Radiation Safety Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Health: I move, That the Radiation Safety Bill be now read a second time. Members will no doubt recall that this bill will repeal and replace the Radiation Protection Act 1965 and its regulations. This will provide a much-needed update to our 50-year-old legislation by introducing best-practice principles in radiation safety to New Zealand law. The bill also enhances security measures that will provide a means for New Zealand to meet its international obligations relating to radioactive material. The bill will regulate the many beneficial applications in which ionising radiation is used on a daily basis in this country. In this respect the bill remains broadly similar in scope to the legislation it is replacing.

I would like to thank the Health Committee for its work on the bill. The committee received 14 submissions, including considered comment from the Regulations Review Committee, and heard three oral submissions. As members might expect for a bill of this type, some of the submissions and advice considered by the committee was of a highly technical nature. The committee has recommended a number of improvements. The reported-back bill clarifies the separate roles that codes of practice and regulations will play under the bill.

Codes of practice have become the only means of specifying how the fundamental requirements of the bill must be met. Members may also recall that the fundamental requirements of the bill specify that ionising radiation can be used only where a justified benefit can be demonstrated. Where this is the case, planned radiation exposures must be as low as are reasonably achievable. In all cases, radiation exposures must not exceed the limits specified in the bill. The fundamental requirements also deal with other aspects of safety, security, transport, storage, and disposal of radiation sources. Codes of practice will be issued for the different practices that involve radiation use. These practices occur across the fields of medicine and in other health services, veterinary medicine, science, research, and industry. Regulations have become the means for specifying how the other provisions of the legislation must be met. These include licensing and consent processes, record-keeping, safety planning, and the setting of fees, for example.

Improvements to the bill also introduce the requirements that codes of practice are reviewed at least once every 5 years, consulted on during introduction or review, and provided to Parliament for consideration as disallowable instruments under the Legislation Act 2012. Because codes of practice have become the only means of specifying how to comply with the fundamental requirements, the regulation-making provisions on fundamental requirements will no longer be needed and have been removed. Some of the regulation-making provisions have benefited from additional clarification of their intended purpose. These include provisions to make regulations to exempt very small radiation sources from authorisation and registration requirements, providing the resulting radiation exposures are below specified levels. This will allow, for example, for the continued beneficial use of household smoke detectors without the user being required to obtain a licence to do so.

The bill’s approach to ensuring appropriate standards are met by radiation ancillary service providers has been altered. These service providers help to ensure the fundamental requirements are being met by calibrating equipment used to measure radiation and assessing radiation exposures received by radiation workers. It was intended to regulate these services provided, using an approvals regime. However, to complement other changes to the bill, these services will now be specified in codes of practice and will become the responsibility of owners and managers of radiation sources as part of their licence conditions.

The bill has been amended to make it clear that a single source licence and a single radiation safety plan can apply to more than one radiation source where this is appropriate. A source licence is a licence to own or to control and manage a radiation source. Some owners, such as district health boards, for example, have control and management of a number of radiation sources. This improvement will help keep the administrative burden of managing radiation risks as low as is reasonably possible without compromising safety or security in any way.

The bill contains a provision to allow unlicensed persons to use radiation under the direct supervision of an authorised person. Further provisions have been added to allow an unlicensed person to use radiation sources, providing they are acting under the written instruction of an authorised person. This will apply to only those uses of radiation that are mechanical or procedural in nature. An example of such a situation might be the operation of baggage X-ray equipment at airports for security purposes. This amendment makes the bill more usable in these lower-risk situations.

The provisions to act under written instruction are not intended for higher-risk users of radiation or for clinical procedures that involve intended exposure of people to radiation. In these situations, high standards of safety training, day-to-day practice, and decision making are expected. Therefore, a licence exception in lieu of designated radiation safety training continues to be the only means of meeting radiation safety standards allowed for under the bill.

The fees charged under the bill are to recover the costs of administrating the bill. Fees will vary to a high degree depending on the size of the risk that is being managed. For some activities, fees will be high. Principles and safeguards have been added to the fee-setting provisions to ensure that suitable consultation is undertaken, that fees are justifiable and as low as possible, and that the fee-setting process is transparent.

Some scientific and technical terms have been clarified in the interpretation section of this bill. An oversight has been corrected to ensure that the Radiation Safety Advisory Council established by the bill will be subject to the Official Information Act 1982. Provisions have been added to clarify safety requirements for volunteers—often family members—who provide comfort and care for people who are being treated with radiation. Also, the committee has taken the opportunity to simplify some of the drafting in the bill.

The bill regulates ionising radiation only, and no changes have been made on this particular matter. I am advised that the committee discussed in its deliberations the potential health effects of exposure to non-ionising radiation. I am also aware that the committee received both submissions and technical advice on the nature of, and differences between, ionising and non-ionising radiation. In retaining the bill’s focus on ionising radiation only, the committee has unanimously reported back a bill designed to regulate the unique phenomenon of ionising radiation.

The reported-back bill meets its stated purpose of establishing a legislative framework to protect the health and safety of people and to protect the environment from the harmful effects of ionising radiation while allowing for its safe and beneficial use. I commend the bill to the House.

The Labour Party supports the second reading of this bill. The Radiation Safety Bill will repeal and replace the existing Radiation Protection Act 1965, and I think all would agree that an update of this Act is long overdue. In fact, in 2004 the Ministry of Health held a review of the Radiation Protection Act and held public consultation. At that time, a regulatory impact statement was prepared for a radiation safety bill, and that regulatory impact statement identified that there would be net benefits in drafting new legislation. So the intention was to extend the scope of the legislation to include harmful non-ionising radiation, but the Government decided in 2009 that the current regulatory regime was satisfactory. So that is a little bit of the history behind it.

This bill was introduced this year and it has been to the Health Committee, which has held submissions on it. I have to say that it is a very complex piece of legislation, in effect, and we were very, very well served at the select committee by a team of experts from the Ministry of Health. I want to commend them today for the way they went about explaining to lay people like ourselves how this legislation would work and what ionising radiation and non-ionising radiation was as we investigated and tried to understand exactly what should be in and what should be out of this legislation. It shows the value of having highly skilled professionals working within the bureaucracy, so I just want to put on record that we really did appreciate their support in this respect.

I think if there was going to be any disagreement on this bill—and it is not disagreement from the Labour Opposition, but I know that there was some discussion and some disagreement about whether we should include non-ionising radiation, and that perhaps this should have been included in this legislation. For those who are wondering what the difference is—and it was something that we needed to understand—ionising radiation is high-energy radiation. It includes X-rays, alpha particles, beta particles, and gamma rays that have ionising capability by removing atomic or molecular electrons, and hence can cause chemical or molecular changes to the interacting bodies. You can see it is quite complex. Non-ionising radiation is electromagnetic energy, which includes laser lights, electromagnetic fields, and radio waves. So non-ionising radiation produced by electromagnetic fields—and examples are cellphone towers, Wi-Fi, microwave ovens, ultraviolet tanning machines, and power lines—are not addressed in this bill, and they will continue to be regulated under New Zealand standards.

I think one of the reasons why we were convinced that we ought not to include them in this bill is that there is a variety of ongoing research about the possible health effects of non-ionising radiation. The reviews conclude that overall the results show that exposure that complies with the current limits does not cause health effects, and also the World Health Organization has said there is no accepted biophysical mechanism that would suggest that low levels of exposure involve cancer development. It was going to be incredibly complex to include non-ionising radiation, and so this bill does not, and we agree with the decision that was made for that to continue to be regulated by Standards New Zealand.

So what does this bill actually do? We have heard a very good presentation from the acting Minister, Paul Goldsmith. One of the purposes of this bill is to enable us to meet our international obligations under a range of international treaties relating to radiation protection, radiation safety and security, and non-nuclear proliferation. We certainly acknowledge that we needed to update legislation so that we could keep up with those treaties but also with technological changes, and there are many technological changes in an Act that is so old. 1965—if you think back to what life was like in 1965, there would be many people who did not have internet. There would be many people who did not have—

💬 Hon Member: It didn’t exist.

Yes, they did not have it. Many people did not even have colour TV in 1965. I could tell you there would have been very few people on the Chatham Islands who had colour television. But, seriously, if you think back to 1965 and go forward to 2015 and think of all the technological changes that have occurred, you will see that legislation must constantly keep up with such changes. It will not actually be only in this bill where we need to be constantly looking at legislation, because we will find very quickly that legislation on our books will become outdated because of the rapid technological changes that are being made.

We also support this bill because we want a high level of compliance and we want international best standard and practice in this country. We pride ourselves on being a country that wants to meet international treaties and standards, and we want a high level of best standard practice. Of course when you are talking about things like X-rays, there is a certain amount of fear in the public about the impact on them anyway, and about whether they have to have a lot of them and what does it do to them. You need to ensure that those who are providing X-rays and other services are reaching the highest standard, so this bill is one that does, in fact, lift our standards and it brings us in line with best international practice.

One of the parts of this bill that I think is also important is it covers the use, the transportation, and the disposal of ionising radiation, which includes man-made cobalt-60 and naturally occurring uranium in quantities above stated levels. It also is a fundamental requirement—it stipulates that radiation use occurs only where the expected benefits outweigh the risks, that exposure must be kept as low as reasonably possible to achieve the results that are wanted, and that the doses must not exceed the limits. So we asked quite a number of questions about how this would work and what impact this would have—if a person did receive too much, what track would they go down to address these issues—and we got, I think, some very solid answers in the way that this bill would work.

In terms of the implementation of international conventions, it does mean that we will complete New Zealand’s domestic implementation of the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism and the Amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material. It also allows for the International Atomic Energy Agency international inspectors—as you heard from the Minister—to be appointed by the Director for Radiation Safety to undertake activities in New Zealand, and these international inspectors must be accompanied by an enforcement officer appointed by the director under a clause in this bill.

So the bill has a lot of complicated pieces to it, but it is a big move forward in terms of our approach to radiation protection in New Zealand, so the Labour Party supports this bill. We thank the chair of the select committee for the very good way that the inquiry and evidence on this bill was heard—the length of time that we were given to be able to understand it, as much as lay people like ourselves can understand these issues—but why I feel very assured that we are making the right moves here is the calibre and quality of those who were providing advice to us at the select committee. We will be supporting this bill in the House.

I am pleased to take a call in this second reading of the Radiation Safety Bill. Can I begin by acknowledging the speaker who has just sat down, Annette King, but also other members of the Health Committee. I have often said that we are quite collegial in our proceedings, and I think this bill is a good example of working together. Perhaps there was a point of commonality—and certainly with regard to me—of complete and utter lack of knowledge in this space. I am not an electrical engineer, physicist, or anything, so—

💬 Stuart Nash: Or anything at all.

Oh, that hurts—that hurts.

💬 Stuart Nash: You said it.

I know. It is just so hurtful, really. You know, we work very well together in this space, because, actually, it was, as both previous speakers have mentioned, a very, very technical piece of legislation. I too want to thank the officials who led us through that, articulating these concepts so that lay people could understand and at times, I suspect, displaying great patience as we continued to ask the same questions over and over as we tried to get our heads around them. But I think, for those listening to understand, that although lay people might sit on this committee, we work very hard to understand the concepts that we are ultimately putting into law. So my thanks go to the officials and my thanks go to the committee.

One of the things that keeps coming up and that I want to assure the public about is, again, that distinction between ionising and non-ionising radiation. I think often when there is a little bit of uncertainty in these spaces it generates a lot of concern for people. Look, this bill deals with ionising radiation. As the Hon Annette King mentioned, we are dealing with things like gamma rays, beta rays, X-rays, and so forth. It is energies or particles of energies that make material and substantial differences, and that is distinctly different in a physical sense from what you would expect from visible light sources, ultraviolet light, radio waves, what is coming out of your cellphone at the moment, TV screens, and the like. We are not, in this bill, wanting to regulate the latter.

There is one that is not so much an exception, but I recall that one submitter—in fact, the first gentleman who submitted—pointed out the issue of smoke detectors and where they fit. In fact, that was something that we have very quickly looked at and come to the right space in that area. Those of you who may, you know, take the time walking through the corridors of your house will note that, actually, we are using ionising radiation in that space, so how we deal with that appropriately is important.

As has also been mentioned, this is about bringing the legislation up to speed with current practice. I have to admit, I was not around in 1965. I will have to turn to some older members—I will not mention which party—[Interruption] I know—experience. But we are also bringing ourselves towards those international obligations.

💬 Andrew Bayly: You were born then?

No, look, the milkman had not even turned down the street in 1965. That said, I was born in an era where we still had black and white television and only two channels. We are also here to bring ourselves in line with international obligations, and that is quite important.

A couple of things I think we need to very quickly touch on—this bill ensures that appropriate security measures are in place when handling radiation. This is not opening the door to some sort of carte blanche approach. It is also about setting codes of practice that will ultimately guide the way we deal with radiation, and those codes have to be renewed or reviewed every 5 years. One really important element is that an institution now using ionising radiation needs a single source licence. So the Minister talked about district health boards, where they might, of course, have an X-ray machine, a CT scanning machine, magnetic resonance imaging, and so forth. We are not expecting the district health boards to hold a licence for each of those items; they themselves can hold a source licence to be able to use ionising radiation, and very much the same is true for universities.

The other thing I will touch on, because there are a lot of technical changes we have made, is about ancillary services. So you might have a magnetic resonance imaging machine, and there is a source licence, obviously, to use it, but you may need at times to send parts overseas, in particular to get the ancillary or support services. In the original drafting of the bill it looked like we might have to regulate or provide some sort of approval for people outside New Zealand to actually help support the work of those magnetic resonance imaging machines. We have decided that does not really make much sense, practically speaking, so we have tightened up the regulations to make it very clear that the source licence will also enable people to use ancillary services overseas to help with those machines.

There are a few exceptions around our Defence Force and its use of radiation as well—I think that is important to note. But look, overall, this is a very good bill. I thank members again for their overarching support and look forward to it moving to Committee stage.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker, tēnā koutou katoa, manako hoki ki a Aotearoa tātou All Blacks.

[Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. Greetings to you all and the desire to return to New Zealand of our All Blacks.]

Welcome home. It is my pleasure to speak on this, the second reading of the Radiation Safety Bill, as a member of the Health Committee. I just want to reiterate some of the sentiments that our chair, Simon O’Connor, has shared about how well our committee gets on and how collaborative it is. This bill was really interesting because the main focus was actually about radiation, and we discussed whether this bill actually should include non-ionising radiation and, in fact, whether we should have renamed this bill the “Ionising Radiation Safety Bill”.

What I really want to highlight is just some of the comments that have already been made, including that this bill will repeal and replace the Radiation Protection Act 1965—so it is a long time since we upgraded and updated this legislation—to enable New Zealand to meet its international obligations relating to radiation protection, radiation safety and security, nuclear non-proliferation, and a range of international treaties, as my colleague Annette King articulated earlier.

The bill also provides that radiation use may occur only where the expected benefit outweighs the risks, and, actually, I want to focus on that sentiment for a while. Radiation and ionising radiation is radiation consisting of particles, X-rays, or gamma rays with significant energy to cause ionisation.

For people who do not know—and we had to do a lot of looking up in the committee to understand what that actually means—ionisation means that the medium through which those X-rays, gamma rays, etc., pass actually acquires either a positive or a negative charge. I think the significance of that particular definition for us in deciding that this bill was actually just about ionising radiation is that we know that ionising radiation causes leukaemia, and it causes cancers like lung cancer, skin cancer, and bone cancer.

So, actually, what this bill is trying to do is ensure, as I said before, that radiation use may occur only where the expected benefit outweighs the risk. So the intention of this bill is to ensure that exposures are kept as low as reasonably achievable, that prescribed dose limits must not be exceeded, that all reasonable steps to ensure safety must be taken, and that the likelihood of an emergency must be minimised through planning and preventing unauthorised access to radiation sources. So that is what this bill is trying to achieve.

I think the preoccupation that some of us had about the difference between ionising and non-ionising radiation actually was coupled with the fact that our select committee had been looking at the Health (Protection) Amendment Bill. That was a piece of legislation that we considered earlier, but within the scope of the Health (Protection) Amendment Bill there is quite a bit focus on ultraviolet tanning services, or sunbeds. The decision that our select committee made in support of that particular legislation was to ban sunbed use for under-18-year-olds. Why did we do that? We did that because, based on the evidence, it is actually unsafe. We do not want to put under-18-year-olds at risk, and so it does actually overlap with this Radiation Safety Bill because—and I will go back to my original point in terms of the purpose of this bill—radiation use may occur only where the expected benefit outweighs the risk.

So for some of us trying to, I guess, marry up those two pieces of legislation that were before our select committee, and trying to understand the difference between ionising and non-ionising radiation, it was actually that we were trying to understand why in the Health (Protection) Amendment Bill we have only banned UV tanning services for under-18-year-olds. The overwhelming evidence that we heard from submitters on that piece of legislation before our select committee was that they should be banned for all, irrelevant of age.

So we thought that if non-ionising radiation was actually part of this Radiation Safety Bill, then, in fact, based on radiation use occurring only where the expected benefit outweighs the risk, this could be another area where we could highlight the fact that, actually, we think—as the other members of the select committee and the Opposition do—that sunbed use should be banned for everybody. So we were not able to make that link. We are quite clear now on the distinction.

I think there is still some merit in calling this the “Ionising Radiation Safety Bill” so that everyone is clear, but we are yet to, I think, fully explore that option. Obviously, through the Committee stage there may be an opportunity for us to propose a Supplementary Order Paper, but the debate that we have had within the committee, I think, has been incredibly robust. I too would like to thank the officials and the level of expertise that was provided to our select committee so that some of us could understand what this bill was trying to achieve. I think that we have managed to achieve that.

I think that where we have come to in terms of this piece of legislation now means that, as my colleague Annette King has said, we will support this piece of legislation. So I will not take much more time because we have got a Health Committee meeting at 10 a.m. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

It is a pleasure to be taking a call and speaking on this second reading of the Radiation Safety Bill. I can remember when I stood up to speak on the first reading. I came into work that day and my executive assistant said to me “You’ve got to speak on the Radiation Safety Bill for 10 minutes.”, and I was there thinking: “Oh my goodness, how on earth? I know nothing about radiation.” As others have said, it is a very complex issue. I do remember going to Wikipedia and ending up more confused than I was when I started.

I do want to endorse the advice—and others have spoken of it—that we did have at our select committee, explaining the differences between the types of radiation, and giving us very clear charts and graphs about how it works. It is about modernising an outdated piece of legislation. I am one of the people on the Health Committee who can remember 1965, so I will make that admission. When you go back to 1965—it was actually when The Sound of Music was released, and I can remember trotting down from my school to the picture theatre. When we think about technology now and the things that we are streaming in in terms of movies, and then go back to 1965 and think about the way we did things then, we just know that the radiation protection that we had back in those days is not going to cover what we have got today.

There are about 4,300 licensed users of radiation sources in New Zealand, and although the majority of them are in the medical industry, we have actually also got veterinary medicine, we have got research, and there are a number of others who are also using it. As other speakers have alluded to, it is about the benefits outweighing the risks going forward, and making sure that the level of exposure, not only to those who are being treated but for family members and all those people around them, is absolutely limited to the minimum needed. It is also stating in this piece of legislation that no one is allowed to use a radiation source other than for its intended purpose. You have to have an authorisation before you can manufacture, possess, or control a radiation source. You have to have authorisation to use a radiation source, to import or to export, or to perform a radiation ancillary service. It is really, really tightening up those rules. It is tightening up the technology as we know it today.

We all know that radiation services are really important for our medicinal purposes. It is about delivering better cancer services—one main use that we use it for. It is a top-priority service. We have come a long way in terms of the treatment that people are getting, if it is caught early and it is treated early by safe, solid services with radiation. So it is a pleasure to support this bill today.

It has been a pleasure, again, to work with the Health Committee. We have had some great discussions. We have learnt a lot. While I am not now an expert on radiation, I have a much wider and broader understanding of it than I did when we began. Thank you.

I begin, as some others have, by thanking the officials who served the Health Committee, and the other select committee members. I thought it was a very useful and collegial way of approaching the bill. I will come back to the contribution made by the officials towards the end of this contribution, but I also want to say thank you to the submitters. The submissions were small in number, and my experience is that that usually—not always, but usually—indicates a fair degree of satisfaction with the content of a bill. Indeed, most of the submissions were, at least broadly, very supportive of the bill, with some minor amendments.

The bill sets out to do three main things. It does some modernising, and the changes made to the penalty regime, for example, are an example of that aspect of the bill. It brings New Zealand’s domestic legislation into line with international agreements and standards to which we are party—in fact, to which we have been party for some considerable time. As Annette King has noted, the reform is indeed somewhat overdue. The other thing that it does is reflect the changing circumstances. In 1965, as others have spoken of—it was a major theme, as I recall, of the first reading debate about this bill, as to what 1965 was like. But at that time, in relation to radiation safety—actually, I went to The Sound of Music, the movie, as well. It is a great film, and I heartedly endorse it for your education.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): The member will get out of the hills and back to the bill, thank you.

So in 1965 the sources of ionising radiation were generally in the control of easily identifiable individuals. One of the things that has occurred in the intervening time is that that is less and less the case. And, in general—

💬 Hon David Parker: General MacArthur.

As I continue, the suggestions of themes from 1965 are flooding in from other members around the House, but I will not be distracted by that. I am going to focus on the bill. But one of those changes has been the change from identifiable individuals to institutional settings: hospitals, universities, and research institutions. One of the things that this bill does is create a machinery for accountability in those circumstances.

My major concern with the bill has been over this issue of whether it should also continue to include only ionising sources of radiation or also non-ionising sources in its scope. I guess there are a number of reasons why I was concerned about that issue. First of all, the original recommendation, as Annette King has said, was for both ionising and non-ionising radiation to be covered by the bill. So it seems, prima facie, that that is what we should be considering.

Secondly, the Health Committee, in particular, as Louisa Wall has mentioned, has been particularly exercised—and was at the time that we were considering this bill—by sunbeds and solaria, which are sources of non-ionising radiation that clearly were the source of considerable harm. And, of course, non-ionising radiation covers a variety of sources. It covers visible light, ultraviolet light, radio frequencies, and, indeed, some other parts of the spectrum. So the potential harm from those sources suggested that non-ionising radiation should also be in the scope of the bill.

I guess the other reason that I was inclined to think that both should be included was one of administrative efficiency. My background is in hospital administration. It is regular for a magnetic resonance imaging machine to be in one room and to have X-ray machines in the room next door. One is the source of ionising radiation and one is the source of non-ionising radiation. It seems inefficient to have totally different regulatory regimes to control the use of the radiation sources in those machines. I was very interested in the evidence that the committee heard on that topic. I guess I was reassured somewhat by the fact that the submissions that we did receive did not suggest that it was necessary to combine the two into one Act. In fact, there was only one submission that made that suggestion, and that submission seemed to being a little off beam in its contents, whereas all of the authoritative submissions that we received agreed that the scope was correctly restricted to just ionising radiation.

There are, effectively, two options for regulating both ionising and non-ionising radiation. One is to have a single Act that covers both in its scope, which would then have to have separate regimes covered under the umbrella of that Act to cope with the different effects of the different types of radiation. The other approach is to take the one that we currently have, which is to have an Act that deals with ionising radiation only and have other regimes—through standards and regulations and, in some cases, other statutes—to deal with the non-ionising sources. The committee has chosen to go down the second of those, and there are several reasons for that.

Others have spoken about the difference between ionising and non-ionising radiation, but what I particularly want to highlight, having perhaps been the one who most strongly raised these concerns in the first reading debate, is that the effects of the different types of radiation are so strikingly different. In particular, ionising radiation interacts with the body by penetrating the body and producing large numbers of ions, or charged atoms, and in consequence we measure ionising radiation by the absorption of energy by body mass. Mass is the unit we use to describe ionising radiation. On the non-ionising side, we measure the impact by the heating effect on the surface of the body, and that is where the risk of non-ionising radiation lies. These are quite different types of effects, and so if we were to combine them in a single Act we would still need entirely different regimes within that Act to accomplish the regulation that we need.

That is not to say that the standards and the regulation that we have for all sources of non-ionising radiation are fit for purpose, and I certainly want to see a programme of modernising of those also. I would support Louisa Wall’s suggestion—which the Ministry of Health had no objection to, in fact—of relabelling this bill the “Ionising Radiation Safety Bill”. I think that that would provide some clarity.

It is this point of clarity and education that I want to finish on. As other members have said, the Health Committee was extremely well served by the fantastic advice that we had from health officials. But the New Zealand public also needs that same level of education and science literacy that was delivered to the Health Committee. I am a person who does have a physics degree, and the thought of speaking in the second reading and revisiting this legislation and rereading our report makes my head hurt, so let us think about the New Zealand public and actually put our minds to educating them about scientific principles. Thank you.

On behalf of New Zealand First, I am very pleased to rise in support of the Radiation Safety Bill. As other speakers have said, this bill sets out to repeal and replace the 1965 Radiation Protection Act. We all know that society, science, and technological advances have come a long way since then—The Sound of Music was a long time ago. But the best news about this particular bill is that it will bring us into line with international best practice and the latest principles of radiation safety, which is important.

We support this bill because it brings dose limits for ionising radiation into line with the recommendations of the International Commission on Radiological Protection. It is absolutely critical to balance the benefits of ionising radiation with the health and safety of people and our environment, and we believe that this bill successfully does that. And, of course, this bill also helps New Zealand to meet its international radiation protection obligations.

I must say I was very pleased to be the New Zealand First representative during the select committee process as we closely examined and refined the bill. Like others, we must compliment the people from the Ministry of Health, who ensured that we knew far more about the bill and ionising and non-ionising radiation as we went through the various stages in the bill. We received a lot of submissions and we heard from a number of people, all of which only added to our understanding of some very technological issues. This was a very technical bill, so we are very grateful to the people who took the time to comment on the bill, because this ensured that the content of the bill was appropriate and practical.

The bill focuses on providing a framework for the safe use of ionising radiation. We learnt that ionising radiation is irradiation that has enough energy to remove electrons from the orbit of an atom, causing the atom to become charged, or ionised.

💬 Scott Simpson: That’s right.

I know. We did not know that before. We also know that ionising radiation can easily penetrate the body. We learnt too that if an atom in a cell’s DNA is ionised, this can trigger chemical reactions that can damage our DNA and can lead to either death or mutation of the cell, which can eventually lead to cancer. We want exposures kept as low as possible, and we need to ensure that they are kept in line with, right around the world. But we can reassure Kiwis that the dose limits of radiation that are listed in this bill are safe and people will not be harmed in any way from this.

We also know that certain parts of the body are affected differently by radiation, and, of course, we were very interested in it because of sunbeds, which we had actually looked at previously, and whether or not they should be banned for people under the age of 18. Being fair-skinned myself, after hearing all of the evidence, I was quite happy to go along with that. So for children and for young people, the limits for ionising radiation need to be very different.

We are pleased too that the security measures have been tightened up by making it a requirement that every person who deals with a radiation source must ensure that there are appropriate security measures in place. This will ensure that everyone takes responsibility for the security of the radiation source, which is vital. A very important revision has been made to clause 22(4) allowing an unlicensed user to use a radiation source under the direct supervision or written instruction of an authorised person. We know that under current law, use is permitted only under the direct supervision of an authorised person, and the bill as it was presented stated quite categorically that no person could use a radiation source without a source licence. But, in reality, it is not possible for this to happen at all times.

I was particularly interested in the case of dental therapists who take X-rays of children’s teeth. It is just not practical for a dentist to be at the dental clinic every time an X-ray is taken of children’s teeth, so they cannot physically be there for every consultation. We believe that a better solution to this would be to allow dental therapists to be able to operate a licence under the Act for our children.

We also believe that there are a couple of items that still need addressing in the bill. The current draft of the bill states that the Director of Radiation Safety “may require an applicant for a source licence to submit a radiation safety plan”. We are of the opinion that it should be mandatory for every organisation that applies for a source licence to submit the plan.

We also fully support the need for a source register. This will allow better monitoring of what is happening in this particular area, but we are very keen to hear how this register is actually going to be controlled to ensure that only authorised persons can access it. We note that the regulatory impact statement says that the Ministry of Health will be able to support the bill within “current departmental appropriations”. We are keen to ensure that appropriate resources are available to ensure that other services do not deteriorate as moneys are used to ensure that this register is kept up to date.

So, although clarity is required on some issues, New Zealand First supports this bill. Thank you.

A lot of the debate in this Chamber has been around the difference between and the nature of ionising and non-ionising radiation, and they are important distinctions to be made clearly in this bill. The Radiation Safety Bill applies to ionising radiation, which of course is X-rays and gamma rays.

I just want to refer to some of the comments around non-ionising radiation that have been made by other members throughout the House, and their reference to sun-tanning beds and how, in the context of another piece of legislation, some members were calling for the complete ban of the use of sun-tanning beds in New Zealand. We did arrive at a different position in the Health Committee. I want to sound just a slight note of caution around that total prohibition position, because for sufferers of skin conditions such as psoriasis, which is a very common and upsetting skin condition—

💬 Louisa Wall: That’s medical. That’s not about cosmetic use. It’s not even relevant.

The member opposite says it is not even relevant, but I contend that it is indeed relevant to those people who have several choices when dealing with the treatment of psoriasis. They can, if they live in Wellington, make an appointment to go to Wellington Regional Hospital. They can take the bus or they can walk or whatever to get to Wellington Regional Hospital, park their vehicle, pay the fee, wait in the waiting room until it is their turn, go into the non-ionising radiation facility, get their 10, 20, 30, or 1 minute session of radiation for their psoriasis, then repeat the procedure, having taken half a day off work and losing income. Or they can go down to Courtenay Place or Lambton Quay and go and treat themselves for their psoriasis. I think that is a valuable option for people to have. That is my position on it. I see it as being a very valuable alternative. However, we can have that argument and we will have that argument in the Health (Protection) Amendment Bill, perhaps later today.

The Radiation Safety Bill is not actually really about the difference between ionising and non-ionising radiation. It is actually about modernising the framework around the use of X-ray and gamma ray facilities. If one thinks about it, there are X-ray suites and gamma ray suites and radiation therapy suites up and down New Zealand, and also in dental surgeries that, indeed, take films of schoolchildren. What this bill does is it brings the legislation around the use of those facilities in line with modern practice. That is what it does. It does it very well. I commend the bill to the House.

The Green Party supports the Radiation Safety Bill. I agree with my colleague Kevin Hague when he said that maybe it should be called the “Ionising Radiation Safety Bill”, because that is the focus of this bill.

Obviously, it is an important bill, because it is going to update and modernise the regulation of ionising radiation in New Zealand. This is important because not only is this radiation used in a wide range of applications but the use of it does carry with it a certain level of risk. It is one that the public is not able to assess for themselves. When they go for an X-ray, whether it is a dental one or at the hospital, they need to have trust that the regulatory regime is robust enough that they will not be exposed to more risk from that radiation than would be acceptable. Obviously, all exposure has the potential to cause harm, so what this bill is trying to do is balance the benefits of the use of being exposed to damaging ionising radiation with the harm that can result from that, and to ensure that that exposure occurs only when the benefits are greater than the risk of harm, which includes the increased risk of cancer and other damage as a result of that exposure.

I was one of those who would have liked to see a single regulatory framework that covered both ionising and non-ionising radiation. Obviously, the way that they affect the body and the way that they cause harm is different, but the reality is that exposure to both can cause harm. The exposure to ionising radiation carries with it, in most cases, a much greater risk of harm, and therefore the priority is to make sure that our regulatory regime for ionising radiation is robust and strong, because the risk of harm is very well known and very well quantified. That does have to be the priority, and that is why we need to support this bill, because it is finally updating the laws to meet international standards and ensure a higher level of compliance, which is absolutely what we need to see in New Zealand.

However, it does not therefore follow that our current levels of regulation around non-ionising radiation are adequate. I would hope that further down the track the Ministry of Health will look at and review the regulations and standards that govern non-ionising radiation, because there is greater and greater exposure to non-ionising radiation from a very wide range of sources, and there is greater public concern about this. So we accept the recommendation of the officials that we do not try to incorporate it into this bill, but it does not therefore follow that that is an issue we should ignore altogether.

The Green Party supports this bill. We support a robust regulatory regime for ionising radiation, we support compliance with international standards, we support the high levels of compliance that we hope will arise out of the bill, and therefore we are pleased to be supporting it. Thank you.

I rise to take a call on the Radiation Safety Bill at its second reading, and I am pleased to do so to offer Labour’s support also for this bill. I did not have the benefit of being on the Health Committee and of hearing all of the submissions that previous speakers have referred to. It sounds like it was a very thorough process—albeit technical at times—and has really challenged both the officials and the members hearing the submissions on the bill in order to ensure that they have got this right. It is interesting to note that this bill has support right across the House, and, therefore, I think that is an indication that the select committee has indeed done its work well and has got the technicalities of this bill correct.

This appears to be a bill where the Government is responding—one of those few times that this Government is responding—to recognise international best practice, and one of the few times that the Government is actually looking at the research and evidence and is making good, sound policy and legislation based on research and evidence.

I want to encourage the National Government to learn from what it has done here and apply it in a range of other settings. There is a bill that went through this House in the not too distant past where the Government ignored international best practice when it came to safety, and it ignored the research and evidence. It went looking for a political solution, and ended up telling us that worm farms are more dangerous than cattle farms. So I think this is an example that the Government should learn from, about how to do it properly if it really is concerned about safety issues. If it is genuine about it and it wants to make progress on it and it wants to have the full support of this Parliament, then actually looking to international best practice, learning from it, hearing the research and evidence, and acting on it properly without the political overlay and the political undermining of genuine safety—that is the way that this Government needs to continue to proceed. And this bill is an example of how it can be done well.

The Radiation Safety Bill will repeal and replace the Radiation Protection Act 1965, and having been born just a year prior to that Act I can actually track the technological advances there have been in the course of my lifetime and I think that that probably therefore tells us that it is well and truly time to revisit the way in which we deal with radiation safety because of the changes that have occurred over the course of that period of time—some 50 years since this legislation was originally put in place.

I hear the calls from members who were on the select committee to ensure that the public do understand that this is really covering one aspect of radiation—not the entire spectrum. It covers ionising radiation and does not attempt to cover non-ionising radiation. I know that there is a range of views from members on the select committee about whether it ought to have attempted to do that or not. The consensus appears to be that they are different, and that they are so different that they are better dealt with in separate regimes, and I accept that from those who heard all the evidence. However, it appears to be, I think, unanimous—although I have not heard the National Party members speak on this issue—that there is a need, and an urgent need, for the non-ionising radiation standards to be updated. They also have not been updated for some period of time. It makes absolute sense to me that if this House is investing its time in updating the ionising radiation safety legislation, then it needs to very quickly turn its attention to the non-ionising aspects that are not covered by this bill.

So, in summary, Labour supports this bill. We congratulate the Government on recognising international best practice, on addressing the research and the evidence in front of it, and we encourage it to do that in all fields with regard to safety.

As a member of the Health Committee, it is a great pleasure to speak in the second reading debate on the Radiation Safety Bill in the name of my friend and colleague Jonathan Coleman, the Minister of Health.

When the speeches leading off this debate were made earlier on by colleagues on the Health Committee, I was impressed with the range of knowledge and depth of understanding that my colleagues had absorbed from this bill and our hearings into it at select committee. One of the great things about being a member of this Parliament is that even though you have no particular expertise—and as members we may not have a particular knowledge of a subject area or a piece of legislation—when a piece of technical legislation such as this comes before a committee such as the Health Committee, which is a collegial and well-chaired committee and one that works hard and diligently, you do learn things as a member of a committee like that. That certainly has been my experience on this piece of legislation. It is something that has been, I think, an exemplar in terms of how a select committee process should work, and I want to acknowledge and also thank the Hon Annette King for the comments she made during her contribution with regard to the very competent level of advice and professionalism received from officials and staff during the select committee hearings and process.

This is a technical bill. It is a bill that replaces legislation that dates to the mid-1960s, and the amount of technological advancement, medical advancement, and improvement in science and knowledge that has occurred in those intervening years is hardly necessary to explain. However, it is important that our legislation improves and keeps up with modern technology and new ways of doing things. This bill does that, I think, in a very good way. It is a way of ensuring that medical professionals are secure, that the users of these types of rays and radiation are secure, and that the beneficiaries of treatments that are achieved from that medical use are also protected.

But it goes further than that, and it is not going to be something that I want to get into, in terms of making great proclamations as to the definitions of the technical aspects of this bill, other than to say that I think the select committee has done an extremely good job. All members of the committee worked very well. I am delighted to hear that there seems to be unanimous support for this bill across the House, and so I commend it to the House.

It is a pleasure to speak to the Radiation Safety Bill, which provides a modern framework to the safe use of ionising radiation. We have heard that ionising radiation is used most frequently in the health space, and that sits in the speciality of nuclear medicine. It is used most frequently for cancer treatments. When we use radioactive material in medicine, there are generally two pathways that we apply. There is a diagnostic pathway and a therapeutic pathway.

Diagnostically, what we often do is attach a radioactive isotope to a molecule and look where it goes. We are primarily looking for cancers or over activity, because cancers metabolise. They take in nutrients twice as fast—sometimes faster—than other tissue and they metabolise it and catabolise it as well. So we attach a radioactive isotype, and for people who have thyroid disorders we attach a radioactive isotype to iodide. You take it as a pill and the radioactive material goes into the thyroid gland and accumulates in places that are overactive.

We also very commonly do it with what are called PET scanners—positron emission tomography—and that is when you think there is a cancer in the body but you just do not know where it is. That is because in the early stages of cancer, it can actually be too small to see with a CT scan or magnetic resonance imaging, but the cancer is there and it is growing fast, and what it is doing is it is eating nutrients twice as fast. Well, one of those nutrients is glucose, so what we do with a PET scan is we put a radioactive isotope on to the glucose, the patient drinks it, and 45 minutes later we do a CAT scan. Over those 45 minutes, the cancer in the body—if there is a cancer—has taken up the radioactive glucose, and when you scan for it, you see what is called a hot spot on a film. It is a very important part of diagnostics for cancer, and we are really focused on cancer.

We also use radioactive material in nuclear medicine therapeutically. That is, once we have made a diagnosis, once we have found a cancer, we can use radioactive material to kill that cancer—to obliterate it, if you like. That would be very common, of course, for breast cancer, also for cervical cancer, and also for prostate cancer. So it is a very important part. This bill really solidifies and provides a really robust framework around the use of radioactive material in nuclear medicine and in medicine generally.

This bill is also a very important step in advancing our international responsibilities. Some of the conventions that this will help us deploy towards include the Amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material. This comes under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and it is a convention that talks about the safe use, storage, and transport of nuclear materials, and the facilities that are involved. So this bill assists further progress towards that implementation. The second major convention that this bill assists is the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism. This is under the United Nations. New Zealand signed this in 2005, and this has a broader application than the previous convention. It is more applied to a definition of materials and facilities, and it covers both military and peaceful applications. It talks to the criminalisation of planning, threatening, or carrying out acts of nuclear terrorism, and it also requires international cooperation.

So this bill assists further progress towards implementation. On that subject, I would like to conclude with what the Minister led off with in the introductory speech to the first reading, and that is to reassure people and reiterate the comments around nuclear materials in New Zealand. He commented that this bill does not in any way alter the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act, the Nuclear-Test-Ban Act, or the Atomic Energy Act. These are well-established laws. They deal with nuclear weapons and atomic energy. These matters are outside the scope of this bill, and this bill has been drafted to ensure expressly that there is no doubt that these Acts are not offended. So on that note I would like to commend this bill to the House.

Bill read a second time.