Radiation Safety Bill

I have to say that when I completed the first part of my speech the other night, we were thoroughly enjoying this debate, except for the Minister, who had gone to sleep while giving his speech. But for the rest of us, and those on the Health Committee, we had really enjoyed this debate and enjoyed this bill because it had been one where there had been considerable cooperation to amend an old Act that is 50 years old and was in desperate need of overhaul—something that started with a review a long time ago when I was the Minister of Health. That was 11 years ago, although you would think it was just yesterday. So it was time to review and update the Act.

When I was last speaking, I had just started a little explanation as to why we needed to change the name of the bill from the Radiation Safety Bill to one that really did tell you what this bill was about. I wanted to change it so that it was the “Ionising Radiation Safety Bill” because at the select committee there was no doubt that there was some confusion between what was ionising radiation and what was non-ionising radiation. The members of the committee were very fortunate that we were well served by some superb officials from the Ministry of Health, who were able to lead us through the explanation as to what the differences were—although I must give credit to Kevin Hague, who probably understood a little better than most.

We were led through the differences and understood what we were doing, but my concern and why I wanted the Government to change the name so that it was more clear was that I do not believe that many of the public know what, in fact, we are legislating for. This would have made it very, very obvious. What we were not passing legislation to regulate was non-ionising radiation, and this is things like your cellphone towers, your Wi-Fi, and your microwave ovens and ultraviolent tanning machines—although I have to say that that is another debate we will have at a later date, and why we are not regulating them out of existence, I do not know, but they are not included in this bill. It does not include your power lines, although some people think that they are included.

So it was a great disappointment that the Government did not accept a name change, and I know that the members of the Health Committee, including my colleagues in the National Party, would not have minded that change because they knew that there was confusion in the public’s mind about this. But, you know, in the way that this place works, it did not happen, and so we now have a Radiation Safety Act coming into place. It is going to update our legislation, as I said. It is going to bring us into high-level compliance with international best standards and also with our commitments to international treaties. That is pretty important, and long overdue.

So Labour supports this bill. We are pleased to see it come to its conclusion 50 years after it was first passed, and after many, many years of it being reviewed and looked at. I want to say that I think that the members of the select committee worked extremely hard on this bill. We came back to this House with a bill that I think is fit for purpose—maybe not for the next 50 years, because, as has been pointed out, a lot of technology has changed in that time. There are some members on our select committee who can remember when there was not television, but there was also—

💬 Hon Member: Only that member.

Well, I will not name them, but there are some who can remember it.

💬 Chris Bishop: Don’t name yourself.

Mr Bishop, of course, would not remember it because he, in fact, remembers hardly any of the modern appliances. So—

I just love this, but unfortunately the member’s time has expired.

It is becoming quite a habit to follow after the Hon Annette King. I am particularly pleased that Labour and, I believe, all parties are supporting this bill in the House.

The Radiation Safety Bill, today in its third reading, is a relatively simply piece of legislation by its nature, but complex in its details. I say it is relatively simple because as a piece of legislation it really is here to do two things. One is just to update the domestic regulations, structures, and operations—the logistical elements, if you will—of how we deal with radiation, and we will come to the whole ionising and non-ionising element in a moment. There is the domestic side that the bill seeks to update, and then there is the international side.

Just to touch on the international side quickly and briefly. New Zealand, in so many ways, has chosen to oblige itself with a variety of international agreements on a whole lot of things. One of them is around the likes of radiation and the management of radiation. As has been pointed out by other speakers in this debate and in the past, the current radiation safety Act—or, as it is actually known, the Radiation Protection Act—was passed in 1965. The treaties that were about and other things have changed since then, and so this bill brings us into line with international agreements. It is something that we as a Parliament are required to do, if you will, if we are going to maintain those relationships. Importantly, too, it means that we will accord ourselves with the various principles of the agencies. Some of them are monitored through the UN. So that is quite important.

I will just state for the record that this bill does not affect the nuclear-free legislation of New Zealand or any of the disarmament Acts. That sometimes gets raised with me and others, but this bill is dealing with ionising radiation, and what we are talking about—think of the likes of magnetic resonance imaging and think of X-rays. That is the sort of area that we are talking about.

We are also talking a lot of things medical. Most radiation sources in New Zealand are down two sides, or two camps. One is research. If you go into any of the universities of New Zealand there will be radiation sources, often used in the science departments and the medical departments. The second area where you will find a lot of devices, and I think there are about 4,500 licences—in other words, 4,500 instances where radiation sources are able to be used. The other big player, bar research, is medical. So, obviously, there are the scanning technologies, and often technologies for the treatment of various cancers. Brachytherapy comes to mind, and ionised or radiated metal balls that are used in order to destroy cancers. You have ionised iodine often used for the likes of thyroid cancers and so forth. So that is what we are talking about there.

There has been plenty of debate, and some part of me—a very small part of me—will miss the constant discussions in the Health Committee about ionising and non-ionising radiation. None of us are nuclear physicists, but I have to say after all those discussions I feel far more comfortable about the distinction now—but it is only somewhat tongue-in-cheek when I say that I will miss those ongoing discussions. Look, I am not going to get into the science of it, but, needless to say, with the advice that we are given and which I and I think all members understand, the distinction is very, very clear between things, and also in the nature of the examples that are given. We heard it from the previous speaker, Annette King. You know, the likes of non-ionising radiation—we are talking about the likes of sunbeds and Wi-Fi and power poles and so forth, OK? It is quite a distinct difference between that and the irradiating of metal objects as in brachytherapy and so on.

So we understand why, and I think it is important for people out there to understand as well that just because this bill does not cover the likes of power lines and Wi-Fi and the like does not mean that there are not regulations and guidance around it. There is plenty of that through other legislative measures. That is quite positive in and of itself.

The select committee itself was very constructive. I think we realised very early on that we were, at one level, out of our depth here in the scientific knowledge. But one of the great things about select committees is that we actually have two ears, two eyes, and one mouth, and we used those, I think, exceedingly well to listen, see, and speak to the officials. So once again I want to acknowledge their work and advice and, speaking personally, acknowledge them for actually taking sometimes very complex ideas and breaking them down in a way that I could understand. I think that helped us, as a committee, move forward. I think what we have done was very collegial and, as previous speakers have indicated, has brought a very good bill back to this House.

In concluding, because we have spoken on this many, many times, I just want to touch on a few of the changes that the select committee brought forward. One really important one is particularly for users in medical fields, dental and otherwise. We put in a new clause to say that, basically, if someone has a licence they can have someone else work under their supervision. OK, there are a few nuances around that, but basically, if I were to read it, an unlicensed user can use a radiation source while they are under the direct supervision of someone else. So, again, licences must be given to someone who is going to use the radiation source. Ionised iodine and brachytherapy treatments—as long as the source user and the holder of the licence has given permission, then someone else is able to be guided through that process.

For those who are military minded, be absolutely assured that the legislation, as proposed here at the third reading, does not prejudice the rights of national security or, therefore, of our defence forces. There are other rules that assist there. Also, importantly, initially in the bill we just talked about enforcement officers. We did go through that quite carefully to make sure that people understood that the likes of the police, chief fire officers, and others can have some jurisdiction in this space if something was to go wrong.

Finally, the importance of codes of practices has been written into the bill, and that links me back to where I started, which is around the whole thing of how this is updating our international obligations. In doing so, we were able to tap into international best practice, which informs our codes of practice. So this is a good bill. It has been worked on very well by the Health Committee. I think we can be very happy with the progress of this bill, and I commend it to the House, title and all.

It is my turn to take a call on the Radiation Safety Bill. As the previous speakers have discussed, one of the key discussions, really, has been around the ionising and non-ionising radiation. Unfortunately, I did not have the privilege of sitting on the Health Committee at the time when the discussion happened, so I actually took the opportunity to inform myself about the difference between ionising and non-ionising radiation. And I looked to the World Health Organization for a definition. The definition that it provides is “Ionizing radiation is radiation with enough energy so that during an interaction with an atom, it can remove tightly bound electrons from the orbit of an atom, causing the atom to become charged or ionized.”

It has been a long time since science class, so I have done some further exploration of that, and it is really around electromagnetic radiation. The impact of ionising radiation when it binds with electrons in the orbit of an atom is that it actually causes the structure to change, which is the ionisation of it. There is a continuum, I guess—a spectrum around the energy where you have low-frequency use at one end and high-frequency use at the other end. So at the low-frequency end we are talking about things like radio waves, microwaves, infrared, and visible light. At the higher end we are talking about X-rays and gamma rays. For the purposes of this bill, we really are specifically talking about X-rays and gamma rays. So that is what I understand is the context within the Radiation Safety Bill—that is the nub of the issue, so to speak. Not all electromagnetic radiation is ionising, as I say. It is, generally, just the X-ray and gamma-ray end of the spectrum.

One of the examples that I think it would be useful for the House to think about is when you are having X-rays at the dentist before you are having treatment. The dentist will ensure that they are well protected in the use of the X-ray machines. As I understand it, there was a discussion around who was licensed or authorised to use the piece of equipment that has the radiation source within it. Generally speaking, in a dental practice it will be the lead dentist who will have the licence and they may, under supervision, allow other members of their staff to use the equipment, but it would be with some specific criteria around that use. That is as I understand it, and I think that has been confirmed by the members of the select committee who did hear the evidence from the officials. It would have been an interesting discussion for those who are scientifically minded, because I understand that from schedule 2, for example, there would have been a really lively discussion around concentration levels and the activity and the source, and if you are anything like me, the periodic table is back there in the mists of time. So I really acknowledge that. In relation to the technical ability for this bill there would have been some real opportunity for the officials to support the select committee members in their understanding of this particular topic.

The legislation itself does some other things. It allows New Zealand to become compliant with the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism and the Amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material, and the protection of nuclear material, I guess, in practical terms, is the example that I quoted around the dentist. It also covers the transportation, disposal, and use of that material. And I want to pay particular reference to cobalt-60, which is used in irradiation of food—particularly of materials that come through our borders that might have pests or other material on them that could pose a biohazard to New Zealand and have an impact on our agriculture and our export of products.

It also allows for international inspectors to be appointed and to undertake activities in New Zealand through the International Atomic Energy Agency. It provides a regime for the authorisation of individuals and organisations using radiation materials. So here, again, I am referring to, for example, dentists who may use X-ray machines in the course of their treatments, and those people whom they supervise to use those pieces of equipment. It provides within the bill the penalties for contravening these authorities. For an individual, that fine could be up to $100,000, and for an organisation it could be up to $500,000.

The director is appointed by the Minister of Health, who then administers a register of those contracted sources—those who are using the radiation in their equipment. The director will also appoint inspectors, who can seize a radiation source to prevent or mitigate any risk. I referred to cobalt-60 previously. That, I understand, caused some discussion, particularly around the radiation of food products, and there was some discussion that was held at the select committee about that. I refer to schedule 2, “List of radioactive material and acceptable activity concentration levels and activity levels”, and also schedule 3, “Dose limits for ionising radiation”, whether that be through occupational exposure or through public exposure.

As I said, I did not have the privilege of being on the Health Committee at the time that the bill was under discussion. I think I would have enjoyed the opportunity to do some scientific work; I did not have the opportunity to do that. I know that the committee is well considered and I acknowledge the hard work that it has done on this. I commend the bill to the House.

It is a pleasure to speak on the third reading of the Radiation Safety Bill, and I would like to begin by congratulating Poto Williams, the previous speaker, because she obviously did not have the opportunity that we had to listen to the wonderful explanations that the officials gave us, but I thought she gave a wonderful account. So I say thank you very much to the previous speaker.

The Radiation Safety Bill is about establishing a modernised framework to protect the health and safety of people and the environment from harmful effects around radiation. As other speakers have said, it will bring New Zealand into line with international best practice. It is modernising an Act that is 50 years old. I have very vivid memories of being a new member of Parliament, walking into my office, and my executive assistant saying to me “Today, Barbara, you’ve got to speak for 10 minutes on radiation.”, and I thought: “Oh, OK.” So the first thing I did was, I went to Wikipedia, but it did not make any more sense to me after that. Of course, we have had a lot of discussion since then about ionising and non-ionising radiation, but at that stage it did not make any sense at all.

The thing that really struck me about this bill at the time—and I remember the aspect that I took from it was the fact that the Act was 50 years old. It was interesting to me to note at the time that that was when The Sound of Music was released and it was also about when the Beatles released their song “Yesterday”, and I know we have had previous speakers talking today about the introduction of television. Well, I cannot remember the introduction of television as such, but I can remember the introduction of colour television, which was a very exciting time.

I remember when we first started debating this bill in the House, we were having conversations about mince pies, microwaves, and all sorts of things in an effort to understand this whole picture of radiation. Then, I have to say, it was fantastic because when the officials came in we were presented with some excellent information and some excellent, clear graphs and charts that made the process of working through this piece of legislation much, much clearer. Even though I did a little bit of biology, chemistry, and physics at school, the presentations we had—although they have not made me a scientist—have given me a much clearer understanding of the process of ionising and non-ionising radiation.

But I think it is important to remember, as we, as members of Parliament, enact some of these pieces of legislation, that our primary role in this is to ensure that the piece of legislation is going to achieve what it sets out to achieve, and our role is to assess the situation to see whether it really is going to protect our people from the harmful effects of radiation. We all know that in the last 50 years we have come a long way. We are all carrying around devices. We have got things in our homes: the technology, the internet—the things we never ever dreamt about have come such a long, long way, and so has radiation. So it is important to realise that these changes will help us in providing better and more modern health services. So, as was mentioned before, X-rays and the like are a big part of this, there is also quite an element of this involved in dentistry, and these changes are going to help us do this more safely and will protect our public.

It will also protect the environment, because when we have people in hospitals who are having X-rays, it is not only the person who has the X-ray who is exposed but it is the people who stand in the room or in the corridor just making sure that we have got the right standards in place so that not only the patient is safe but all of those people around them are very safe. I have to say that we have made great advances with cancer treatment in the last few years, and cancer radiation and chemotherapy waiting times are now at world gold standard. So it is really important to realise that not only are people getting a better, quicker service but now this legislation will be protecting them even further than it did before.

It is also important that the select committee has asked to insert a new clause, which is clause 92A, and that requires the Director of Radiation Safety to review each code of practice once every 5 years. So I think for me, looking at a piece of legislation that has been on the table for 50 years, it is really important that with the advances in technology we are making now, those things are looked at and the Director of Radiation Safety will actually be active over each 5-year period to make sure that this does not drag on.

So it is a real pleasure to be speaking on this bill today. I do want to commend the officials again, and I also want to say it is wonderful to be working as part of the Health Committee, under the chairmanship of Simon O’Connor and with the members whom we have in this group. We have worked extremely well together over time, and it is a pleasure to commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

I rise to give what will be my final contribution on this bill, and, actually, the Greens’ only contribution in this debate today. As several other speakers have commented, I think that the officials from the ministry did a really terrific job of working with the Health Committee on this pretty technical subject, and they were praised highly in the debate on the second reading, but they deserve praise in this debate also.

Simon O’Connor, in his contribution, remarked on the fact that this bill effectively has two purposes: first, to bring New Zealand into line with our international obligations under the International Atomic Energy Agency and, secondly, to modernise. Barbara Kuriger has just referred to the fact that this is legislation that is 50 years old. I guess there is nothing like legislation that touches on science to expose, fairly brutally, how legislation can become out of date. Certainly, the legislation that we are replacing is obsolete legislation. I wonder sometimes whether there may be some value in having some sort of systematic review of old legislation so that other Acts—like, for example, the Adoption Act 1955, which is also well past its use-by date—could also be reviewed by this House.

I think the debates in the House on this matter, and at the select committee, have focused to quite a considerable degree on this business of whether or not the bill should cover not only ionising radiation but also non-ionising. Several speakers in this debate have referred to that. The original recommendation from officials was that the bill should cover both—that all forms of radiation should be regulated through this particular statute. There is certainly some sense to that. Poto Williams, in her contribution—even though she did not participate in the debate in the select committee—I think had it right when she talked about there being a continuum of energy that radiation could potentially possess, and the difference between the amount of energy that something needs to ionise and that which would not be enough to ionise it. The boundary is just a hair’s breadth. There actually is a continuum, but in practical terms there is more of a difference.

Officials told us, first of all, that for non-ionising radiation we have regulation that has been kept more up to date. As new devices become available, regulation has been put in place that has, in fact, protected the public from potential harms, although I think Annette King is completely right to draw the House’s attention to a bill that we have yet to finish debating that really covers an area—namely, sunbeds and solaria—where a source of non-ionising radiation is able to produce the kinds of serious harms that are perhaps more worthy of the kind of strong regulation that this bill provides for.

The regulation of non-ionising radiation has been kept more up to date than the statute on which we rely for the safety of ionising radiation. I guess too that the qualitative effects are significantly different. Perhaps with the exception of the sunbeds and solaria example, non-ionising radiation is typically stopped and absorbed within the skin, and it is within the skin that any adverse effects are likely to be felt, whereas ionising radiation will typically penetrate the skin and cause havoc within the body by ionising cells within it. Those particles that are produced by that ionisation process will go on to damage DNA, causing either direct harm or, potentially, mutation that will cause harm down the track. Both practically and in terms of effects, there are distinctions that can be reflected in different types of regulation.

There are, none the less, some odd effects that come about from having different regimes for dealing with the two types of radiation. I have referred in earlier contributions in the House to the fact that in a hospital, for example—and other speakers have, quite rightly, referred to the fact that it is in health care settings that many of these forms of radiation crop up—literally within the same radiology department, one will have a magnetic resonance imaging suite and technology that uses a form of non-ionising radiation that is regulated in a different way from what may be in the next room, and the X-ray machine in the next room will be regulated by this bill. There is an administrative inefficiency that is created by having different regimes for dealing with the two. It is a difficult balancing act, I guess, to get this right.

Although at the beginning of this process I felt that both forms of radiation should probably be regulated by this bill, on balance I think that it is reasonable to have separated the two. None the less, the level of confusion among the public that exists around the distinction between these two forms of radiation and the subtlety of the difference, I think, would have justified support for the change to the name of the bill proposed by Annette King. I believe that the bill we are passing into law today ought to have been called the “Ionising Radiation Safety Bill”.

I close by making reference to something that I think is probably always worthy of note when the House is debating a bill that has scientific implications, and that is the matter of scientific literacy. The submissions that the committee received were small in number, and mostly from people with expertise in the field. Some of those submissions were extremely useful, but one or two of the submissions reflected a misunderstanding of the science, and I know that in some of the more general comments that existed in the community about this bill, such misunderstanding of the science was also present.

I worry that the internet—one of those technical apparatus, shall we say, that has come into existence in the 50 years since the original Act was passed—has meant that people have access to an extraordinary amount of information, and that information varies very widely in its quality, from very helpful and authoritative information at one end through to information that is misleading and unhelpful at the other. That has created a situation where New Zealanders, perhaps more than ever before, need to be able to discern the difference between the two—to know, when we look at something that is on Wikipedia, for example, or that is found on some other website, whether the information there actually has scientific validity. If we do not possess that science literacy, then we will draw conclusions that are invalid, and the contribution that we can then make to the debate about scientific matters in this country is compromised.

I close by supporting the bill, but also supporting the House’s doing what it can to improve scientific literacy. Thank you.

I am very pleased to rise on behalf of New Zealand First in the third reading of the Radiation Safety Bill. I was very pleased to be a part of the Health Committee as we reviewed the submissions and talked with the officials, who made sure that our knowledge was far greater than it was when we first started looking at this bill. None of us are medical physicists, and we needed that particular help.

I was very interested in Kevin Hague’s speech—we can always learn in this particular area. I would like to say a big thankyou to the officials for their patience, particularly as we all came up to speed.

We support this bill. We know that it is for the safe use of ionising radiation. This bill will repeal and replace a very outdated Act, the Radiation Protection Act. It is long overdue. There have been a lot of scientific developments in the 50 years since this bill was first introduced, and it is important that our legislation keeps up to date with the latest technology, particularly in this age. On this occasion, we believe that the New Zealand public will be reassured that the bill will bring our legislation into line with international best practice and the principles of radiation safety. We are also satisfied, too, that the dose limits for radiation exposure are consistent with international standards, and there have been a number of standards, which were read out by previous speakers, that we needed to bring our legislation in line with.

We were pleased to hear that there is now a legislative provision for the registration of radiation sources. Previously, only licence holders were required to be registered. This bill ensures that we now have provisions that are required by the International Atomic Energy Agency code of conduct. As other people have already pointed out, it is good to see that the penalty for offences against the legislation are going to be increased. We definitely need deterrents in this part. For this bill, it definitely successfully balances the benefits of ionising radiation with the health and safety of people and the environment.

All of us on the select committee were very aware of the concerns that were voiced to us regarding non-ionising radiation. We are very satisfied that these two regulations should remain separate from this bill, hence our desire to see the title changed. It is far easier to identify what legislation one is looking at when we have “Ionising Radiation” or “Non-Ionising Radiation” in the title. We are quite satisfied now that we are at this point.

Although the bill proposed that it will be voluntary for applicants for a source licence to submit a radiation safety plan, we believe it should be compulsory for every applicant for a source licence to submit a radiation safety plan for safety, security, and emergencies. That plan should identify how the individual or organisation is going to comply with the requirements of the bill. We believe that this is essential to ensure that the Act is actually complied with. One of the areas that we have some concerns about is that we want to hear how the Government is planning on supporting operators so that they themselves are fully prepared for the changes that have been made to this legislation.

In conclusion, we believe it is a very necessary bill, which ensures our regulations are aligned with international best practice and the principles of radiation safety. Therefore, New Zealand First is very happy to support this bill in its final reading, and we will follow its implementation closely. Thank you.

I am happy to also, with other members around the House, endorse the Radiation Safety Bill in its third reading, and note that this is another piece of legislation that is being brought up to date to reflect current medical applications—not only for medical uses but also for uses in veterinary medicine, industry, and research. This is a bill on which the House has worked cooperatively—the Health Committee has worked cooperatively.

I do note the suggestion that this bill could have had a different name. However, this is the Radiation Safety Bill, and if we remember the purpose of this bill, it is indeed to reflect modern practice and modern safety levels with the use of radiation in its many applications, which are mostly to the betterment of people in our excellent health system. With those few words, I commend the bill to the House.

Well, here we are—finally we get to the third reading of the Radiation Safety Bill. I have had the privilege, I think, of speaking on every single reading of this bill, despite the fact that I was not on the Health Committee, and was not able to hear any of the—

💬 Scott Simpson: The member was robbed.

Robbed of being on the select committee. You are quite right—it was a select committee that I had been on in another term of Parliament, but not during this one. So I did not get the benefit of the advice from the officials, but I take the members’ word for it that the officials should be thanked for the very good information they provided during the deliberation on this important bill, because it does bring us up to speed.

I have had it suggested to me that the reason I have been on the speaking list every time on this bill is that my own children have broken enough bones to have enough X-rays that I should know enough to speak on the bill on this matter. I just want to dispel that myth to start off with. Yes, there has been the odd time that my boys have been robustly playing their chosen game that they are passionate about—basketball—and they may have ended up having X-rays. But the problem has not necessarily been the issues associated with this bill, but this: could the Government please bring a bill before the House that would stop bones being broken on statutory holidays? That is the problem I have had—every single bone that has been broken in our household seems to happen on a statutory holiday, and that is when you have to pay the most to actually get the bone X-rayed. So if you can fix that please, I would very happy.

But that is not what this bill attempts to do, and neither should it. It is actually a bill that brings New Zealand’s practice up to speed with international best practice. I do want to support what the Green member Kevin Hague raised in his contribution. It would be good to think that we had a process in place so that when Acts become out of date when technology and our scientific knowledge has moved on, to the extent that we know about dangers that we once did not know about, there would be some automatic scrutiny of Acts that ensured we did not just have to wait for some Minister’s office to notice that the Act had become horribly out of date or for something to go badly wrong before we realised that such an Act had become out of date.

The last time this Act had attention was 50 years ago. I think in one of my previous contributions to this debate I may have said that it has been as long in the making as I have been on this earth-ish, because I never declare my actual age, but I am sure people can go and look that up for themselves. I mention this because the technological advances and the scientific knowledge that we have made over the course of my lifetime explains to me the reason why I am a little worried that it took so long before we reviewed this Act again, and perhaps we should have processes in place to ensure that we do that in a more timely fashion. None the less, we are here now.

This bill does repeal and replace the Radiation Protection Act 1965. So, in fact, the Act is a little younger than I am—a little younger. One purpose of the bill is to enable New Zealand to meet its international obligations under a range of international treaties relating to radiation protection, radiation safety and security, and nuclear non-proliferation. That is important, because New Zealand has—not always—on many occasions led on non-proliferation of nuclear issues, and so it is rather surprising that we have taken so long to update this legislation.

Labour does acknowledge the necessity of updating legislation such as this in order to keep pace with the technological advances and changes. Annette King tried to amend this bill to change the title of it so that it was more correct, because the legislation that we are debating does not cover all forms of radiation. In fact, it covers only the ionising radiation form. So those are the ones that we are familiar with when X-rays are taken.

I guess, alongside accompanying my children for X-rays from time to time—not too regularly—that the other time that I come across X-rays and the use of them is when I go to the dentist. Is that not a bit disconcerting when you are having an X-ray taken at the dentist, and everyone else in the room bolts while you sit there and have the X-ray? I often do sit there and think: “Gosh, should I be bolting as well? Is the harm that can be omitted that bad that all of the other people in the room are dashing before they go somewhere and push the button remotely?”. In times gone by, people such as the dentist and the dental technician would have stayed there and they would have been in the same environment. But, of course, what we now know is that regular exposure—not the irregular exposure of me having an X-ray once in a blue moon, but the regular exposure—of those workers in their workplace to that health and safety hazard is no longer acceptable, and so we have these new systems in place to deal with this.

So on the one hand our health and safety legislation in the workplace has kept apace of these changes, but this Act, which we are amending today when we are debating the Radiation Safety Bill, has not kept apace in the same way. We do support having a high level of compliance with international best standards, and we do support our commitments to international treaties.

The bill does cover not only the use of ionising radiation but the transportation and the disposal of ionising radiation, both man-made and naturally occurring, in quantities above stated levels. The fundamental requirements stipulate that radiation use occurs only where the expected benefit outweighs the risks, that exposures must be kept as low as reasonably achievable, and that prescribed dose limits must not be exceeded. So these are important factors when we think about the fact that it is our children who are exposed to this ionising radiation and that it is older people who are frequently exposed to these, because probably they are the two groups who are most exposed to X-rays over the course of their lives. So it is very important that they are protected with that statement.

The enactment of the bill 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 allows for the International Atomic Energy Agency international inspectors to be appointed by the director to undertake activities in New Zealand, and international inspectors must be accompanied by an enforcement officer appointed by the director under clause 39 of the bill. So it introduces a new regime of authorisations for individuals or organisations using radiation materials. [Bell rung] I was anticipating this being a split call, but no other member wants to share the call with me, so I think at this stage I will just simply reaffirm that Labour supports this bill and commend it to the House.

Before making some very brief comments on this third reading of this bill, I seek the indulgence of the House just to make a passing comment on the sad death today of Martin Crowe, one of New Zealand’s truly great sportspeople—a man who has contributed enormously to this country on the sporting field and off it. I had the good fortune to attend Auckland Grammar School at the same time as Martin Crowe, and his obvious talent even as a young member of the cricketing first XI during those years was immediately obvious to all. Not only was his skill obvious to all but so too was his natural joy and love for the game. He epitomised true sportsmanship, and our country is the sadder for his loss. Condolences to his family, his friends, and his teammates. Per angusta ad augusta.

The Radiation Safety Bill is a technical bill. It has received a lot of acknowledgment in debates across the Chamber from parties across the House, and I think we are all in agreement that it is a necessary bill. It brings up to date legislation that was passed in the 1960s that is now completely out of date, and it is needed to bring us into line with international best practice. The Health Committee members all, I think, learnt lots as we went through this process, and I want to join with others who have already acknowledged the very good and effective work of the officials who were advising us, for making what was quite technical and dry information meaningful, relevant, and understandable to us as mere committee members.

This bill replaces an existing piece of legislation that, as I said, dates back to the 1960s. It is appropriate that we pass it, and I am delighted and pleased that across the House there seems to be unanimity on it. I commend it to the House.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. I too would like to acknowledge the passing of Martin Crowe—an amazing New Zealander, an incredible sportsperson, and somebody who, I think, was one of the critical factors in inspiring New Zealand’s performance at the Cricket World Cup. So I think we all collectively mourn his passing and pass on our condolences to his whānau.

It is my pleasure to speak in this third reading of the Radiation Safety Bill as a previous member of the Health Committee. I think we are 51 years from this law reform coming to fruition today as it replaces the Radiation Protection Act of 1965. I do want to state for the record that if we had our way this would be the “Ionising Radiation Safety Bill” because it applies only to ionising radiation and not non-ionising radiation, but that is really all I will say about that.

This law reform actually completes New Zealand’s domestic implementation of, firstly, the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism. We actually signed that convention on 14 September 2005, so today we will actually join 101 other nations to now ratify this convention in our domestic legislation. It also completes our commitment to the Amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material, which was adopted on 8 July 2005, and, again, that ensures that our domestic legislation now puts us in that group of countries that have taken the convention seriously, and our domestic legislation now reflects that commitment.

This law reform enables us to meet our international obligations relating to radiation protection, radiation safety and security, and non-nuclear proliferation. So rather than google about ionising and non-ionising radiation, what I have been doing here is googling about the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material, which was actually adopted on 26 October 1979 in Vienna. The convention is actually held with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which was established on 29 July 1957. That agency’s mandate is to promote peaceful use of nuclear energy to stop the production of nuclear weapons, and I guess I have been trying to look at the interface between the whole nuclear energy focus and the relationship with radiation, which is what this bill is all about. Nuclear radiation is energy rays given off from a radioactive element such as uranium—which this bill will apply to—as it decays. So the whole reason it all traces back to that particular convention is that, I guess there is universal acceptance that radiation causes harm.

In our particular bill, what we have said is that radiation use occurs, and should occur, 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. This piece of legislation really is about the safe use of ionising radiation in New Zealand, and I think we have ensured that this is a best-practice piece of legislation.

I want to take the time to thank the 14 submitters on this piece of legislation, and three of them made oral submissions. The Regulations Review Committee also helped clarify the separate roles that codes of practice and regulations will play under this piece of legislation, and I too want to highlight that the codes of practice now written into this legislation will ensure that these are reviewed at least once every 5 years. So we can be reassured that there will be a regular update in terms of the regulations that are relevant to this piece of legislation.

I would like to take the opportunity to thank the officials. I think they were incredibly helpful and patient with some of the members of the select committee during the passage of this legislation who were fixated at times on this whole issue of ionising and non-ionising radiation, so that we actually understood the relevance of the focus on ionising radiation. As I have tried to explain, the background and the context have been about this focus on nuclear energy non-proliferation, and, actually, the protection of the world against the drastic consequences when nuclear energy is used as a weapon of destruction.

I would also like to take the time to congratulate the Health Committee on the way that it always works. I think it is the most collaborative select committee. I have been on a few and I am on another one now, but I think there is something really special about the Health Committee because of the subject area. Our job is to protect the health and safety of New Zealanders, and I think that as a committee we are all incredibly committed to that task. So I just want to commend the select committee on that work and, as always, I am really willing to take a call on any bills that are before the Health Committee.

Just finally, we support this bill. The passage of this bill, actually, is about time, and so I commend the bill to the House. Kia ora tātou.

I rise with the final call on this bill to support the Radiation Safety Bill, which provides a modern framework for the use of this dangerous but very important form of energy. We heard in the Health Committee that this bill will have most application to the medical profession, where it will have applications in the diagnostic space and in the therapeutic space, particularly in the therapeutic space around cancers, where ionising radiation has that ability to differentially target rapidly dividing cells. That makes it different from chemotherapy—it means you can isolate it to an area and do less damage, less harm.

The structure of the bill is to rely on codes of practice, which addresses the underlying fundamentals that are described in the bill. There are five of these: safety of people in the environment, safety of radiation sources, security of the radiation source, safe disposal, and safe transport. The bill is actually quite wide because it also helps us meet our very important international obligations, including the Amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material and the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism. We should note that although this bill amends these, there is no effect on the other nuclear legislation for New Zealand: the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act, the Nuclear-Test-Ban Act, and the Atomic Energy Act. There has been some discussion around expanding the scope of this bill to possibly include non-ionising radiation. I think that the hazards of ionising radiation are so great, including its ability to be used in terrorism, that I think these are separate pieces of work and are rightly kept apart.

Finally, as I looked around the House today, I suspect there were two members who have actually given radiation to people: probably the Hon Annette King, in her dental role, and me, with the privilege of working as an after-hours doctor at Rāwene hospital about 25 years ago, where there was an expectation that you would give after-hours X-rays. I think, if for no other reason, this bill is a good thing because it means, clearly, that Annette and I will not be irradiating the general public, and that is a good public safety measure, believe you me.

That aside, this bill is a good bill. It is a good framework, it brings us up to date, and I think we should make it law. Thank you.

Bill read a third time.