Prasad Rajen: New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumePrasad Rajen: New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 16 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10175. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour): Namaste. I was enjoying the line of reasoning my colleague Sue Moroney who has just sat down was pursuing. I want to speak to clause 3 of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2) and about the principal Act. I want to hear from the Minister of Health and hear the Minister’s response to what I am going to raise and what my colleague has just raised as well. Here we have a bill that is really setting down in stone a principle—I will have a lot more to say about this principle when we are debating clause 4—and that is the prime responsibility of the family for caring for each other. That is the principle that most of this amendment bill and its provisions are based on. I want to know from the Minister or from anybody else opposite what considerations were given to amend other Acts where this principle is either not stated or implied and there are many. It would be useful to hear that because that is the anchoring principle in this bill. I have worked with Acts that make this assumption but have not seen this principle written down in this form.Of course if the bill had gone through a proper select committee process we would have asked the officials to tell us what the other Acts were how this principle was operating and whether there was any need to amend those Acts as well. So it is an important and serious question that I am asking. Have those Acts been examined? Has the principle been debated by officials by the Minister and by others? And what are its implications further down the track? For example let us take the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act because here is an Act that is really based on this principle as to who has responsibility. Many of the provisions of that particular Act are about what to do when that principle is not delivered on if you like by family members.The Minister can probably tell me what the implications of this principle will be for those particular Acts and indeed for the whole Whānau Ora programme. Is there anything in that programme that also needs to be amended if you like where there is a principal Act that actually states that particular principle as strongly as this bill takes it forward? As I said I raise those questions quite seriously because I have not seen this principle written in this particular form and there will be others. The Care of Children Act is another one where this principle is embedded assumed etc. I ask whether or not the Minister would want to come back to have a look at those Acts and the family support Act as well. So maybe the Minister can take a call.It is very difficult to debate this bill in this environment when the whole Government side including the Minister sits there like stunned mullets not responding at all. This is if you like the select committee process and yet I think what Government members are doing is taking this side of the Committee to be idiots—and you are probably entitled to do that—Hon Simon Bridges: Well you haven’t raised a good point yet.Dr RAJEN PRASAD: But Mr Bridges you look like an idiot too when you sit there and do not actually answer the questions—a very senior member. If the member wants to I invite him to please debate these particular questions because they are important questions. Maybe that member has not heard of this principle. Maybe when he was arguing in the courts he did not use it but here we are and the principle is important.What I am saying is that I would like to hear members opposite including the Minister of Health tell us where else this principle applies and whether or not consideration has been given to amending those Acts as well. That at least is what the select committee process would have done and it would have done it very well. It is a travesty that that process has not been prevailed upon. If that is what the Government is going to do then it is the responsibility of Government members to answer those questions now and not sit there like stunned mullets and make inane interjections. The only time during the Committee stage of this bill when we have had any sense that they are even awake is when they make inane comments as one was made just then. Thank you.