Medicines (Specified Biotechnical Procedures) Amendment Bill

The Medicines (Specified Biotechnical Procedures) Amendment Bill is an indictment on the Labour Government and its approach to science. I note that in effect the bill extends the moratorium on xenotransplantation in New Zealand until 31 December 2006, and allows that date to be extended by Order in Council if necessary. That is what is being said.

There is no doubt that a moratorium is a very crude and unthinking approach to science. I note that the Ministry of Health’s report to the Health Committee stated that in February 2002 the Government identified biotechnology as a growth sector for New Zealand in its growth and innovation framework. Here we have an unthinking Labour Government that has basically demonstrated in its attitude towards science that it has been coerced by the Greens to take an approach that is not evidence-based. That is a huge worry.

I note that the report of the Health Committee—I was not present at the time, but my views were well known—signed by the chairperson, Steve Chadwick, states: “We resolved to call for public submissions on this bill as we considered that the bill content was straightforward and uncontroversial.” That does not reflect the views of the National Party. The bill’s content certainly is controversial. For the chairperson of the select committee to state, without reference to other members of the committee, that it is uncontroversial is absolutely inappropriate.

The report goes on to state: “Some of us consider that certain organisations should have been consulted on this issue,”. I made a specific request in writing that there be consultation with the scientific community. There are members of the scientific community who are particularly interested in progressing xenotransplantation in New Zealand but who have been prevented by this Labour Government from doing so.

The report goes on to state: “Others of us would prefer to see the outcome of the consultation being undertaken by Toi te Taiao: the Bioethics Council before considering detailed legislation in this area.” We know that Toi te Taiao is, indeed, wending its way at snail’s pace through its considerations of xenotransplantation. One of the things that worry me greatly about Toi te Taiao is that it does not seem to have a sense of time in terms of the rapid rate at which biotechnology is progressing throughout the world. It is absolutely impractical to think that a moratorium in little old New Zealand will in any way affect what is going on around the rest of the world.

I note that the ministry in its submission to the Health Committee went through the situation in various countries and what they are doing. Australia may have taken a Luddite approach just like that of the Labour Government of New Zealand, but Canada has certainly taken a far more progressive view. Public consultation on xenotransplantation has occurred there, and Canada’s view is that xenotransplantation should be progressed on a case by case basis according to the merits of each case. The United Kingdom Xenotransplantation Interim Regulatory Authority, which was established in May 1997, has taken the stance that the authority reviews applications for clinical trials on a case by case basis.

Here in New Zealand, however, the Labour Government has taken the easy way out. It has been coerced by the Greens and has put in place a blanket, unthinking moratorium, while at the same time it goes on with the rhetoric that the biotechnology industry in New Zealand is very important for our economy. We do know that there has been one—

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Before I call the next speaker, I note that the previous speaker was not really talking about the title. He was talking more about the bill as a whole.

The debate isn’t on the title, is it? It is on the part.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): It is on clause 1, the title. Because members have been used to having wide-ranging debates on title clauses, I did not really want to interrupt the member’s speech to point that out. But if members so wish, they can have a wide-ranging debate and put the bill as one question. Is that what members want?

This is not a very big bill; it is only a page long. The debate will probably not go for very long. I seek the leave of the Committee to have a wide-ranging debate—if the Minister is happy with that—but then vote separately on the clauses when the time comes. If you are comfortable with that, I think it would be appropriate, given the size of the bill.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Do members agree with that? They do. There is no objection.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to support the Medicines (Specified Biotechnical Procedures) Amendment Bill. New Zealand First believes that there are too many unknowns to proceed with xenotransplantation at this stage, and that this moratorium needs to be extended to 31 December 2006, until further research can be carried out.

Although we want to provide lifesaving solutions to New Zealanders, we believe it is wiser to ensure that medical procedures like xenotransplantation provide the best possible outcomes for everyone. The countries that we like to compare ourselves with, such as Australia, Britain, and Canada, also have moratoriums or very strict guidelines imposed upon the clinical trials for xenotransplantation. We find it unacceptable to rush in when neither the knowledge exists nor the structures are in place at this point in time in New Zealand to assist patients with any problems or challenges that they may experience after xenotransplantation. Even our closest neighbours, like Australia, would be unable to help us in this particular instance. The risk has to be weighed against possible benefits to recipients. Studies at this point in time are inadequate, and they do not counterbalance the potential risks that are involved.

Human trials do not appear to be totally justified at the present. We even have discussions over which animals will be used for xenotransplantation. I quote from the Health Canada fact-sheet: “While it may seem logical to choose animals that are genetically similar to humans, such as apes or baboons, it is becoming clear that more distant mammals may be preferred. Pigs have been viewed as the preferred choice of source animal due to the fact that they are inexpensive and easy to breed, have relatively large litters, have organs that are about the right size, and may confer less risk of infection to humans than non-human primates.”

Even this area is not clear to scientists at the present. There is a lot of ongoing discussion about the whole topic. We know already that medical science uses animal parts for various therapeutic reasons, such as replacement heart valves from pigs. These products are chemically treated, and they are not functional, living tissue. This distinguishes them from the various organs used for xenotransplantation. We believe that the risks at this point need to be resolved. There are a lot of issues, too, that need to be resolved to a far greater degree than they are at present. We need to be sure that the technology does not have an increased risk of transmission of a wide range of diseases, including viral, bacterial, and other infections known to occur in the source animals. We do not want the risk of a new infection jumping the species barrier. So until the many issues are resolved, we believe that the moratorium should remain. We support the bill.

I rise to speak to the Committee stage of the Medicines (Specified Biotechnical Procedures) Amendment Bill. I reiterate some of the comments made by the National Party speaker, Dr Paul Hutchison. He commented that the Health Committee chair had noted that the bill is uncontroversial. In fact, it is not. ACT does not believe that the bill is uncontroversial. It is a very controversial matter.

This bill, which comes before Parliament in an election year, is kick-for-touch legislation, so that the Government does not have to confront the fears and the controversy surrounding xenotransplantation. The bill does not cover only xenotransplantation, as was pointed out by several speakers in the debate on the second reading. It covers a raft of issues, but the debate always seems to come back to xenotransplantation. The bill extends the moratorium so that the Government will not have to confront this very controversial issue in an election year.

The Government has persistently declared its belief that biotechnology is a main aspect of what it likes to call the knowledge economy. How often have we heard about the knowledge economy? It has been many, many times since I have been in Parliament. We hear all the buzzwords and terms, such as “bright future”, but what do they actually mean? When it comes back to the Government putting its money where its mouth is, it backs down very quickly and tries just to kick for touch, so that the moratorium is extended until 31 December 2006, which is a full 18 months away. So what are our scientists expected to do in the meantime? They are expected to go offshore, again.

The New Zealand First speaker said that further research needs to be carried out, and she used the very good example of heart valves. What we have here is a display, not just from that member but from many members. We in this Parliament are not experts on xenotransplantation, and that should be noted. In fact, I have had an email from somebody who has described exactly what Dr Elliott was doing before he was forced to move his experimentation offshore. This prominent medical researcher has developed a method of trickling insulin—cultured from the pancreatic cells of piglets—that is contained within retrievable tea bags. So the bags are a completely independent item, so to speak, and they float in the diabetic’s peritoneal liquid. The cells are coated to prevent an immune reaction, and patients’ immune systems are not interfered with, at all.

I think that the New Zealand First member’s comment of “interesting” is very pertinent, because she did not know that previously. She did not realise that a retrovirus could not get across that barrier. Firstly, there is the barrier of that coating to prevent an immune reaction, so that the patient’s immune system is not interfered with. That is a very valuable point, but it has been deliberately ignored by many members in this debate and is something that many people did not know about.

What we need, and what I am calling for in this debate, is some relevance. We should be listening to what experts are saying. We should be calling on expert advice. That did not really happen, I am afraid to say, within the select committee process, where the bill barely touched the table. We should be having a proper debate. We should not be just extending a moratorium because it suits the Government in this election year; we should be debating the real issues—those of xenotransplantation and other research.

For this reason, ACT New Zealand opposes the extension of this moratorium, calls for a proper debate, and calls for it now. We should be discussing the real issues, and it is an indictment on the members who refuse to do that. Only the members of the National Party and ACT are prepared to debate the real issues on this topic. It is a very sad day for this Parliament that we come here and want just to push things along as they are—to keep the status quo—in order to keep voters happy, so that at election time votes are not lost because of a very important issue. It is something that impacts heavily on diabetics in this country, of whom we have a great number.

ACT opposes the legislation because of this ignorance, the failure to call on expert opinion, and the failure to acknowledge that we should have a knowledge economy in this country. We think that the debate should be held here and now, not kicked for touch and then revisited in another 18 months’ time when, hopefully, we will have a completely new Government.

As we heard from my learned colleague Paul Hutchison, the National Party is not supporting this bill, for a number of very good reasons. There is no support for the bill, whatsoever. There is no basis in science to support the bill, and there is no logic associated with the decision to extend the moratorium. The decision to do that is based on absolute ignorance and on a desire, I think, on the part of Labour to push a contentious issue to one side until after the election.

We on the Health Committee were very concerned that we were unable even to call for submissions or for expert opinions to be heard so that we could find out whether the bill was a good or a bad thing for New Zealand science and for New Zealand people waiting for life-saving operations and treatments. Paul Hutchison asked for the opportunity to have submissions heard, but that was rejected. So with this bill there has been no consultation, whatsoever. Labour has just made a blanket decision to extend the moratorium, which is very much a Luddite approach to trying to deal with some very difficult issues.

At the moment many, many New Zealanders are waiting for life-saving operations and treatments. This bill does not reflect any of their concerns. It does nothing for those people who are waiting for science to provide them with, hopefully, effective treatment. Labour is continuing to ignore the human face of this issue. Members on this side of the Chamber wanted an opportunity to debate the issue at select committee level, but we were denied the opportunity to hear submissions—to hear from people about their concerns.

There are concerns among people in the scientific community, because, of course, this legislation puts a damper on a lot of areas of scientific work, particularly the work of those at the forefront of scientific endeavour; it makes it very difficult to conduct certain types of work in this country. We were also denied the opportunity to hear from the many, many New Zealanders who are keen on seeing scientific advances in those areas. We have seen some of the treatments that have been developed for people who suffer diabetes. That work cannot be done here now. Some people are waiting for kidney or liver transplants, or for transplants of other organs, but, because there are not enough human donors, they have to look elsewhere.

I think that the Government is trying to make up some of the cultural aspects that do not support xenotransplantation, but I say that people who do have concerns about those aspects do not have to go through the scientific work—they do not have to front up to be part of a trial; they do not have to try the new technology. But, for heaven’s sake, that opportunity should not be denied to those New Zealanders who do want to try different options in order either to preserve their lives or to increase dramatically their ability to enjoy their lives. My father is one of those people who are waiting for a kidney. He has no access to kidneys within the family, and, frankly, I know that if he could get a pig kidney he would be more than happy to line up for the trial.

Those technologies are developing. We are not talking about mad scientists who are putting together all sorts of weird and wonderful projects; we are talking about good, methodical science that is already being done, and about our ability to do those trials in this country. We have the brains and the people to do that kind of work. We should allow New Zealanders to make up their own minds about the risks and effects of taking part in a trial. If we look at the diabetes trial that Bob Elliot put together, we see that many, many people with diabetes said they understood the risks and the fact that some aspects might not work, but that even with those risks they felt they would be better off than they were in their current situation. But they were denied the opportunity to take part in that trial.

This moratorium is basically a slap in the face for all those New Zealanders who are facing health concerns, because it puts on the back burner a lot of the work that would have put them in a better position. The decision to extend the moratorium is not based on science or logic; it is based on absolute ignorance and political expediency. It is just an outrage that we have not been able to debate the bill at the select committee level. The whole thing has been slipped through with very little process.

I rise on behalf of United Future in support of the Committee stage of the Medicines (Specified Biotechnical Procedures) Amendment Bill. The bill is very, very small. It is really an application for an extension, and we make such applications all the time in Parliament when we need more time to work on something.

In this case, we are waiting for the introduction and passing of the human tissue legislation, which needs to happen first. That is not uncommon in law either—that sometimes one bill requires another to be passed first. My most recent experience of that was with the Ngati Awa Claims Settlement Bill. We first needed to pass Te Runanga o Ngati Awa Bill, the governance bill, before the settlement bill was passed a few days later. One required the other to be in place.

This legislation is in exactly the same situation. We require the human tissue legislation to be tabled and to proceed through the House and, when that is out of the way, this issue will be solved. All we are doing is keeping the moratorium in place, in the form of an extension. The fine work that is already being done on drafting the human tissue legislation—the fine work being done by the Bioethics Council—can continue.

This issue is not stalemated somewhere; it is not in some sort of freeze-frame mode; it is moving ahead, and this bill provides the extra time required. That is really all that this bill is about. Therefore I will say no more, except to reiterate that United Future is very happy to support the bill at the Committee stage.

I rise to speak in opposition to the Medicines (Specified Biotechnical Procedures) Amendment Bill, for a number of reasons. Firstly, I want to make it clear, as I did in an earlier debate, that xenotransplantation is not a new technology. I have a bit of paper in front of me stating that the first xenotransplant took place in 1682, when a bit of a dog’s skull was used to repair the broken skull of a Russian nobleman. There is a perception around that xenotransplantation is a new technology that has just fallen off the back of a truck, and that mad scientists somewhere in New Zealand have come up with this silly idea. In fact, the first successful transplant of an organ took place in 1963. So this is not new technology, and the science around it is reasonably robust.

I have heard a lot of arguments against allowing this bill to proceed, and I have seen no credible scientific argument to back the bill up. There are always doubts in science, and nothing is 100 percent sure. It is certainly not 100 percent certain that there will not be an earthquake tomorrow in which this building falls down and crushes us all. There is no 100 percent certainty about that, and there can never be 100 percent certainty in science. We found that out recently in the “corngate” inquiry, when contaminated corn was tested for zero tolerance. There can never be 100 percent certainty.

But at least a hundred examples have been put forward as to why this moratorium on xenotransplantation should not be extended. I think the argument that carries the most weight is that in regard to the work Dr Bob Elliot has done on diabetes, which is a major medical problem in this country. I know that the Associate Minister of Health, the Hon Damien O’Connor, who is in the chair, understands that diabetes is a major, growing problem, particularly in the lower socio-economic group—the group this Government purports to represent. We now have the science to address that problem. This technology could be described as xenotransplantation, because—as I understand from a brief explanation by my honourable, learned colleague Dr Paul Hutchison—it uses pig islets to reproduce insulin in a person’s body.

This Luddite, socialist Government is saying to people that they cannot undergo that procedure under its watch. I just ask why. It is typical of the Luddite approach of the Government to have a select committee process in which the chair says that the committee will not allow scientists with expertise in the area to appear before the committee in order to give it some advice. The Government never wants to let the facts get in the way of its bigotry. It wants to stop the scientists from proceeding, those mad loons out there in their white jackets—who, I hasten to add, have built the economy of New Zealand. This economy has been built on those people.

💬 Moana Mackey: I thought the farmers did that.

💬 Hon Parekura Horomia: You’re a farmer!

That is interesting. Government members interject that the farmers built the economy, and that I am a farmer. I tell them that the technology that has been developed in agriculture through scientific experiments is the reason why we are the most efficient agricultural producers in the world. The Minister interjecting should know that, but clearly he does not. If people put their heads far enough into the sand, it is dark and they cannot see anything. This is a classic example. So why should Parliament today stop these scientists?

Talking of farmers, I have in my electorate a leader in farming who desperately needs a kidney transplant and cannot find a suitable donor. He has told me that he would be more than happy to have a pig kidney transplant, because his condition now is such that he has no quality of life, and his illness is life-threatening. He does not know how long he has left. He has told me that, rather than live the life he is living and continue to go through the uncertainty, he would welcome the opportunity to have a xenotransplantation, provided the medical science was robust—and it is.

I thank the Chair for a further call on the Medicines (Specified Biotechnical Procedures) Amendment Bill. As I said earlier, the Labour Government has certainly taken a “head in the sand” approach to science in this country, and that is very regrettable. I am sorry to hear that New Zealand First and United Future have also taken such a similar stand as there is a clear need, by the thousands of people in New Zealand suffering from diabetes, to progress this technology. And the way not to do it is to have a blanket moratorium.

It is very important to realise that a whole spectrum of procedures is associated with xenotransplantation, and again the Ministry of Health supplied these to the Health Committee. It pointed out that, firstly, there can be whole organ xenotransplantation, an example of which is transplantation of an animal kidney. Secondly, there can be cellular transplantation—the transplantation of insulin-producing pancreatic cells. Thirdly, there is external xenotransplantation therapy—passing a patient’s blood through a medical device, such as an artificial liver that contains animal liver tissue. So it is important to establish that xenotransplantation is not one simple procedure, but many.

Heather Roy spoke earlier about the Diatranz development in New Zealand, and the fact that back in the 1990s it had carried out six xenotransplantation episodes on diabetics, by way of an intraperitoneal capsule, until they were stopped by this Labour Government. I must say that at the time Mai Chen, a hugely well-known lawyer, submitted to the select committee that she believed the Supplementary Order Paper brought in by the Government was literally a constitutional outrage. I absolutely agree with her. It gave no opportunity for Diatranz to submit its case.

But even more important is the fact that one of the problems at the time was the concern about the pig endogenous retrovirus, which was contained in the cells that Diatranz was using. Pig islet cells are now available that do not contain the pig endogenous retrovirus, and that has taken away this very important worry.

As was explained by Heather Roy, the procedure is a very elegant and innovative one, whereby the pig islet cells are placed within a capsule, which is then, by laparoscope, placed within the intra-abdominal cavity. The cells themselves are coated, so they do not have an antigen-antibody response but merely produce the insulin. In February this year, one of the patients looked again at his own pig cells and they were found to be still producing insulin. It thrilled him and it thrilled the international scientific community, yet the Labour Government is placing a blanket moratorium on a very safe, innovative, elegant procedure that will do great good for the biotechnology industry in New Zealand, let alone for the tens of thousands of diabetic patients in this country.

The point I want to stress is the fact that a whole spectrum of procedures is available. It is not just a matter of a pig heart or a pig kidney going into a human being. It can be cellular xenotransplantation. This issue should be taken on a case by case basis, according to the risks that are associated with it. This blanket moratorium will only set back science in New Zealand by many, many years.

The other interesting point that came out at the meeting in Parliament given by the Royal Society of New Zealand was that it now views the future of this technology as complementary to the technology of stem cell research. For New Zealand to say suddenly: “We are going to put a moratorium on it, and we are going to wait for the Bioethics Council, until it has consulted and deliberated on it.”, is simply not a meaningful or sensible approach to science, and it is being endorsed by a Government that says biotechnology should be one of the main focuses of the innovation initiative.

I welcome the opportunity to take a further call on this very important matter, and I would like to thank Dr Paul Hutchison for the light that he has shed on this matter. It is unfortunate, I think, that the only serious scientific debate we are to have on this matter in the near future is taking place here today—here in a Parliament where there are no experts, in fact. Here we are, a group of members of Parliament, most of whom are not qualified to comment on this issue. Both the National Party and the ACT party are opposed to this legislation. What we should be having is a much wider debate with the experts involved, but unfortunately that has been denied to New Zealand, to the detriment of science.

The obvious question, following on from what I said when I spoke previously, is whether pig insulin is safe for humans. I think that has been answered by decades of injecting millions of diabetics with pig insulin. I would have thought that was a very good starting-point for this debate, yet that question is being ignored by most of the parties here today. The decades of injecting millions of diabetics with pig insulin have proven that, in fact, pig insulin is safe for human beings.

Here in New Zealand we do have very rigorous regulatory regimes to control research, and those too have been largely ignored by this wider debate. I would like to mention Professor Roger Morris of the New Zealand veterinary school. I am told that Professor Morris is a world expert on the transfer of animal viruses to humans. There has been much talk by various politicians about retroviruses during the first and second readings of this bill. Professor Morris is a main adviser to the UK Government on foot-and-mouth disease, and to the Hong Kong Government on duck and hen infections jumping into humans—and there has been much talk of that particular case in the last couple of years.

Professor Morris has this to say: “It is riskier going to the zoo than to have one of these pancreatic cell transplants.” That is what the expert declares. I will read that again. “It is riskier going to the zoo than to have one of these pancreatic cell transplants.” Now that is quite something, coming from somebody whom the United Kingdom Government is happy to take advice from on the issue of the transfer of foot-and-mouth disease, and the Hong Kong Government to take advice from on duck and hen infections. Professor Morris added, after he said that is it riskier to go to the zoo, that: “I don’t believe it is risky going to the zoo.” I ask members to show me a New Zealander who believes that it is risky to go to the zoo. So, there we go; that is from the mouth of an expert. But, unfortunately, despite the fact that some people at the Health Committee would have liked to see some of the evidence from the expert, the debate has been denied that sort of comment.

New Zealand, of course, has been a world leader in promoting this promising treatment for diabetics—xenotransplantation—and Dr Hutchison gave a very good overview of it just before. We have the healthiest pigs, I am told, as well as the best monitoring technology. I would have thought, as someone who has been involved with research, that those three things combined would actually mean that New Zealand was a very good and safe place for the research to take place. But, no, political expediency in this election year is much more important to the Government than that. So we will deny our world-leading scientists the opportunity to continue their research here. We will deny an opportunity to the diabetics of this country who, after being well informed, volunteered to participate in this world-leading research here in New Zealand, and some of our best and brightest scientists have been driven overseas. New Zealand diabetics will have to go overseas for these transplants, which are permitted in countries that are frequently put forward as being advanced in that sort of area. I am talking about countries such as Switzerland, Sweden, and the USA. How often, when we talk about knowledge economies, do we put those countries forward as examples to follow?

What we have are political power-seekers who have usurped the status of experts—who have usurped our scientists, our people who actually know the real issues we are talking about in this debate. But, no, here in New Zealand today we will have misinformed debate on retroviruses.

I pay tribute to the member who has just resumed her seat, Heather Roy, because she made an extremely important point. One expert, whose advice she has had access to, says that xenotransplantation—

💬 Jill Pettis: What do you know about science?

I would keep quiet if I were that member. Her outbursts have put her Government in a difficult position vis-à-vis Mr Benson-Pope. The ACT member made a very important point that xenotransplantation is as risky as going to the zoo. The members of the Health Committee did not know that, because we were not allowed to call any expert opinion. We were not allowed to ask for any submissions on this point. The bill was rushed through, because the Government put political expediency ahead of the people of New Zealand who are waiting for this kind of technology. We were not allowed to ask the tough questions about—

💬 Jill Pettis: It’s funny that the case came from Dunedin. It’s no coincidence.

There goes the fishwife; she is singing again. She should watch her outbursts. She got her colleagues into a lot of trouble last week. We do not know what the kidney societies think about this bill, we do not know what Diabetes New Zealand thinks about this bill, and we do not know what the Royal Society of New Zealand thinks about this bill, because the select committee was not allowed to ask them. We were not allowed to ask any of the companies involved in undertaking this kind of research. We were not allowed to ask any of the scientists undertaking this kind of research. The general public has been locked out of having any consultation on this bill at all.

The Minister in the chair, the Hon Damien O’Connor, has to explain why. Can he explain to the kidney societies why they were not allowed an involvement in the development of this bill, and why people see this moratorium being extended for another 2 years for no reason? If the Government comes up with any reason, it is fear and ignorance. There is certainly no scientific backing for the extension of the moratorium. The Minister in the chair might like to explain his views on this bill. I am sure that, having travelled the country, he has spoken to many of the associations and organisations that I have just listed. I think that the public will be pretty angry that they have been locked out of this process, because it will have a huge impact not only on our scientists but also on all of those people who are waiting for the treatments and operations that could come as a result of this scientific work.

Some of the consultation being done by the Bioethics Council is odd in the extreme. It is looking, as part of its consideration, at the cultural, ethical, and spiritual aspects of xenotransplantation. I cannot think of any spiritual aspects. If there are cultural aspects, it should be noted that the individual patient has a choice about whether he or she wants to have a particular treatment or operation. These sorts of things are not compulsory, but New Zealanders who are interested in the outcomes of this kind of work should be able to choose to have access to it.

We did not hear from any of the scientists who are working in this area. What impact will this moratorium have on the work they do? If they want to continue to be at the forefront of scientific endeavour, will they have to go offshore, just as Diatranz did? What will the impacts of extending this moratorium be? Once again, the Minister in the chair is silent, because he does not know. Certainly, I am ashamed to say, the select committee does not know either, because it was not allowed to ask any of those questions. The bill was just slipped through at, I believe, a conspicuously suspicious pace.

So the public will be upset. As Heather Roy has said, the expert she was able to consult said that these processes are as dangerous as going to the zoo, and he followed that up by saying he did not think that going to the zoo was very dangerous either. So that begs the question—

I am pleased to take a quick call on this bill, and I am alarmed to hear the Opposition speeches in the Chamber today. As the chair of the Health Committee, at the request of that committee I asked the Ministry of Health to come and brief us. Perhaps the members were absent from the meeting, but we had a very comprehensive briefing from Gillian Durham on all the aspects that members have raised in this Parliament as to why we have extended the moratorium and why we have voted to support this bill. It is for a very simple reason. All the issues that Dr Paul Hutchison raised are the very issues that are being considered by the Bioethics Council right now. It is a far more important body to listen to the very important and deeply concerning issues to do with some of the safety impacts of xenotransplantation than the Health Committee is.

All we were asked to consider was to align the dates, because the expiry of the dates currently is at the end of June. The Bioethics Council simply needs a little longer to consider all the submissions before making its report on every aspect of the issue that Heather Roy, Katherine Rich, and Paul Hutchison have raised today. I think that the members of the council are the experts. It is misleading the Committee to say that we rushed this bill through. We received a briefing from the ministry, and it is interesting that not one of those members who have raised issues of concern asked one question of the ministry on xenotransplantation at the briefing that I arranged.

In no way did I fast track this bill through the committee. The member who is raising the greatest concern was not present at the committee when we voted, so I think that it is a mere oversight that the member does not understand the workings of the Bioethics Council at all, and has again shown a distrust of the Ministry of Health. That is something I find most improper coming from the Opposition spokesperson on health.

I support this bill. It is a simple bill, simply to extend the moratorium to the end of December 2006 so as to allow proper consultation, which is what those members of the Opposition have said I was denying. We are not the Bioethics Council; we are simply the Health Committee. We were asked to put the dates into alignment. I think we have done exactly the right thing, and I move with haste to support this bill.

I was somewhat astounded to hear the shrill attitude of the chairperson of the Health Committee towards what she stated was an uncontroversial bill. This is a hugely controversial bill. As Mai Chen said several years ago, when the Labour Government slapped a moratorium on it and prevented a New Zealand biotechnology firm—[Interruption]

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): The member will be heard.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am afraid that Jill Pettis carries on an avian-like cacophony of nonsense perpetually, and it would be nice for her to chirp down.

We heard from the chair of the Health Committee that one body alone, the Ministry of Health, came to the Health Committee. Well, that is fine; the Ministry of Health has to do what the Government says. We specifically asked for other submitters to come before the committee, and I can think of some very important submitters that would have helped Parliament and the members of the committee to have a much more rounded and scientific approach to this bill: for instance, the Royal Society, Diabetes New Zealand, the New Zealand Association of Scientists, the New Zealand Biotechnology Association, and interested consumers groups that have involvement with kidneys and hearts. Instead, what did the Health Committee’s Steve Chadwick do? She denied an open debate on this very, very important subject, while she underpinned it by saying in her report that the bill was uncontroversial.

Well, it is controversial and, as I said earlier on, Mai Chen, an eminent New Zealand lawyer, said several years ago that it was a constitutional outrage that this Government prevented Diatranz from putting its point of view to the Government by denying it from having its application heard through Medsafe.

We know from the Ministry of Health submission that in more enlightened jurisdictions like Canada and the United Kingdom, those applications are being taken on a case by case basis, which is what should happen in New Zealand. [Interruption] As I have been at pains to try to point out to that rather noisy chairperson of the Health Committee, a wide spectrum of techniques and procedures is associated with xenotransplantation.

The very fact that the pig endogenous retrovirus is now no longer present in some cell lines has been a massive breakthrough in this technology. It gives every reason, as was endorsed by Bruce Scoggins, the Chief Executive of the Health Research Council, that we should be endorsing and looking at this technology in New Zealand and not putting it on the back burner, through a blanket, unthinking moratorium, as this Labour Government would have us do.

Also, as I have pointed out, the Royal Society made the very important point that this technology will stand in line as being hugely important, along with stem cell technology. We should be treating it with an evidence-based, scientific approach and not with the blanket moratorium that the Labour Government is determined to have.

This Labour Government keeps talking about biotechnology being the focus with which it will gain its innovation and economic progress. But what does it do in reality? It actually imposes some of the toughest regulatory hurdles in the developed world on to this sector, to the extent that a constant stream of New Zealand scientists, and science, is going overseas every day. Only 2 months ago we heard of the tragedy of the Huntington’s chorea transgenic sheep experiment, which is being carried out through Auckland University. The university was forced to go to Australia with it because it cost too much and it took too long to do it in New Zealand under this Labour Government’s rules.

It is interesting to listen to the debate from both sides of the Chamber, including the contribution made by the Health Committee chair. But the question that still remains in my mind, which was raised by Heather Roy from the ACT party, is why would we not listen to somebody like Professor Roger Morris from Massey University, who is a world-renowned expert in this area? Why would we not listen to that gentleman? I visited Professor Morris in his rooms in Massey University a while ago, to talk about biosecurity issues. One of the amazing things that he said to me with regard to the Government’s complete failure to control the multi-systemic pig virus disease that took off in this country, which was a complete biosecurity failure, was that the most important part of that failure was overlooked. That was not the argument that I was putting forward, which was that it was a tragedy for an important export industry in this country, but it concerned the important medical point that was lost—that is, the pig herd in New Zealand is the first detection point for some kinds of potential diseases that may come into this country. Like humans, pigs are very susceptible to diseases of various kinds. So if something were to come into this country, we would find it in the pig herd before we found it anywhere else.

Here we are today extending a moratorium because the Labour Government believes that there is risk or danger in xenotransplantation, yet at the same time it has allowed through this country’s borders a major virus that has affected the pig herd. The argument put forward is that some of those diseases may be trans-species. Of course, that sounds like a credible argument to a layman. But why not listen to scientists and experts who have looked at the issue and come to an absolute conclusion on it? Why not listen to them? The only conclusion one can come to is that, as usual, if the Government happens to be a Labour Government, it must not let the facts get in the way of its own view of the world. Clearly, this is a classic example of that.

I question the Minister in the chair, Damien O’Connor, as to why Dr Bob Elliot and Diatranz went overseas. It is a simple question. Why did they not stay here? There was a leading New Zealand scientist who had some frontier work going on—something that New Zealand is known for around the world, actually, and something that has built the economy of New Zealand. We have been leaders in a range of fields, particularly in biotechnology and in the agricultural sector, which has had the strongest growth in the economy, despite all the previous Labour Government’s protests that it was a sunset industry and that we would soon move out of that sort of nonsense into something more sophisticated. Despite those comments, that is the area where we have had the strongest economic growth in this country, based on the back of biotechnology. Why did Dr Bob Elliot and Diatranz pick up their roots and clear off overseas? The simple answer is that this Government could not see the worth of people like Dr Elliot and the work they did. It introduced silly little bits of legislation like the one we are debating today, and made it so difficult for Dr Elliot that he could not operate here.

My second question to the Minister in the chair, and to anybody else on the Government benches who would care to take a call, asks whether or not it was a recent occurrence in this country that a Seventh-Day Adventist family was actually taken to court because it would not allow its young infant to have a blood transfusion that potentially could have been lifesaving—the medical opinion was that it was lifesaving. The Ministry of Health, under the Labour Government, took that family to court and prosecuted it for stopping that process from taking place. The ministry described it as an elective option of the child. I ask the Minister which it is: on the one hand he is saying that we can stop science on the basis of culture, religion, and science—although there is no science to back up the argument in terms of the process of xenotransplantation—and on the other hand we have prosecuted a family that held to its religious and cultural beliefs to the point that it sacrificed one of its family members because it felt so strongly about the issue. The Government cannot have it both ways. Which is it? Will we have a blanket ban on any kind of science?

I move, That the question be now put.