Health (Protection) Amendment Bill

This bill has two main parts to it. The first part deals with infectious diseases. The second part deals with sunbeds. Obviously one part of it is more important for the Labour Party than the other, in terms of the debate. I want to say to the Minister in the chair that Labour will vote for the bill, but we do have Supplementary Order Paper 80, which I have had tabled for quite some time, and I would hope that perhaps the Minister may have taken time to read it.

This bill has been a long time in gestation. In fact, some of the original parts of this bill started when I was Minister of Health 11 long years ago, although you would think when you listen to the current Minister of Health that it was just the other day because, obviously, I am responsible for everything that has ever gone wrong in health. But I have to say that when I was Minister of Health, some of the work that is in this bill came out of the rewrite of the Public Health Act. So we have had a long wait to get this bill to the stage it is now. It was first introduced into this Parliament on 31 July 2014, we reported it back from the Health Committee on 1 May 2015, and we had the second reading of the bill on 27 May 2015. So it has been almost a whole year since the second reading before we have got to where we can actually start to debate what it is all about.

The first part of this bill will increase the range of infectious diseases that are notifiable to the medical officer of health without identifying information of the patient or diseased person. It will include HIV infection, gonorrhoea infection, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, and syphilis. It is a long overdue and very welcome update of a bill. We had a large number of submissions on the bill—very, very good submissions, in my view—and we had them from the most pre-eminent organisations in New Zealand, whether they were district health boards or whether they were sexual health organisations, medical associations, and so on. People took to this bill with seriousness in terms of how we could improve it.

I would like, at this point, just to pay tribute to Kevin Hague, who I know would have liked to be in this debate. Kevin Hague, because of his experience as a former director of the AIDS Foundation, was very valuable in the debate and discussion at the select committee when we looked at Part 1 of this bill. He was able to look at the practical implications as it would deal with patients who would be affected by it.

One of the changes that he recommended in this part of the bill—and one that I also want to give credit to the current Minister of Health for—was to put forward an appeal mechanism that allowed an appeal to the High Court after a decision by the District Court. The bill did not have that in it. The committee discussed it and we decided that it was a good suggestion to have this additional appeal ability, and it was taken from the committee by the health officials—taken straight to the Minister of Health—and within a very short time there was agreement from the Minister of Health to include that change to Part 1 of the bill. I have to say that I do not believe that would have happened under the previous Minister of Health, Tony Ryall. We probably would have waited a long time and he would have said no. But this Minister, perhaps because of his understanding also as a medical doctor, could see that this was a very good change indeed.

We did make quite a number of amendments to Part 1 of the bill, and the amendments are on the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 127. We have agreed to all of those amendments. There is no dispute from the Labour Opposition on this part of the bill. We believe that we have brought it back to this House in good form. I will not go through all the parts of it as I do not think that is necessary. I will save a lot of my discussion for Part 2 of this bill.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 127 in the name of the Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman to Part 1 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

Part 1 as amended agreed to.

Part 2 Artificial UV tanning services