Speech by Green Health spokesperson Sue Kedgley to the Natural Healthcare Policy Debate

Wednesday, November 24th 2004

• Tweet

We recently attended a debate at which all major parties health spokespersons gave their parties views on the proposed TGA with Australia.

All the major parties oppose this legislation except for Labour and United.
If this proceeds your health products will cost more and many products will be withdrawn.

To take action and try and ensure you continue to have access to your favourite products please visit NZ Health Trust for more information on how you can make your opinion count.

Interestingly although the Select Committee investigating the TGA merger categorically said it should not proceed, as it would reduce choice and increase cost, Labour ignored public opinion and the recomendations of the Select Committee report.

Although we do not take "political sides" Sue Kedgley explains why this proposed government legislation is not good for the New Zealand public.

We have printed Sue Kedgleys speech unabridged.

The Green party is totally committed to a preventative, holistic model of health, which is based on the WHO definition of health as a state of complete mental, social and spiritual well-being, not merely the absence of disease, which is focussed on keeping people well, treating the whole person and not just the symptoms of illness, using drugs and surgery as a last rather than first resort and which acknowledges that the food we eat, the air we breathe, the exercise we take, our relationships with other people, all have a direct bearing on our health and natural healing processes.

We are committed too, to restoring traditional or what is called complementary healthcare to its rightful place in the mainstream of the health system. I believe we are the only party that has strong support for the integration of complementary healthcare into mainstream health in our official health policy.

We want to see in New Zealand what already exists in many countries overseas ---traditional healthcare like homeopathy, acupuncture, Chinese and ayuvedic medicine, traditional Maori medicine or rongoa, recognised and accepted throughout our health system, and eligible for public funding. We want to see doctors and other health professionals working alongside recognised complementary health practitioners in public health organisations -PHO's -and in our hospitals -using whatever treatment is judged to be most effective, be it a natural remedy or an allopathic treatment.

We believe it is time in the 21st century to leave behind the narrow mindset that says that orthodox medicine is the only effective way of treating illness and acknowledge that there are other healing practices which have been around for centuries which can be equally effective in preventing disease and treating illness in a low tech, less invasive and more natural manner.

It is time too to acknowledge that while orthodox medicine is extremely effective at treating acute illness and trauma and in diagnosing disease, it has little to offer in terms of preventative health. Modern medicine criticises complementary health modalities for being unscientific, yet it takes a narrow physical -and some would argue unscientific?approach to health, and essentially ignores the emotional and spiritual aspects of disease. It tends to treat the symptoms rather than the causes of illness, and to look upon the body as a machine and sees the task of the doctor as to repair the machine. To quote Prince Charles: "Western medicine has tended to regard disease as a parcel of symptoms to be dosed or chopped out, losing sight of the whole person behind the rash or lump and the various emotional and environmental factors that may contribute to their physical problems."

So it's not surprising that conventional medicine has had limited success in treating chronic, degenerative diseases such as multiple sclerosis, chronic fatigue and cancer. There is very little data to establish whether conventional treatments for diseases like arthritis and MS actually improve the long-term outlook for patients or slow the illness and make the patient live longer. Some conventional treatments actually weaken the immune system and other organs, rather than strengthen them.

While lip service has been paid recently to primary, preventative health, our mainstream health system is still very much an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff system, focussed on treating people once they become ill. In our view the Ministry of Health would be more appropriately named the Ministry of Ill Health, or Ministry of Illness Management.

And while we welcome the shift to primary healthcare delivered through PHO's, we worry that doctors have scant training in nutrition and none in understanding and embracing other healing systems. Unlike Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, whose motto was 'Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food,' modern doctors are taught to dispense drugs in ten minute sessions rather than look at the nutritional causes of disease, and only receive about 6 hours of nutrition training in their degree. We ask, how are doctors going to improve the health of the nation if they have so little training in something as fundamental as nutrition? That's one reason why we want doctors to work with naturopaths and other natural health practitioners who have an understanding of nutrition.

The Green party supported the development of PHO's in part because they were intended to be multi-disciplinary teams of health professionals working together, but we are annoyed that no PHO, to our knowledge, has included complementary health practitioners in these multi-disciplinary teams. We have challenged the Health Minister in Parliament about this, and her response is that there is nothing to stop PHO's from employing complementary health practitioners. But her government is doing nothing that we can see to help to make this happen.

With the costs of orthodox medicine and our drugs bill soaring, escalating waiting lists, consumer confidence in pharmaceuticals declining as drugs like Vioxx are suddenly withdrawn from the market, with acute shortages of health professionals such as nurses and doctors --in short, with a health system in crisis -we cannot understand why we are not embracing low tech, cost effective, less invasive and more holistic therapies which can improve the overall health of New Zealanders, reduce our dependence on prescription drugs, and help shift our emphasis towards preventing rather than just treating illness.

If complementary therapies can improve healthcare and offer increased consumer choice, why on earth wouldn't we embrace them? It simply doesn't make sense.

When I came into Parliament I was painfully aware there was no recognition or support for complementary therapies. Despite their growing popularity, there was no policy and not even one staff member in the entire 1000 strong Ministry of Health who was working in this area.

So I drew up a 6-step plan to recognise and integrate complementary healthcare into our mainstream health system. One of the first budget bids the Green party put up when it was supporting the government on confidence and supply in the previous government, was a proposal to establish a Ministerial Advisory Committee on Complementary healthcare to consider how to better recognise, regulate and integrate complementary healthcare. The government accepted our budget bid, and the committee met for three years and produced a report, which does not go nearly as far as I had hoped it would but is at least a step forward. Another successful Green budget bid was the establishment of an on line, searchable research database of existing research into the safety and efficacy of complementary therapies.

The Green party has been calling for more than five years for a Complementary Healthcare Unit within the Ministry of Health and for statutory recognition of key complementary therapies, so that we can ensure consumers that all registered complementary health practitioners are properly trained and competent to practice, and that there is a system in place to protect consumers from incompetent or unscrupulous practitioners.

Acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine has a history of over 2000 years and has been recognised by the WHO as an effective treatment for more than 40 diseases. So it is frankly bizarre that it does not have statutory recognition here in New Zealand. I have worked with the acupuncturists for years to try to get recognition for acupuncturists, and put up an amendment to recognise them under the Health Practitioners Competency bill, but regrettably only NZ First supported that amendment.

So the Green party not only has a clear vision of the role of CAM in mainstream health, it has taken many steps over the past five years to try to implement that vision. We would seek to make further significant changes if we were to work with the Government in a confidence and supply agreement again.

On the question of the Trans Tasman Therapeutics Goods Agency, we have been working for 4 years with the dietary supplements industry to try to foil the government's plans to hand over control of our dietary supplements industry to the Australian based TTTGA. When we were first tipped off about the governments plans we organised a nationwide petition and collected 30 thousand signatures opposing it and we organised 7 public meetings around New Zealand alerting people to the dire implications of the TTTGA for New Zealand before the last election. Our petition was presented to the Health Select Committee and helped trigger an inquiry, which unanimously recommended against it. Since that time we have been leading the fight against the government's plans and will continue to do so.

The Green party considers the proposed TTTGA would be a disaster for New Zealand and we hope and pray that the Labour party will never have enough political support to get legislation setting it up through Parliament. Unlike Australia New Zealand has nothing to gain and everything to lose from the proposal. It would increase compliance costs and therefore the cost of dietary supplements, reduce consumer choice, close down small dietary supplements businesses and result in a wholesale Australian takeover of the whole industry. How would New Zealand possibly benefit from that?

Officials conceded to me that they could not think of any other country in the world where an entire industry was regulated and enforced by an agency based in another country. Bear in mind that as well as setting policy and monitoring the industry, the proposed agency would have policing and enforcement powers as well and so we would be faced with the prospect of Australian inspectors closing down health stores and any remaining dietary supplements companies in New Zealand as they did during the Pan fiasco which has cost the Australian and New Zealand industry more than $40 million to date.

We would also lose our sovereignty and control over the entire industry, if we went ahead with it. Key decisions would be delegated to an unelected and unaccountable Managing Director of the agency who would be given the statutory powers presently exercised by the Minister of Health and delegated authority to make and enforce regulations which would have immediate effect in New Zealand, but without recourse to our Parliament. Parliament would lose its jurisdiction over dietary supplements, so if I or any other MP here wanted to introduce legislation relating to dietary supplements in the future, we would be told that we could not; that Parliament had given up its jurisdiction over this industry. The only New Zealander that would have any influence under the proposed TTTGA model would be the Minister of Health, meeting behind closed doors with her or his Australian counterpart. Would that satisfy any member of this audience?

The silly thing is that there is absolutely NO need for such a change. We can regulate dietary supplements perfectly well here in New Zealand and seek mutual recognition with Australia, as we do in almost every area of our economy. There is no need to harmonise. We need a strengthened system, along the lines proposed in our Health select committee.

It's worth remembering that the whole point of CER was to benefit New Zealand businesses and consumers by eliminating regulatory impediments to trade with Australia. But the effect of harmonising with the TGA would be to increase regulatory impediments and compliance costs and to give an unfair advantage to Australian businesses so they could wipe out the remaining New Zealand businesses.

Finally let me point out that the vast majority of New Zealanders are opposed to the TTTGA, and 99% of submissions to our recent Health select committee opposed it. So too is the dietary supplements industry and the majority of MP's in Parliament. So why is the government not listening? Why is bulldozing ahead with its plans against the wishes of the majority -plans which will undermine New Zealand's interests and sovereignty.

No wonder people are thinking about binding citizens initiated referenda! Out party is formally considering the proposal for BCIR. But we would certainly want to ensure that there were safeguards in any binding referenda, just as there are some safeguards in our democracy -in terms of spending limits, political party advertising etc. We would want to see spending controls, guaranteed broadcasting slots for different positions; a brochure distributed to every household with arguments for an against etc. Otherwise there is the danger that what has happened in many cases overseas could happen here -namely that the side of the argument with the most money and resources would win the referendum, regardless of the merit of the question under consideration.

Sue Kedgley MPGreen Party of Aotearoa New Zealand
Room 13.05 Bowen House
Parliament Buildings, Wellington
Ph: 04-470-6717 Fax: 04-472-7116
Email: sue.kedgley@parliament.govt.nz

Footnote from Ideal Health

Related articles can be found here:

Bitter pill: Govt surrenders $200m industry to Australian control

Complementary Health Response Disappoints Sue Kedgley

Govt Suffers Setback on Trans-Tasman Plans

NZ Health Trust Newsletter

Pharmac Warns Huge Fees Will Price Medicines Off the Shelf

Rules Body 'Will Limit New Drugs'

SPEECH - ALLISON ROE, JUNE 16TH 2006

When Is a Lie Not a Lie?

If you need help or advice, you are welcome to email our naturopathic team with your health question.

Disclaimer: The health information presented here has been written for the New Zealand health consumer. It is of a general nature and is only intended to provide a summary of the subjects covered. The information is not intended to be comprehensive or to provide medical advice to you. While all care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of the information, no responsibility or liability is accepted, and no person should act in reliance on any statement contained in the information provided. All health ailments should be treated by a qualified health professional.

ref:n244

• Tweet