O'Connor Simon: Health (Protection) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Connor Simon: Health (Protection) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 06 November 2014. Volume:701;Page:728. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki):I am very pleased to take a call on this bill. As the member who has resumed her seat Hon Annette King has noted this will be a piece of legislation coming strangely enough into the Health Committee meeting. I am happy to report to the House that 3 weeks in I think there is a collegial conviviality and we are working very hard on the matters in front of us although I will not illuminate the House on some previous matters we discussed. Although they may be of great importance I am not sure that everyone will want to necessarily know about particular prophylactic elements that we have been exploring. This is a very important bill and I am very pleased that the Minister of Health has brought this to this House for its first reading. I am also very pleased as the chair of the Health Committee to be working with a fine team of people on both sides of the House in order to help facilitate this bill through. As this is the first bill I do want to acknowledge Barbara Kuriger who is the deputy chair and Scott Simpson Jacqui Dean and Shane Reti from the National side whom I am very much looking forward to working with and of course led by the previous speaker and others in the House on the other side I think we will make good and productive work of this bill the Health (Protection) Amendment Bill.There are three broad areas to the bill. The first which was noted is around the whole Tuberculosis Act and integrating that into another piece of legislation. I think that reflects the National Government’s approach to keeping things simple and not having multiple bills when you can put them into one.The second area is around UV rays particularly through the use of these tanning beds. It has been a discussion point for a while. In fact I think the previous chair of the Health Committee Dr Paul Hutchison was quite keen on this topic. It is one that strikes me as quite important and it is very prudent too that the Government is targeting particularly those under 18 in order to assist them in their decision making. When I worked within the health sector prior to coming into Parliament I used to do quite a bit of work around the plastic dermatological side when it came to melanomas and other skin cancers. Although I would not know whether those were caused directly or indirectly by sunbeds the damage that UV rays can do is very very clear so it is really important that this bill provides some structure and guidance around that.The most important aspects of the bill though are of course around infectious diseases and the notification thereof. This bill is increasing the number of those infections that can be notified. The Minister has mentioned those and they are around gonorrhoeal infections the human immunodeficiency virus or HIV as we most commonly know it and syphilis which is still around in society. Up until this bill basically there has been a voluntary system or obligation of notifying. We are basically ramping up this in a series of steps where a duty is rightly and positively imposed to use a technical term on the person to provide their details to their doctor or to their health professional. In turn actually as well those health professionals—nurses doctors caregivers—are under a duty too now to collect that data. So this has been discussed around contact tracing. Those who are familiar with epidemiology will know that tracking down the source of a disease or infection or some health issue is vitally vitally important not only for that person and their immediate family but for us as a society as well.This bill is a response to those exceptions where as the Minister was referring to people refuse to give over their information. Their choices around their infectious disease have a consequence for the rest of us. We have heard from the Minister as to how that will be a graduated response. Again we want people to voluntarily provide their details and to notify the fact that they have an infectious disease but where necessary we will impose a positive duty that that must be done. Where people then refuse to take the treatment that is required—be that something as simple as counselling discussion or testing—more and more pressure can be applied for what is basically the common good of society.So there are three very important aspects brought into this bill—a triumvirate of factors if you will. I am looking forward to this bill coming before the Health Committee. As I said at the start it is a hard-working committee and we are going through quite a range of petitions at the moment. All are quite important. I think it was quite striking the other day that we had people come before the committee to share their personal stories and it was important for us to hear and acknowledge that. In acknowledging them I will also acknowledge the work that will happen through this Health (Protection) Amendment Bill and I commend it to the House.