Following is a message from "Citizens for Health Choices,"
which should give us all a great deal of concern.
The Labour Government in an arrogant manner evidently decided last year,
without waiting for it's appointed Health Select Committee to report back to Parliament,
that the Joint Trans-Tasman Agency for Health Supplements should proceed.
Many of you will remember the effort we went to last year, along with many others in the winter of 2002,
to encourage our members, friends and associates to join us in putting in submissions
to the Government against the proposed Health Supplements Bill, which was designed to have Australia
in control of regulating our health supplements. Australia is recognised internationally, as having the most
draconian Nutritional Health Supplements legislation in the world.
See Positive Living at Vox Australasia for past information -
The Bill won a reprieve with a Select Committee Review to be reported back
to Parliament before a decision was to be made. This new decision was evidently
made by the present Labour Government last year without any outsider's knowledge,
and the Select Committee was allowed to proceed. It appears the Minister also
answered a direct question about this, in the negative just some months ago.
Please act immediately in fighting for the right to retain choice in the health products
and nutritional supplements that we can import, buy and use.
A free society with freedom of choice, is a healthy society. Please act.
Many thanks.
Jacqui Leeden
Editor, "Positive Living"
Publications & Website
Convenor, Auckland Fibromyalgia
Support
Executive, Auckland District Kidney Society
Northern Region Advisory Group, Arthritis New Zealand
National Governing Board, Arthritis New Zealand.
P.O. Box 28-552, Remuera, Auckland 1005
WWW.VOXAU.COM FOR FIBROMYALGIA AND OOS/RSI NEWS
Ph 649 578 1958 jacqui@voxau.com Fx 649 578 1955 Mob 025 979 860
To All Our Supporters
TRANS TASMAN THERAPEUTIC GOODS AGENCY
THIS ARROGANT GOVERNMENT HAS TAKEN UNBELIEVABLE ACTION
THEY HAVE NOT WAITED FOR THE SELECT COMMITTEE REPORT
Despite all the work Citizens for Health Choices, dietary supplement
industry associations and consumers have done since 1992 and the overwhelming evidence against proceeding with the joint agency with
Australia for dietary supplements, it has today been revealed in Parliament that Annette King, Minister of Health has deliberately betrayed all New
Zealanders who believe in freedom of choice in healthcare.
The following question was to Annette King on her chat room 8th Oct 2003.
GARY:
We have been informed that despite complete rejection by the dietary supplement industry and well over 35,000 dietary supplement consumers,
constitutional lawyers and economists and before the Health Select Committee has submitted its report; you have stated that the Trans Tasman Joint Agency
to regulate dietary supplements will proceed as planned. Why are you ignoring the overwhelming opposition in New Zealand to the proposal for a Joint Agency?
ANNETTE: You have been misinformed.
A transcript of the events in Parliament this afternoon
is at the bottom of this communication.
Select Committees are part of the New Zealand constitutional process.
I believe it is unheard of for a government to take action before a Select Committee report has been tabled. This calls into question New Zealand’s
whole “constitutional process”. It means that New Zealand Select Committees have no power at all and are a waste of time.
Annette King has now stated in Parliament that the decision was made
in November 2002 to proceed. She allowed the Health Select Committee to proceed with their enquiry over the past 8 months, knowing full well that
she would ignore totally any recommendations.
She allowed industry, consumers and tax payers to waste tens of
thousands of dollars and many thousands of hours providing very valid arguments against the proposal.
The Minister advised Australia, that this Bill was proceeding months ago.
The Minister has still not advised New Zealand interested parties.
The Minister’s reasoning about time delays to government is seriously flawed. It
would appear that there was overwhelming pressure from Australia to proceed.
The Minister’s comments that it was because of Pan are seriously flawed as not one dietary
supplement has been analysed to show that there was anything wrong with it. The Pan situation arose over a pharmaceutical over the counter drug product,
not a dietary supplement.
URGENT ACTION REQUIRED
1. Immediately contact your member of parliament by
phone, fax, e-mail and ask him/her and their party to vote against the treaty and bill when it is presented in Parliament.
2. Ring radio talkback programmes Radio Pacific and NewsTalk ZB continually day and night over the next few days to
alert all New Zealanders to what has happened.
3.
NOW IS THE TIME TO TELEPHONE, FAX, E-MAIL, WRITE TO HON. ANNETTE KING:
HON. ANNETTE KING, Minister of Health
e-mail aking@ministers.govt.nz
w.c.nairn@extra.co.nz
kilvirnieeo@xtra.co.nz
POSTAL ADDRESS
Freepost Parliament
Hon. Annette King
P O Box 18888
Wellington
PHONE (04) 470 6554
FAX (04) 495
8445
Some ideas on what to say in your
communications:
1. We don’t want to have a joint
agency with Australia for the regulation of Dietary Supplements
2. We want to keep the power to regulate Dietary Supplement within New Zealand.
3. We want to be able to choose which Dietary Supplements we want to use, and don’t want to pay extra for that privilege
due to costs of unnecessary regulation.
4.We feel angry that we have been consistently told in letters from the
Minister that the decision had not yet been made, when the decision was made November 2002 to have a joint agency with Australia for the regulation of Dietary Supplements and have been
5. We do not agree on signing
a treaty with Australia on such a matter as this. It appears to be nothing more than a dangerous experiment. Nowhere else in the world
has there been such a joint agency established.
6. That Complementary Health Products should be
regulated as a separate category from medicines and food.
7. That the
preferred approach should be for NZ to self-regulate and for a mutual-recognition arrangement be struck with Australia.
8. That products should be registered after being
measured against a black-list of forbidden ingredients
9. We want the freedom of choice as to how we
protect our health.
PLEASE ACT NOW !!!!
Kind regards,
Jan Mabey
SECRETARY
CITIZENS FOR HEALTH CHOICES
TRANSCRIPT FROM NZ PARLIAMENT – 4 DECEMBER 2003
Trans-Tasman Therapeutic Products Agency — Bilateral Treaty
11. SUE KEDGLEY to the Minister of Health: Has the Government made a decision
to include the regulation of complementary medicines and dietary supplements in the proposed trans-Tasman therapeutic products
agency, and when does it expect to sign a bilateral treaty between the Australian and New Zealand Governments establishing the agency?
Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister of Health): Yes. The Government has decided to include
the regulation of complementary medicines and therapeutic dietary supplements in the proposed trans-Tasman therapeutic products agency. The treaty will be signed on 10 December.
Sue Kedgley:
Why has the Minister made this decision before the Health Committee, which is inquiring into this very issue, has even reported back, and what does she
say to members of the Health Committee who have been toiling away on this issue for 8 months, only to find at the end of it that we have completely
wasted our time because the Minister had already made up her mind?
Hon ANNETTE KING: It is not reasonable to expect the Governments of New Zealand
or Australia to wait any longer for a report from a select committee — a report that the Government did not call for — on something that was first
decided in September 2002, 15 months ago. Governments cannot hold up agreements on that basis. What countries would deal with us if we did?
Mark Peck: What process will be followed once the treaty has been signed?
Hon ANNETTE KING: It is proposed that the national interest analysis and a text
of the agreement be tabled in Parliament in accordance with the parliamentary treaty examination process.
Dr Lynda Scott: What are the cost implications for New
Zealand R17's large complementary health-care market of having a trans-Tasman therapeutics product agency rather than mutual
recognition and a strengthened regulatory system?
Hon ANNETTE KING: Work undertaken by the New Zealand Institute of Economic
Research suggests the costs of regulating complementary medicines within a joint agency would be significantly less than that of a New Zealand
regulatory scheme.
Sue Kedgley:What was she saying to the hundreds of submitters who made submissions in
good faith believing that we were conducting a genuine inquiry into this issue, and does she understand how they may consider her decision to be
arrogant and extraordinary, and that they too may feel—like the members of the Health Committee—that they have completely wasted their time because she
had already made a predetermined decision on the matter that the committee is inquiring into?
Hon ANNETTE KING: The Cabinet made a decision in principle in November 2002
that complementary medicines would be included in the joint regulator. We have waited patiently for the select committee to report back. It still has
not reported back. We are working closely with the Australian Government. We have considered what we have heard along the way. I think the member may
well even be pleased when she sees the extent of what has been considered in the joint regulator.
Sue Kedgley:In light of comments by the Minister for Small Business yesterday that
Australian businesses face much higher compliance costs than New Zealand businesses do, why is she supporting a proposal to regulate dietary
supplements by an expensive, Australian-based therapeutic goods agency, when overwhelming evidence was presented to the select committee that will
increase the compliance costs of small New Zealand dietary supplement industries, and that no further assurance will be given to consumers as a
result of these increased compliance costs, as the Pan Pharmaceuticals debacle amply illustrated?
Mr SPEAKER:
That question was far too long. The Minister may comment briefly on one or two aspects of it.
Hon ANNETTE KING: This Government has decided to move, in conjunction with
Australia, to regulate complementary and therapeutic dietary supplements because of the Pan Pharmaceuticals situation. Many New Zealanders demanded
that we put in place regulation, and the work that I have seen shows the impact on small business of what we intend to put in place will be minimal.
Sue Kedgley: Is she aware that the overwhelming majority of submitters, consumers, and
dietary supplement industries are completely opposed to the course she is pursuing, and does she agree with Margaret Wilson’s comment, in respect of
the Supreme Court debate, that a remote and inaccessible final Court of Appeal is not a hallmark of modern democracy; if so, why is her Government
supporting the establishment of a remote and inaccessible body, based in Australia and staffed principally by Australians, to regulate dietary
supplements in New Zealand?
Hon ANNETTE KING: The member is wrong on just
about every point she has made. She has assumed that the body is remote, she has assumed that it is in Australia, and she has assumed that it is under
Australia R17's control. She is wrong on all those points.
