authorities as regulators to act immediately to suspend a practitioner's practising certificate in instances only where there is a risk of serious harm to the public or pending prosecution or investigation.This change will help ensure increased public safety when practitioners may pose serious harm to patients and it also gives increased public confidence to those who want to utilise those services. The bill takes into account also the electronic age we live in with all the responsible authorities submitting that electronic communication should be allowed within the Act and it's good to see that increased access being available through alternative means of communication. The committee considered that issuing documents such as annual practising certificates electronically and serving notices electronically would improve the operation and also the efficiency of responsible authorities.So it's with great pleasure that I commend this bill to the House. It is one that has taken two reviews and a significant amount of time and work by officials and by Ministers concerned across two Governments to be able to bring this together in a way that brings increased confidence from the general public and increased transparency into the health services provided to New Zealanders. Thank you Mr Speaker. I commend this bill to the House.