SpeechSARAH PALLETT (Labour—Ilam) (remote): Kia ora. Thank you so much Madam Speaker. It's slightly confusing here—I'm speaking via Zoom—because we have occasionally some microphone feedback as I'm getting at the—I'm just going to talk over you so forgive me. If you want my attention just yell. Forgive me we're experiencing a little bit of microphone sort of input here but I am absolutely delighted to be speaking this evening—lit as I am by the evening sun so forgive me for the somewhat uneven lighting to speak to the Sunscreen (Product Safety Standard) Bill at its third reading. I am part of the Health Committee—the very hard-working Health Committee and just wanted to add my thanks and congratulations to our chair Dr Liz Craig but also to thank Todd Muller for bringing this bill to the House. It really has great value although we've heard members say in previous speeches that we in Government will be introducing the therapeutic products bill which we hope will be able to be a little bit more or significantly more comprehensive but in the meantime this is such a pressing issue and we did with our Celtic skin recognise that it was of value to do something straight away. So I commend him for this bill. Also like to thank the hard-working clerks and officials for their input. Fundamentally as we've heard before really what we're trying to do is just to ensure that sunscreen does what it says on the tin. With some products it's pretty clear that that's not going to happen. You know regardless of what advertising or what products say on the tin I know that applying it to me is not going to turn me into Rachel Hunter for the simple reason that I'm not blonde—I mean obviously no other reason. We can laugh but it is a serious issue. We've heard Mr Muller speaking about the impact of the sun on fairer skin. Certainly I can speak to that myself. As I said in a previous speech I believe I came from an area which had a great deal of sunshine and we were back in the—gosh!—1980s more keen to get a tan than to avoid the sun. And so you'd find us on our lunch breaks actually putting olive oil on our skin to try to get that tan. But you know not for long; a couple of decent burns would have us stopping doing that. I was chatting to a friend this morning and just mentioned to her that I was going to be speaking to this bill this evening. And she said Oh yeah it's really important because I you know I had melanoma." and she's a young woman and I hadn't realised that she'd had it in her early 20s. She did have melanoma successfully removed has no long-term health outcomes from it but she was really concerned to learn as she did in our conversation that the reason for this bill was that the tins were not accurate in representing in some cases what was really happening in the product inside. So she told me of her personal experience. Another colleague was so alarmed when we spoke earlier—well last year when this first came to the House—that her children are being covered pretty much from head to toe not in sunscreen but in clothing and I think I'm having visions of us all in hand-knitted Victorian bathers trying to keep ourselves protected. I think having a decent sunscreen is probably preferable although I think some might benefit from Victorian bathers. I'm not going to say who.This year we have seen sadly already three brands failed their Consumer New Zealand testing and they were three brands that failed the year before interestingly enough. I won't name them but a quick Google search will bring them up. They failed either on broad spectrum or sun protection factor (SPF) claims and it's pretty serious stuff because when we're putting this sunscreen on our bodies we really do need it to work to protect us. We really do need it to do what it says on the tin. Otherwise we don't just risk a nasty burn—as I've received and I'm sure many of my colleagues have—but we actually risk skin cancer and this is potentially fatal and we know that it is a significant cause of early and preventable death in New Zealand. We need broad spectrum cover—and you know for those who aren't aware we're looking at ultraviolet A (UVA) and ultraviolet B (UVB) cover. They do differ; they're ultraviolet radiation. Neither of them we can actually see or feel but they do penetrate the skin. And with UVA for example and these shorter wavelengths UVB—UVB with the shorter wavelengths does make a small amount of vitamin D. But I think it's probably really important to realise that we don't need a huge amount of sunlight on our skin to produce the amount of vitamin D for good health and certainly a decent sunscreen applied all the time isn't going to stop us from having the vitamin D that we need. Increased levels of that you know UVB are going to lead to sunburn and also turn to cancer whereas the UVA it goes a bit deeper and causes ageing of the skin but also cancer. And both of them suppress skin immunity which isn't something that we need. I guess what we're looking at is an SPF reading which will tell us how long we can stay in the sun being exposed to those ultraviolet radiation levels without burning and without increasing our risk of skin cancer. So a lot of us choose the highest possible SPF so that we can guarantee the greatest amount of time outside because let's face it none of us—we do enjoy being outside as much as we can although today I don't think I've got a great deal being in the virtual House from home but I do like to enjoy going outside. It's very much the Kiwi way to get out and enjoy this beautiful countryside. So yeah so we're relying on that SPF really to give us that protection and reading DermNet a lot of us aren't even applying it correctly: six teaspoons of sunscreen as I said before to the "mountains and valleys" whatever that means and two coats like painting a wall. I'm trying to have a little bit of a public service announcement here so that we will have a greater understanding of what we need to do. But as I said we have defined "sunscreen" a little bit more completely in this bill than in the original draft and I think in part due to the interactions from my colleague Naisi Chen who gave us a pretty comprehensive understanding of products that might be seen to contain some protection factor in her first reading speech. I was certainly blown away and learnt stuff so it's really good to see that we have got that. We have got that definition that basically as my colleague Dr McLellan said does include insect repellent that's labelled with SPF of 4 or more. What I learnt in my research was that insect repellent actually can reduce the SPF of the products that you're using so it's more important that you have a higher level and you're applying more frequently. Obviously you know sunscreen is something that's primarily to protect the skin from ultraviolet radiation. But also we've included here a product that's represented as skincare with an SPF greater than 15 or a product that's represented as a tinted base or foundation which is something that a lot of us really do rely on actually on the day-to-day basis to provide us with that you know bottom-line SPF coverage. One of the things that Mr Muller was alluding to earlier was the stock-in-trade amendments and the discussion that we had around whether or not—what particular time line we should look at before these products—Hon Member: Read it like you mean it!SARAH PALLETT: I'm sorry it's not you Madam Speaker; I'll carry on talking. The stock-in-trade—we needed to balance the need for obviously getting products off the shelves as quickly as was reasonable with the harm that might be caused by having products still available that were not accurate. We've landed on 12 months after the legislation commences so that's 18 months from the date of Royal assent I believe. Obviously we really are clear in the committee that—all of us are clear and probably I would say in the House that we would like our manufacturers and our stockists to basically put products on the shelves that do what they say on the tin and keep everybody safe. In the meantime those boys are going to be in protective gear. I commend the bill to the House. Thank you."