Sunscreen (Product Safety Standard) Bill

I move, That the Sunscreen (Product Safety Standard) Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Health Committee to consider the bill.

In 1987, I was holidaying in Taupō, when my 18-year-old younger self decided that I’d had enough of being pale and it was time to embrace the sun’s rays and be a little more cooler, in my own mind.

💬 Kieran McAnulty: How’d you go?

So I decided—thank you, Kieran McAnulty, I knew it wouldn’t take long! I decided to embrace the sun’s rays in the elevation of Taupō for most of the day, and woke up the next morning with my face entirely blistered—completely blistered—and my back only marginally less so. I am reminded of this youthful indiscretion every six months when I catch up with Dr Paul Salmon from the Tauranga SkinCentre as he regularly books me in for Mohs surgery to remove basal cell and other skin cancers. Of course, my father had a melanoma himself, but was lucky enough to have it caught, for it runs in my family.

Sunscreen is important for me. It is important for my two red-headed daughters and my son, who, hopefully, won’t repeat my mistake. Sunscreen is important to me. What the label says on the sunscreen is important to me—that if it says SPF 50, then I have an expectation that it will be SPF 50. That’s why I am so proud to be standing here this evening, presenting for the first reading the Sunscreen (Product Safety Standard) Bill.

Now, I’m sure most in the House would have been somewhat surprised when they saw this bill, and would have thought, “But surely we have a sunscreen standard in this country.”, and we do. It is a shared standard with Australia. It is the Australian New Zealand Sunscreen Standard AS/NZS 2604:2012, which comprehensively prescribes the test methods for both broad spectrum and water resistant sunscreen products and their labelling requirements. But you see, in Australia, the standard is mandatory, meaning a product cannot go on to the shelf without meeting the standard. But in New Zealand, compliance is voluntary. And the result is that many sunscreens do not meet the promise of the label. They say they are broad spectrum, they say they are SPF 50 or a similarly high number, but, actually, when tested, they do not deliver that claim.

In 2019, Consumer New Zealand tested 20 sunscreens, and nine products did not meet the SPF claim on the label. In 2020, they tested a further 10 sunscreens and five failed the SPF claim. Now, it’s one thing for me to be lying on a beach in Taupō, trying to be cool, and being accountable, ultimately, for that error—in a blistered face and an ongoing life of removal of skin cancers from my body—but it is quite another thing for New Zealanders to go and buy an SPF 50 on the promise that it will protect them, only for that sunscreen not to be delivering against that standard. Quite frankly, that anomaly needs to be fixed.

So let’s talk to the bill itself. It’s not particularly complex—it’s very, very simple. The bill requires the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs to recommend the setting of mandatory regulation under section 29 of the Fair Trading Act 1986, prescribing a product safety standard for sunscreen products—that’s the first thing it requires. Secondly, the bill expressly states that this is to be the NZS—the New Zealand standard—2604:2012 or any New Zealand standard substituted for that standard. There is work under way—almost being concluded, actually—for that standard to be updated, so that would automatically become the new standard in these regulations.

That is largely it. If you look at the reference in this bill to section 29, it is very clear: section 29 of the Fair Trading Act states, “Product safety standards (1) The Governor-General may, from time to time, on the recommendation of the Minister, by Order in Council, make regulations in respect of goods of any description or any class or classes of goods, prescribing for the purpose of preventing or reducing the risk of injury to any person, a product safety standard”. In the second subsection, “(2) The Governor-General may, from time to time, on the recommendation of the Minister, by Order in Council, make regulations [that sets]: (a) an official standard or an official standard with such additions or variations as are specified in the regulations is a product safety standard:”. So the standard that is a voluntary compliance currently will be put in the Fair Trading Act as an obligation on manufacturers. That is, in my view, a way to strengthen consumer protections immediately.

Now, I do have to acknowledge that there has been work under way by this Government in the therapeutic products regime, and also in the natural products regime, with a hope to be able to bring a new, refreshed framework to the House sometime in the next year. Now, it is probable that in time that new regime will reflect on how to treat sunscreen, but we all know that that is likely—the Minister himself has said that that is many months away before it would be presented in the House, and then it would have to run through the obvious select committee process. This small change to the Fair Trading Act means that this summer, New Zealanders can have greater confidence in the efficacy of sunscreens that they buy in New Zealand. Right now, this House, through supporting this bill, can make that change and give effect to it.

I don’t just stand here as someone who has a personal interest, and I guess some negative impact of not following the right approach in terms of protecting oneself from the sun. I obviously stand here as a father with children who are particularly fair-skinned and exposed in that context, but I also stand here on behalf of the many New Zealanders who have expressed their deep concern at the fact that sunscreens are simply not delivering the protection that they expected they would deliver when they bought them and applied them not only to themselves but also to their children. I also stand here on behalf of groups who have written to me in support: Cancer Society of New Zealand, Cosmetics New Zealand, Albinism New Zealand, Kylie Findlay and 1,329 others who have a petition in front of the Health Committee at the moment, Melanoma Network of New Zealand, and many other individuals, who I won’t read out, over the last few weeks.

This is not a detailed, dense bill; it is a precise, forensic addition to the Fair Trading Act to ensure that the sunscreen that we purchase in this country has greater efficacy and that consumers have greater protection, and I would hope that this is a bill that this whole House can support to select committee to further refine and debate. Thank you very much.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Madam Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to take a call on this bill, the Sunscreen (Product Safety Standard) Bill. I’d like to acknowledge the member Todd Muller for bringing this bill to the House. The member mentioned a personal story that he has, and I’m sure that many of us have either had a similar story or know someone very close to us who has had a story around melanoma, because the most common form of cancer in New Zealand is, basically, skin cancers: making up a total of 82,000 per year; all other cancers form a total of 16,000—so skin cancer itself 82; all other cancers 16.

Our skin cancer rates are the highest in the world. The melanoma rate in New Zealand and Australia is four times that of Canada, the US, and the UK. We have a very harsh sun here, and the reality is that we have to be incredibly vigilant around this.

So I’ll talk a little bit about, actually, just to put a bit of context into it in terms of sunscreen, what has brought us to the point that we are now with sunscreens and the SPF rating. Then I’ll move on to the Government’s position on this bill and then I’ll talk a little bit more around various aspects of the bill.

Before I start, I also have a similar story about wanting to be cool. I think we’ve possibly all been there at some time! For me, it was the 1980s with zinc—I don’t know if people remember zinc; I can see some nods, yes, from people who are my age and older. Kieran McAnulty, you are too young for zinc, but it was various colours on the face. I mean, we have a laugh about it because, you know, the colours were fairly vibrant. However, it was an incredibly important campaign, and we had zinc products come out with different colours for the express purpose of encouraging people to wear zinc, which was, obviously, a form of sunscreen—a very good form, actually, as I understand it.

So in terms of what has brought us to this point, in terms of sunscreen, just for the benefit of the House—a little bit of context. The ancient Greeks and Egyptians actually used sunscreen—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: No.

They used natural products—that’s right, Mr Brownlee. Zinc oxide paste was around for thousands of years, even before it was cool in the 1980s. Synthetic sunscreens were first used in 1928, so that’s when the mass synthetic production of sunscreen came, in 1928. In fact, in World War II, the US military used sunscreen in the Pacific. In 1974, the sun protection factor, which has been alluded to in the previous member’s speech—SPF—was introduced. That’s 1974. Water-resistant sunscreens were introduced in 1977.

Just in terms of the SPF rating, most of the sunscreens in the 1970s were around an SPF rating of two or lower—very, very light. We didn’t know much about sunscreens and we didn’t know much about skin cancer back then. But, certainly, things have changed. If we move forward to today’s society, dermatologists—and I tread carefully because I know we’ve got three doctors in the row in front of me here—recommend SPF of 30 or above, and an SPF of 30 blocks 90 percent of the sun’s UV rays.

But the point of the SPF and the point of this bill here is that SPF ratings must be accurate. If someone is buying an SPF rating of 15, but the rating isn’t 15, then there can be quite severe consequences. Some people for, you know, quite strict medical reasons need 30 or 50 SPF. And if they are picking something off the shelf that says that and it is not, there can be life-threatening consequences, as we’ve heard outlined in the previous speech.

Just to move on to this Government’s position on this bill at the first reading: so the Government are supporting this bill to select committee. We are not guaranteeing any support beyond that, but we are supporting this bill to the select committee. We think it is important for it to go through that process.

This bill requires the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs to recommend the making of regulations under section 29 of the Fair Trading Act 1986, prescribing a product safety standard for sunscreen products. The Government is supporting this bill to select committee to facilitate additional consideration of the regulations surrounding safety standards for sunscreen products.

We are, however—as the member alluded to—already progressing the regulation of sunscreen products as part of the proposed Therapeutic Products Bill, which we anticipate will be introduced to the House later this year. Now, I acknowledge the member’s comments in terms of wanting to move quickly, but that is just to signal to the member that we do intend to bring that bill in towards the end of the year. We are supporting taking a health-based approach to the regulation of sunscreen safety standards.

What the bill does: so it requires the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs to recommend the making of regulations in the Fair Trading Act. It states that the product safety standard, the New Zealand standard with sunscreen, or any New Zealand standard situated for that standard—it notes that the Minister must make the recommendations as soon as practicable after the commencement of this Act, but no later than six months after its commencement.

So the reason we are supporting it to select committee is because while we are progressing the regulation of sunscreen products as part of the proposed Therapeutic Products Bill, select committee scrutiny of this particular bill will offer an additional opportunity for consideration of the regulatory settings around the safety of sunscreen products. And, obviously, we will consider our support then again after the select committee process. So we support taking a health-based approach to the regulation of sunscreen safety standards.

I’d also like to touch on something that the previous speaker highlighted, which was the work done by Consumer New Zealand, because this is quite important work for this piece of legislation. I quote Consumer New Zealand. They say, “The Sunscreen Product Safety Standard Bill … highlights the need for better regulation and could provide an opportunity to make sunscreen testing mandatory,”. That’s what Consumer New Zealand said, and that, obviously, certainly fits in with the work that we are doing on this side of the House. So there are certainly various streams of work going on in this area because it is important that we do have things right in this space.

As Consumer New Zealand said, sunscreen is currently classified as a cosmetic, and that is at the root of the issue here: the fact that because it is a cosmetic, manufacturers aren’t required to regularly test these products, and the sunscreen standard is voluntary. We heard, previously—and just to highlight it again—at the Consumer New Zealand test, five of the 10 products—which is quite remarkable, actually; Consumer New Zealand took 10 products off the shelf, checked their SPF rating. Five of those 10 products were inaccurate; they didn’t meet the SPF label claim, and they weren’t over the SPF; they were under the SPF. As I highlighted earlier in my speech, that certainly has potentially fatal ramifications around skin cancer. And, in fact, two of those also failed to meet the requirements for broad spectrum protection. In Australia, sunscreen is subject to a mandatory standard and regulated by the Therapeutic Goods Administration.

In 2019, Consumer New Zealand wrote to the Minister of Health, urging for priority to be given to a mandatory sunscreen standard. So there is no doubt that the time has come for a mandatory sunscreen standard. In terms of Consumer New Zealand, the chief, Jon Duffy, said, “The results were, unfortunately, not much a of a surprise”, which is quite sobering because I’m sure if you walked down to Lambton Quay and spoke to members of the public and held up a bottle of sunscreen—you know, “Do you believe this is SPF 30 or 40?”—most of them would say, “Yeah, I’m sure it is.” But the fact that the CEO of Consumer New Zealand said that it wasn’t much of a surprise that only five out of 10 were accurate—that is certainly concerning.

So, basically, just to summarise, people need to be clear on what they are buying, in terms of the SPF rating. The member has brought a bill to the House; we’re supporting it at first reading to select committee. Also, from the Government’s side of it, we are working on a piece of legislation, as well, which will be ready by the end of the year. So, Madam Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to speak to this bill and we support it at first reading. Thank you.

Ngā mihi ki a koe. Ā, tēnā koe e te Whare. Kia ora koutou katoa. I stand in support of this bill. One of the key principles of the Green Party health policy states, and I quote, “All services should be provided to the highest possible level of quality (accessibility, acceptability, effectiveness, efficiency and safety) as determined by service users, peer review, audits, and the community at large.” Since sunscreen is a product purchased by people to prevent damage to their health, establishing a product safety and standard certainly is in line with this.

The Greens have long supported consumer protections that ensure people can trust what they are buying. This bill would increase consumer trust in the claims of sunscreen brands. We also note that Consumer New Zealand, which publishes regular critiques on sunscreen markets, issued a release welcoming any movement to improve regulation. We know that Aotearoa has the highest rate of melanomas in the world. Although Māori and Pasifika are much less likely to get them, when we do we have a higher risk of thick and more advanced melanoma with a poorer prognosis. Whereas for non-Māori it is predominately men who get melanomas, for some reason for Māori it is predominately women. Research is not available on the impact on takatāpui, trans, intersex, and non-binary people. Of course, prevention is better, and we acknowledge agencies such as Te Herenga Hauora, our health promotion agency, for their SunSmart campaign. We’re told to “slip, slop, slap” and now “wrap”. So slip on a shirt or slip into shade, slop on some sunscreen, slap on a hat, and wrap on some sunglasses. But sometimes even that may not always work.

Along with my National colleague who proposed this bill, Todd McClay, I also have personal experience in this. Proud as I am of my Māori whakapapa that gave me these brown eyes and this hair, it is my mother’s strong Irish blood that gave me this fair skin. So for decades now I have used quality skin care and sunscreen to make sure that I go a lovely brown colour and not bright pink. So it was quite a surprise to me in 2005 to find the tiny lump beside my eye suddenly started growing at an alarming rate. My partner made me go to a doctor and I was diagnosed with skin cancer. I was told that the waiting list was at least six months long but I was likely to keep getting bumped because I would always be low priority. They also told me, though, if I waited too long I would likely go blind. I have sight in both of my eyes because one of my friends loaned me the $2,000 it cost back in 2005 to do a 15-minute procedure in a private hospital. All because the labelling on the products I was using in good faith were not accurate.

Now, that was 16 years ago. How many more people since then have lost their sight, lost function in some part of their body, or just died because of it? People should be able to trust that what they are putting on their skin to protect them will actually help them. Labels on health-related, not cosmetic, products should be accurate. The safety standard for sunscreen should be mandatory. The Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs should absolutely recommend the setting of mandatory regulations under the Fair Trading Act to prescribe that standard, and end users should not have to pay extra for their sunscreen because of it.

Nō reira, I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m extremely excited to rise in this House to speak on the sunscreen bill, because I actually have a huge passion, which I don’t think my colleagues probably know this about me, but I feel very strongly about SPF. The reason for that is, while we’ve heard stories from the 1980s and probably earlier from our colleagues across the floor today—OK, probably later—but, Mr Speaker, probably not known to you, but right now SPF is a really, really hot topic in the beauty influencer industry at the moment. SPF has become a really, really, widely talked about topic, no matter whether that’s on your YouTube influencing platforms, or on your podcasts—there’s literally people who make podcasts just about how to wear their SPF—sunscreen has actually come a long way since, you know, the days of maybe what my colleague Todd here was talking about, in terms of there’s so many different ways of protecting yourself against the sun.

So there are now different types of sunscreens; as we know, there’s the mineral sunscreens, there’s the chemical sunscreens, there’s sunscreens that are specifically formulated to sit under your make-up so that it’s a matt finish, so that it doesn’t have a gleam to it, a white sheen to it. There are specific sunscreens that are formulated for different skin colour as well, so that that white skin doesn’t—you know, it’s not just for people with fairer skin, so that white, creamy kind of colour doesn’t come through your make-up as well. And, of course, now—which I’ve noticed in this bill doesn’t get mentioned—there’s also powdered sunscreen as well. So for people who wear make-up on a day-to-day basis, the powdered sunscreen actually makes it easier for you to touch up your sunscreen—because you’re supposed to reapply sunscreen every two hours—so that you don’t actually ruin your make-up. The matt finish, because of the powder, actually soaks up the excess oil that your skin produces after you’ve put on your initial dose of sunscreen in the morning.

So what I’m trying to say here today is that sunscreen is absolutely important and on-trend to talk about right now, in this House, and I think it’s extremely important that we have the right legislation to look at what we should be regulating in Aotearoa New Zealand here. I completely recognise my colleague Todd Muller for talking about the outdated ways of how we regulate the sunscreen market, and, actually today, in anticipation of this debate, I actually looked up on the internet what “SPF” actually means. Now we all know that means “sun protection factor”, but how is SPF actually tested, and how do we actually come to the conclusion of what product has which number?

Now, it’s actually really, really interesting—so in order to get the sun protection factor of any product, what you’re supposed to do is on an area of skin, you’re supposed to apply 2 milligrams of sunscreen, and, next to it, a control, which means there’s no sunscreen on another piece of skin. And this is all done by human, like so that’s all done by volunteers in all of these experiments. And then so you expose the same person—usually, I imagine, their back—to a UV lamp, and so when the sun or the UV lamp comes into contact with that volunteer’s skin, the speed to which that skin burns divided by—so the one with sunscreen divided by the one without sunscreen becomes your sun protection factor. So, may I say, science has advanced, has come a really long way since we’ve done things this way, but right now this is still the best way that we have to measure the sun protection factor, which I found actually really, really interesting. So it’s still done by a human way, we have to still just time it by sight to see when someone’s skin burns—yeah, I found that extremely fascinating.

So I’d be really interested in the select committee stage, which our party supports, to actually hear what people think, not only just about, obviously, the regulations but also about any new advances in technology of how we test the SPF factors; also the different types of sun protection the market now offers, because I see here in the drafting of the bill that in the list here, for example, it only talks about creams, oils, gels, or sprays, and, like I already mentioned at the beginning of my contribution, I would like to see powders to be included in that—and also clothing and fabric as well, because now there is a specific type of jacket that actually protects your skin as well, which is really, really interesting.

And so, with that, I would be really excited to hear all the submissions in the select committee process. Thank you Mr Speaker.

I had a dream last night about sunscreen. My new friend Kieran McAnulty and I were sitting—it was Easter, we were drinking pints at the Honest Broker, or, sorry, the Honest Lawyer pub in Nelson, and there was extended hours, and it was just like the bills came together. I said to Kieran, “Can we have some more pints? You’re looking a bit red, though, in the face, show us your sunscreen.” And I said, “Oh, that one’s no good. You should stop taking that.” And then a flash forward to the summer when Mr Nash and I were standing on the beach in our budgie smugglers welcoming back the Australians to our fine beaches, and I said “Stuart, why have they got better sun cream than us?” And then my mind turned to the law, a very serious piece of work that needs to be done. But I have a solution which will bridge that.

So the bill does require the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs to recommend the setting of mandatory regulation. And by way of background, Mr Muller’s already touched on the standards between Australia and New Zealand, which prescribes product tests and labelling requirements for both broad-based spectrum and water-resistant sunscreen products, and there’s now powders. But both countries take a very different approach to how they apply this. In Australia the standard is mandatory, but here New Zealand’s compliance is voluntary. This means that a sunscreen product in Australia can’t go on to the shelf without meeting the standard but in New Zealand it means that anyone can make a sunscreen and sell it without having to test it provides the claims and protections that it states. There’s clearly a market failure here, and even though the ACT Party is light on regulation, I think this is a good case for it.

So the bill requires a sunscreen standard to be set as mandatory in Fair Trading Act regulations. But just to give you a bit of background, I have a 13-year-old daughter who was diagnosed, after a mole check, with an advanced melanoma, which is unheard of, really, at that age. We had to go to the USA for a test because it was actually an adult-type tumour. We were really lucky to catch it at a very early stage, otherwise she mightn’t be here today. But now she’s confined to covering up from exposure at certain times of the day. There needs to be a complete education programme around the use of sunscreen, and also when you should go out, and how you should plan, and there should be professional advice around that.

So that’s when I found out about the variability in sunscreens and standards. So we do need to meet our mothers’ and children’s and young adults’ expectations. As for the law, a mandatory requirement may not be necessary to correct this issue. It is likely governed under the Fair Trading Act, but it is misleading. However, a mandatory requirement would ensure that such misleading advertising can be brought more easily into line.

The ACT Party has a recommendation. This policy is a very worthy one. On this point, ensuring clear standards and accurate information to consumers is vital. It’s vitally important to mothers, kids, teenagers, and to give them confidence. Moreover, recent reporting has highlighted the dangers to comply with a gap in the current regime. We do see pictures of sunburnt children in the newspapers and on television but there’s nothing worse than seeing them in your own home. But I have lived with that fear and the fear of loss.

However, the method of addressing the policy objective here is peculiar. The bill instructs the Minister to regulate. If the bill has the numbers to pass it will obviously require Labour’s support. If Labour supports the bill it could simply pass an Order in Council instead of wasting Parliament’s time, and that’s no disrespect to the committee stage process. I would plead with them to do that. Arguably, a better medium for this type of policy change would have been through a letter to the Minister.

Given the aforementioned, the ACT Party will be supporting the first reading of this bill while making this point. And if Labour is in support, they should regulate immediately rather than wasting Parliament’s time further, and do a sun-loving act to the outdoors people of New Zealand, a great service to all the consumers that use these products. However, if it goes to select committee, we will be supporting that and we will be supporting the first reading. So we’d like that option to be considered. And thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Thank you for allowing me to take a call on Todd Muller’s bill, the Sunscreen (Product Safety Standard) Bill. Now, I want to talk this evening on a couple of points. Firstly, and my colleague Jamie Strange mentioned it earlier, around the changing understanding of the impacts of the sun and our response to that. I also want to talk tonight about why I want to support this bill through to select committee and the opportunity not to waste time but to gain knowledge and understanding around this important issue. And, thirdly, I want to talk about the summer of ’99—not ’69. I know, for some of you across the other side of the room, that’s their favourite song, but we want to talk about the summer of ’99. But I’ll get to that very shortly. Bryan Adams, thank you very much! I know him well!

Now, I think back to the mid- to late-70s. My mother was a keen sunbather. I remember the coconut oil smells and all the sorts of things where you were pretty much putting stuff on your body to make you look browner and look more beautiful, evidently, which wasn’t necessary at all. But we’ve changed, obviously, with the ozone layer, with our UV radiation issues. I remember when SPF 4 was it. And if you were SPF 8 or more, you were just like this kind of lightweight who obviously had some terrible skin condition! So it’s changed a lot, thankfully, and I’m really grateful that SPF 50 is now just quite normal to take home or to take to the beach, and you’re not judged whatsoever. But it’s changed, and I’m really surprised, to be honest, that Consumer New Zealand had obviously done those studies, and around five out of those 10 sunscreens actually weren’t as effective or impactful as they should be. So we’ve changed; we’ve come a long way. SPF 4 is long gone, and we need to ensure that SPF 50-plus is just the norm for our society.

Secondly, I support the bill to select committee because I want to hear the views of the public. I want to hear people’s lived experiences. I want to hear from professionals, and what’s important there. Because I want to listen, and I enjoy listening and understanding and gaining more knowledge in my kete than I already have. And, as Jamie Strange said earlier, we want to progress regulation of sunscreen products as part, obviously, of the Therapeutic Products Bill, but I am really keen that we can critique and listen and understand in this space, which I’m sure everyone in this House wants to do.

Finally, I want to take us back to the summer of 1999. Y2K was on the horizon, but also a beautiful Australian, who I will be able to visit in a few weeks, released a song. His name is Baz Luhrmann, a wonderful opera writer and also, obviously, created some amazing films. Do we remember the sunscreen song? No? Come on!

💬 Hon Members: Sing it!

I was hoping that we would. Well, it’s kind of—it’s a spoken word. I’m not sure what the rules of the House are, but it begins—and I’m sure, because it hit the New Zealand charts, and driving around, actually, Todd Muller’s electorate in that summer, I remember listening to the song time and time again. The words begin like this: “Wear sunscreen / If I could offer you one piece of advice for your future, sunscreen would be it / The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proven by scientists / Whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now”—drop the beat! OK, people don’t remember it, but it’s an amazing song. Please go back. But if I could offer you one piece of advice, sunscreen would be it, and this evening I am here to support this piece of legislation going through to select committee so that I can listen, that I can learn more, and I can ensure that people around our nation are protected from the unfortunate impacts the sun has on us, particularly down here in Aotearoa New Zealand.

So, in closing, our world is changing—our understanding of the sun and how we respond to it. I support this bill to select committee, and don’t forget that summer of ’99. If I could offer you one piece of advice, sunscreen would be it. Kia ora, Mr Speaker.

I rise today in the House to take a call on the Sunscreen (Product Safety Standard) Bill. I want to acknowledge in the House Jamie Strange, who just spoke before me as part of our Hamilton contingent. I actually thought it was David Bennett speaking. I didn’t realise it was Glen Bennett speaking before. So I was going to acknowledge the other member of Parliament from Hamilton as well.

I was quite impressed to see the passion Jamie showed in talking about this bill. Now, we may not have a beach like Mr Muller’s electorate. I do recall that the last time I put on sunscreen it was actually with both Jamie and David. We were at a community parade. We were all dressed up as clowns. I don’t remember the SPF rating of the sunscreen we applied, but I gather the point that Mr Todd Muller is trying to make here with the introduction of this bill.

Now, New Zealand and Australia currently have a shared sunscreen standard which comprehensively prescribes test methods for both broad spectrum and water-resistant sunscreen products—labelling requirements, etc. Despite having a shared standard, though, both countries take a very different approach to application. In Australia, I understand that the standard is mandatory, which means that a product cannot go on to a shelf without meeting the standards, whereas in New Zealand it is voluntary, which is a bit surprising because there was recent testing done by Consumer New Zealand where they found 50 percent of the sunscreens that they tested failed to provide the claims that they had on sun protection. So out of the 10 that they tested, five did not meet the requirements. As for Consumer New Zealand, this wasn’t the first time: some of the brands actually had tested negatively before that as well. So having brands test two or three times negatively is not good for the consumers—for our patients.

One of the things that the Consumer New Zealand chief mentioned was that regulation has been due for a long time, and I understand that’s what Todd is trying to get at. But also, I guess, it’s important to remind ourselves how big the burden of skin cancer is in New Zealand. As my colleague Jamie Strange mentioned, we have one of the highest rates of skin cancers in the world. If you look at melanoma: 35 to 40 people per 100,000 per year. That’s one of the highest age-standardised rates in the world.

Now, limiting UV radiation exposure through sun smart behaviour is one of the key ways of preventing these cancers. I speak this as a medical professional in my past life. And if we can’t ensure that the sunscreens that people are applying have the right SPF that they claim to have, then how do you bring down these numbers? So, in theory, this actually makes really good sense, and I think if we take a health-based approach, we definitely would recommend this going to the Health Committee. But, I guess, the bill requires the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs to recommend the setting of mandatory regulation under section 29 of the Fair Trading Act 1986, prescribing a product safety standard for sunscreen products.

So I look forward to this bill going through the select committee stages. I also understand that the Ministry of Health themselves have proposed a different bill altogether, which is the Therapeutic Products Bill, which will be a little bit more comprehensive and will be looking at a few more broader issues, not just the sunscreen itself. But until then, we would like to see what the submissions are on this bill and we would like to hear from other members of the community, and especially the medical community and, obviously, the consumers as well, some of whom might have gotten skin cancer because they didn’t take the right sunscreen, which made claims that obviously weren’t true.

So as far as the bill goes, I would like to support it in terms of a health-based approach to go through the select committee to the next stage to be discussed. I want to thank Todd Muller for bringing this to the House. Thank you.

I rise to strongly support this bill and congratulate my colleague Todd Muller on bringing this bill to the House. I do have some experience in this domain. I completed my postgraduate Diploma in Dermatology in Wales and then practised for 20 years as what’s called a “GPSI” GP with a special interest in dermatology. So I have probably seen my fair share of sun-induced and other sorts of cancers and other lesions, and I’m very pleased to see this sort of proposal in front of the House.

I’ve been intrigued and privileged to manage sun-induced conditions for a number of years, melanomas, which I’ve heard my colleagues speak about, which are clearly influenced by the sun; and non-melanoma conditions, the ones that most people have. I’d also just mention that there are some conditions that are very photo-sensitive. Lupus erythematosus, for example, is very sensitive to the sun, and you’d be wanting people with that to be using sunblock as well, but the cancers are the main lesions that we want to be attending to. And, of course, these talk to the properties of UVB, and the more ubiquitous rays and then the less defined UVA, and I’ll talk about that a little bit further when we get into the sunblocks.

Sunblocks generally work in two basic categories. They’re reflective or absorbent. The reflective ones basically look to bounce the sun’s rays away. So that’s what the zincs and the titanium oxides do—they’re reflective sunblocks. Their trade-off is that they’re a bit gluggy. They block the pores on the skin. That’s what you see the cricketers wear—you’ve heard of the zinc and various other things. But that’s their mechanism of action—they’re reflective. They bounce the sun’s rays away. The others are absorptive, and what they do is they absorb the sun and use the energy of the sun to break chemical bonds and form two, three, or four inert chemicals. I know that at one point in time, there was some concern around whether those inert chemicals could themselves be troublesome, but that hasn’t proven to be so. I’m talking about things like PABAs, the para-aminobenzoic acids, and those sorts of things. They were very, very common in the early years for sunblocks and even today you’ll still see them.

This bill specifically talks to the SPF. We’ve heard people talk about how that’s assessed, and it’s quite right. You apply sunblock to skin that is exposed and not exposed, a certain layer—2 milligrams per millimetre as I recall—and then you basically irradiate them and look for where you get minimal redness and compare the time to get minimal redness in an area that is covered and an area that is not, and you do a formulaic division, and that gives you the SPF. This mainly talks to UVB. UVA is not quite so clear, and, in fact, we use something called persistent pigment darkening to determine what the UVA category is. As you’ll see, UVA comes into the broad sun spectrum sunblocks—less easy to measure but primarily SPF is talking about UVB, and I’m sure we’ll hear more about that in select committee.

The author of this bill notes that when products failed, to quote consumer reports, they failed significantly. A number of them were rated at 50+, and when they were independently tested they turned out to be about 20+, so not even close—actually half of what they were promoting. I think when we focus on the SPF factor in this bill, it strikes me that it’s not a bill of science. It’s a bill of consumer affairs because it fundamentally says that what we want is for you to be honest with your labelling, honest with your claims, honest with your statements. You do need to have the laboratory certification to back up the statements you’re making.

We’ve made the comparison with what they do in Australia. We have a voluntary code which is clearly not working. Australia has mandated it. But if we look across the world it’s also widespread as to how they regulate sunblock. The European Commission doesn’t let you label sunscreens with an SPF less than six, but everything greater than six can be called “broad spectrum.” As we commented, between ourselves and Australia we do have some consistent standards; it’s just how we apply them that is different. The USA, through the Food and Drug Administration, has a completely different range. The real difference tends to be around the broad-spectrum, which is the UVA component.

I’m sure we’ll hear more about all of this and maybe even get to apply some of them in select committee. I’m really looking forward to that coming. This is a really good consumer affairs bill. This is just about honest trading. The science is well known, the science is accepted, and it’s very timely for this bill to come to the House.

One recommendation—as everyone is sharing their moments—is that I’ve said to my daughters for a long time that the cheapest Botox they will ever use is sunblock. Use it during the winter, use it during the summer. I generally say to them, “Choose your favourite moisturiser and then find something with at least SPF15 in it”, because I find that cosmetically they don’t get concerned about blocking the sun—you know, put your sunblock on and you’ll get acne; all that sort of trade-off, and I think they’ve been pleased. And I used to say to my patients as well that the cheapest Botox they’ll ever use is sunblock.

So I’m a strong supporter of sunblock. I look forward to this bill coming to the select committee. It’s an excellent bill. Thank you, Todd.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I would like to commend the member Mr Todd Muller for bringing this bill to the House, and I’m grateful to have the opportunity to take a call on the Sunscreen (Product Safety Standard) Bill.

I’ve heard all the stories about sunscreen. I think I have a story, in terms of a brown fulla. What’s sunscreen got to do with a brown fulla? Well, actually there is still a risk with getting skin cancers as a dark-skinned guy. I remember my time in Samoa, walking around in the villages, on the beach at Lalomanu or Falelatai, and just putting it on my face. But then, you know, I got my shoulders exposed, my back exposed, and then later that evening I had a really sore shoulder and sore back and then the next following days peeling from the sunburn. It’s really important not only for our fair-skinned populations, but also for my Pacific Islanders as well. It’s important because there’s always a risk to get skin cancers. The three most common being BCCs, basal cell carcinomas, squamous cell carcinomas, or melanomas as well.

According to the bill—I’ll just touch on a few points—the bill requires the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs to recommend the making of regulations under section 29 of the Fair Trading Act 1986. Also it states that the product safety standard—again, we’ve heard from other colleagues about making sure that it is up to New Zealand sunscreen standard, NZS 2604:2012.

We are supporting this, like many of my colleagues have said, to select committee. But the huge thing I want to touch on is the health-based approach. The member before me, Dr Shane Reti, being a primary care physician himself—we see a lot of skin conditions coming through the doors. Sometimes it’s a bit late. We always say prevention’s better than cure, and sometimes we get a lot of our patients turning up, and assessing their skin conditions we may have to do excision biopsies, shave biopsies, or refer on to dermatologists as well. I think this is a good time to acknowledge the work that is done by our primary care colleagues, our dermatologists, our specialists in the health system that do care for skin cancers in the system. But, again, it’s all about prevention, and this is what the bill aims to do.

We’ve heard about the Consumer New Zealand testing, with five out of 10 last year being false, not reaching the SPF factor that they claim to have. Also, when I look at SPF, sun protection factors, the SPF 50+ filters about 98 percent of UVB. I’ll just touch on the UVA, ultraviolet A radiation, UVB, and UVC. UVA is 95 percent of radiation that we do get that penetrates the atmosphere and has a low energy compared to UVB, so it doesn’t do as much damage compared to UVB, and that’s why we see in our sunscreen products that we try to target UVB. When we talk about broad spectrum, it’s trying to target both the UVA and UVB. UVC is pretty much absorbed by the atmosphere, so we don’t provide products such as that.

That’s why this bill is really important, to make sure that what we’re giving out, whether it’s been clinicians advising patients to put on SPF 30 or SPF 50+, is to make sure that we are protecting our whānau from these skin cancers as mentioned before. Again, SPF 50+ filters 98 percent of UVB compared to the SPF 30, that filters up to 96 percent, 97 percent as well.

When I look at the risk with our patients, whether it be older adults or fair skinned, again, like I said, dark skinned populations as well, those who have a family history, it’s really important that we get things right. It’s really important that our manufacturers are providing products that do meet the standard, and this bill aims to do that. This is all about protecting our whānau, protecting those who are at risk of getting skin cancers, and making sure that the product is doing what it’s claiming to do. So that’s why I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Mr Speaker. I rise this evening to speak to the Sunscreen (Product Safety Standard) Bill that has—and I congratulate Mr Todd “On-trend” Muller for bringing this bill to the House for our discussion. I was really interested to hear my colleague Naisi Chen talking with such enthusiasm and information sharing. I didn’t actually realise that you could get sunscreen in powder form but it does sound like a really good opportunity for those of us who actually want to continue to apply it over our make-up. But it is a serious issue, and as you’ve heard my colleagues on this side of the House say, we are supporting this bill to go forward to select committee.

I was actually genuinely quite shocked to see when the news came forward about five out of 10 products, as we’ve repeatedly heard, being tested by Consumer NZ not meeting the SPF claims, and rather than mention brands, I just would direct people towards the article by RNZ if people want to get further information on that. Because I do think it’s really important that we’re aware of what’s in the bottles of sunscreen that we all rely upon—and we really do rely on them being accurate. New Zealand, as we’ve heard, has a really high rate of skin cancer and melanoma, and if this is preventable, it’s really important that we’re able to prevent that accurately.

Now, looking at me, you correctly guess that, like Mr Muller, I do need to apply effective sunscreen. I’m looking at many of my colleagues across the House who would fall into the same category. My partner would also be on the fair side, and probably burns even more than I do. I know that in my youth, which was not in the 80s, we used to go to the—well, I say “we”; I actually didn’t do this—but my friends used to go to the chemist, which was the only place you could buy olive oil, and apply it to themselves in order to actually achieve that desirable tan. I mean, here you wouldn’t—I was in the UK, and even though I was in the beautiful and very sunny island of Jersey, the sun didn’t carry quite the same strength to it in terms of capacity to burn as it does in New Zealand. My partner, as I said, who is fairer than me, actually was raised in the north of England where I don’t believe the sun shines very frequently. But when we came to New Zealand, we found ourselves covering up and scampering from shadow to shadow, and relying really heavily on that sunscreen.

Of course, the sun is almost always shining in Ilam, the electorate that I represent, and it’s very important that we are covering up and using good sunscreen. But I did, myself, fall foul of this sunscreen inadequate labelling. Earlier on in my time in New Zealand, I had to spend much of the day outside and couldn’t achieve the shade that I would have preferred to achieve, and was really relying on constant application of sunscreen. Unfortunately, I was using one of the brands that was found to be actually delivering a less-than-adequate level of protection, and burnt really badly. Fortunately I haven’t ended up with serious consequences so far, that my colleague Elizabeth Kerekere described earlier.

I was interested to find out, too, that SPF—we’ve heard lots of people talking about it, but I didn’t actually realise until this evening that what it actually means is that an SPF 15, for example, would mean that 1/15th of the burning radiation reaches your skin. SPF 50 would mean that 1/50th of the actual burning radiation would reach your skin. So you can see there’s a really big difference in the impact on your skin, and it’s incredibly important that we are able to achieve an accurate understanding of what we’re applying to ourselves. So I do look forward to receiving this in select committee should this bill pass forward, which I hope it will, and certainly we are in support of that.

I’m looking forward to hearing more from the public, and I’m looking forward to hearing more from people like my colleague Naisi Chen, who may be able to share some even more interesting experiences and further products that can mean that we’re further on trend. So I do commend this bill to select committee, and thank you again for bringing it forward.

Look, thank you, Mr Speaker. Can I, firstly, thank the House for their endorsement of this bill. It’s always very exciting, particularly when you’re an Opposition MP, to put up a bill that gets the level of support that this does, and I appreciate and thank all of the contributors to the debate. It’s been quite an interesting debate, really. It’s had moments of high humour, and also underpinning actually everyone’s contribution is an acknowledgment of the serious issue that we’re trying to address here. I’d have to say there were times through Naisi Chen’s contribution that I felt that I’d reached the pinnacle of my political career. I mean, to be described as “on trend”. I don’t think I’m going to be able to beat that in the time that I—

💬 Matt Doocey: First time ever.

It’s not only the first time ever—I have teenage children who I’m going to remind of that accolade time and time again, because from their perspective, I’m the opposite of on trend, so this is great to have it confirmed here in this House so publicly, and I really appreciated her enthusiasm, somewhat surprising enthusiasm, actually, for what we are seeking to do.

But I thought if I can, in conclusion, just acknowledge Damien Smith’s contribution because, you know, he talked to the seriousness that sits behind this. We are a country that is hugely exposed to skin cancer in terms of incidence across our population. It is one of the cancers that is at a level the easiest to avoid if you are very focused on applying sunscreen and protecting yourself from our sun. And New Zealanders expect that when they put sunscreen on and they are fulfilling their part of the bargain of protecting themselves, they have confidence that the sun protection factor that’s on the label is indeed what’s in the bottle, and I think it’s heartening to hear the collective support around that intent.

I acknowledge, of course, the Labour Party’s support for this. We all appreciate that if they don’t see the merit in a bill, however flawed that perspective might be in previous bills, things don’t progress. So I do appreciate the fact that they have seen the merit in this bill. Obviously, a lot of focus and repetition of the fact that the support lies to the first reading and we see where we go with the select committee. I do hope that we have significant contribution from people who have been affected, those who are involved in this particular issue in an advocacy perspective, and also that the Government reflects actually very fairly on the time it will take for the therapeutic products bill to be finalised, to have stakeholder engagement, and then to progress through this House. I think, based on our initial approaches on the bill ourselves when we were in Government, it’s a very complex bill that only becomes more complex if you’re going to integrate the natural health products, which, I understand, the Government are minded to do. So it is likely that that will take time. And in the meantime, we have a bill that has the support of the House, I know has the support of the country, and I think we can progress this in a way that will actually deliver some value to the wider community, regardless of our political persuasion. So thank you. I appreciate the support and I look to forward to participating with others in the Health Committee to debate it. Thank you.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

The question is, That the Sunscreen (Product Safety Standard) Bill be considered by the Health Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Health Committee.