King Annette: Medicines Amendment Bill — In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKing Annette: Medicines Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 19 November 2013. Volume:695;Page:15053. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai): You can see that I am very eager to speak on the Medicines Amendment Bill because I have looked forward to this day for 6 years. For 6 years I have looked forward to it. In fact for 14 years this bill has been in the making. In fact this bill makes a few changes to the Medicines Act 1981. It is an interim measure after 14 years. It is a bit of a sticking plaster a bit of a patch up until the Government progresses the Australia New Zealand Therapeutic Products Agency under a treaty that was signed between Australia and New Zealand in 2003. So this is not a comprehensive overhaul of the Act; it is an interim measure.The irony of this is that National after years of political posturing and shilly-shallying in Opposition led by Tony Ryall opposing a joint agency finally decided in 2011 that it now supports it. That must be the biggest backflip that we have seen on a piece of policy in this House. The Prime Minister agreed in 2011 that National which was once opposed to a joint agency would now proceed with the establishment of the Australia New Zealand Therapeutic Products Agency.The legislation that will bring this agency to life sits on the Order Paper of this House—No. 47 if you want to have a wee look. It is the very legislation that Iintroduced in 2007 and is unchanged after all the political posturing. Now it is in the name of the Minister of Health Tony Ryall. I have to say that after 9 years of National being in Opposition with the most objectionable obnoxious and malicious fabrications—full of cant—about a joint agency we now have a National Government in support of it. In fact Mr Hayes probably knows quite a lot about it because it was very much part of a trade deal we did with Australia under the CER and the Trans-Pacific Partnership and he is probably well aware of the negotiations that took place. But for purely political reasons the National Party opposed the joint agency.This bill takes out some of the changes that were going to be made a very narrow range of changes for an interim measure until the joint agency is set up. I look forward to that day because as the former Minister of Health who took the heat on that bill and listened to so much rubbish over months and months—in fact years—I am delighted that National finally saw the light. I have to give credit to the Prime Minister because there is no way that Tony Ryall would have seen the light.You see a regulatory impact statement undertaken by the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research right back in October 2000—13 years ago—confirmed that the Medicines Act 1981 the Medicines Regulations 1984 and the Dietary Supplements Regulations 1985 were outdated and gave rise to significant “safety risks trade barriers and costs to Crown and industry.” It proposed in 2000 that the changes to be put in place should be around putting in place regulations to make change and putting in place international best practice.Well this bill which we are now finally debating modernises the definition of medicine medical devices and therapeutic products. We welcome that because it made up part of the negotiations for the joint agency all those years ago. The second thing it does is it changes the approval process for medicines and medical devices by the use of regulations to specify detail. We support that because it made up part of the changes that would have come in with the joint agency all those years ago.The third part of this bill amends the prescribing framework. We will have three types of prescribers. Authorised prescribers are the ones whom most people are familiar with. They are doctors dentists and midwives and they prescribe within a scope of practice that has been defined for them. Then we have designated prescribers and they are a restricted subgroup of authorised prescribers. Currently they are optometrists and nurse practitioners. They have already got prescribing rights and there are some specialised nurses who are also designated prescribers. They are allowed to prescribe only medicines that are on a list and these are listed in regulations. This bill revokes designated prescriber regulations for nurse practitioners and for optometrists and now names them as authorised prescribers. So they now join the doctors the dentists and the midwives. It aligns them and now they too will prescribe in line with their scope of practice. They have shown for 7 years that they are totally capable of doing that so it has taken rather a long time.The new category of prescriber is the delegated prescriber. This new category is going to enable people to prescribe under a delegation an order by an authorised prescriber. That is a doctor or a dentist or a midwife and in this case it would be a nurse practitioner or an optometrist. In fact the requirements will be at a lower level so they will have limited prescribing. But we believe that the changes will enhance the health workforce and also the ability to provide appropriate care within the community. We support all those changes in this bill. The reason why is that they were a Labour Government proposal. It is only 5 years later that in fact we are now looking to pass them into law. So we certainly support those changes in this bill.But because this is being taken as one debate I have to emphasise again that we should have learnt a lesson about playing political games with major policy that affectsthe health of New Zealand our trade obligations and the economic viability of many businesses in this country. For purely political reasons the joint agency with Australia was held up predominantly by the then Opposition spokesperson on health Tony Ryall for no other reason than political purposes. Now all these years later having opposed it National is going to pass the very bill that I introduced. The Prime Minister said that National now supports the joint agency. Can we not learn that there are some things that are for the good of this country and are supported across Parliament instead of the sorts of stupid political games that were played with this particular policy?So now in an interim way we will make a few changes a little bit of a sticking plaster until the agency is in place. I will celebrate that day as I am sure will the Hon Christopher Pyne who is now the Leader of the House of Representatives in the Australian Parliament and Tony Abbott who was the Minister for Health and Ageing who helped negotiate it—now the Prime Minister of Australia—and who gave so many concessions to New Zealand to ensure that we have an agency that is fair that is equal and that enables us to act in a joint way and finally complete the negotiations with the one part that was missing under CER.Yes we will support this bill but the bigger picture needs to be the passage of the Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill sitting on the Order Paper with the date on it saying it was introduced in 2007.