King Annette: Health (Protection) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKing Annette: Health (Protection) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 06 November 2014. Volume:701;Page:726. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon ANNETTE KING (Acting Deputy Leader—Labour):Labour will be supporting this legislation today. Can I congratulate the Minister on bringing forward his first piece of legislation as the Minister of Health and in fact on holding the position of the Minister of Health. It is one that I was privileged to hold for 6 years and I have to say that of all the portfolios I had in my 10 years as a Minister it was my favourite and that remains still the case today. In congratulating the Minister I have to say there have been many Ministers associated with amendments to the Health Act 1956. In fact these amendments were first proposed in work that I did as the Minister way back when. The Public Health Bill that contains these changes was introduced into Parliament in November 2007 by my former colleague—Hon Ruth Dyson: 2007?Hon ANNETTE KING: In 2007 it was introduced into Parliament by the Hon Pete Hodgson. We had the first reading on that bill in December 2007 and it was referred to the Health Committee which reported back to Parliament in June 2008. So since June 2008 the Public Health Bill which amends the old Health Act has sat gathering dust on the Committee table with no action at all. So 6 years on congratulations Minister on getting some of the amendments through. There is still more work to do and I think perhaps this is going to be done in episodes because it appears to be—Iain Lees-Galloway: A continuing story.Hon ANNETTE KING: It is a continuing story—an ongoing matter it appears. But good on you for bringing forward these changes and they are ones that are necessary. I think it is appropriate that we have them now although as the Minister said we do not need them—with Ebola now in the media and of great concern to many people we have very good measures available now—but the measures that have been proposed in the Health (Protection) Amendment Bill will help strengthen the existing measures that we have.The old Act that we have got is a very fragmented one and it does need to be updated. It is outdated and one of the things that was very clear in it was that it needed to have greater provisions around contact tracing and I will talk a little more about that in a moment. When you look at the regulatory impact statement that the Ministry of Health has put forward it has made it very clear that it wanted these sorts of changes over a long—or in fact it calls it a sustained—period of time and it has been concerned that we needed to include these new measures. It recommended that we improve notification of infectious diseases and also the framework for notification. It pointed out that this is of interest to main stakeholders who are of course the public but also to doctors to laboratories and to district health boards. And it made it clear that this is not an issue of cost so it was not ever going to be a problem in terms of cost. It said that the cost of these changes is relatively minor. The regulatory impact statement also shows that the ministry has had a look at the bill in terms of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and it has found that the provisions in this bill on balance “represent justifiable limitations on rights and freedoms under the Bill of Rights Act 1990 given the importance of protecting the public from significant infectious and the safeguards provided.” So it has had a pretty good passage in terms of looking at the clauses that are to be changed and at whether it meets obligations.The problem with what we have got now in the current Act is there is a risk that the members of the public who are infected with an infectious disease spread this disease and that it remains unknown and is not able to be managed and of course that is of great concern to New Zealanders. It would also probably be of great concern to the person themselves if it was unknown to them. Also currently the comprehensive and timely information on the rates and trends of sexually transmissible infections is lacking and I found that really interesting—that we do not collect good information on some very old infectious diseases such as syphilis and gonorrhoea or of course on a newer one HIV. So it is interesting that for these diseases—and HIV has been around for quite some time now—we have lacked comprehensive and timely information on the rates and trends. Collection of this sort of data is incredibly important in managing infectious diseases and also for looking at trends and at where it is happening—age groups and so on—in making policy decisions. The other limitation of course is in tracing and contacting people who may be the source of the infection.This bill goes into three main areas. The Minister has set them out pretty clearly and I will just quickly go over them. The first area is the tracing of contacts as I said who may have an infectious disease or who may have been exposed to one. It is called contact tracing and what it does is move from the current reliance on a voluntary involvement to specific measures on contact tracing which will improve the public health ability to be able to identify isolate and test the sources of infectious disease in the community. What it says is: “Where voluntary consent is not gained the Bill introduces a duty on a person who may have an infectious disease or may have been exposed to one to provide prescribed contact information. The Bill also places a duty on public health staff to keep patient and contact information private to the fullest extent possible.” and I think that is really important. Throughout these changes protecting private information is one of the requirements and often it can hamper information if people are scared that things are known about them that will be provided in a public way. The bill also has an offence: “An offence is introduced of failing to provide the prescribed contact information. There is a fine of not more than $2000 upon conviction” and there is an ability to appeal those convictions.The second area of the bill is that it increases the range of infectious diseases that are notifiable and I have already talked about them. They are gonorrhoea HIV and syphilis. So that is the second area where changes are being made. The third area of the bill “provides a series of incremental options for the management of individuals with significant infectious diseases whose behaviour puts other people at risk of contracting a disease.” and it puts in place additional management provisions within a human rights framework using principles of risk management and proportionality.The fourth part of this bill is measures to ban the “commercial provision of artificial UV tanning services to young people under 18 years of age.” and I think the Minister set it out pretty clearly that this is a risk to a small group of people but it still is a risk. Also it does not stop with the approval of a medical practitioner the use of UV tanning services should that be prescribed. So it is not an offence if a practitioner was to prescribe it for medical purposes but for those operating commercial artificial UV tanning it will be an offence.Finally this bill does streamline a number of administrative changes as well and the Minister mentioned that at the end of his speech. The most notable is the inclusion of tuberculosis as a notifiable infection in the Health Act as opposed to it being in its own Act where it was for so long when we had high levels of tuberculosis in New Zealand.The bill goes to the Health Committee. We are very short of work there in the Health Committee so we will be looking forward to having a bill to get our teeth into and we will be looking forward to hearing submissions from the public. The Labour Party supports this bill.