Annette King - Fotopress - Ross Setford
10/12/2003 11:54 AM - Virginia McMillan - The Independent
Nutritional supplements suppliers say their industry is being sacrificed to the government's desire for closer economic relationships with Australia.
Health Minister Annette King revealed last week she would today sign a document paving the way for an Australian and New Zealand joint agency to regulate pharmaceuticals, complementary healthcare products and medical devices.
This was news to her fellow Labour MP, Steve Chadwick, who chairs the Health Select Committee then preparing to release its report urging the government to drop the trans-Tasman joint agency plan.
Chadwick's committee was unanimous in its call for stronger New Zealand regulations instead of a joint regulator. Its report was released yesterday.
The submissions of complementary health product manufacturers, importers and marketeers had been among the 132 made to the committee, helping to convince it assessment of all options was needed.
A key submitter was Bill Bracks, chairman of NZAX-listed health product company, Comvita, and president of the National Nutritional Foods Association. He says his industry has been "politicised for an agenda: the cross-Tasman relationship.
"The question for us is: Do we want to give our sovereignty away to an unseen number of people in Australia who will determine what we can and cannot do with our complementary medicines industry?"
The timing of tomorrow's signing ceremony with Trish Worth, Australia's Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health and Ageing, casts doubt on the democratic process, smacks of "almost totalitarianism" and defies belief, says Bracks.
"I am dumbfounded. I think [the select committee members] have been insulted."
Committee members Heather Roy (ACT) and Sue Kedgley (Greens) referred respectively to the minister's "arrogance" towards, and "scandalous ignoring" of, the committee.
Ron Law, an industry adviser, says a problem lies in regulating dietary supplements, presently treated as foods, alongside the far riskier drug-based pharmaceuticals.
A New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) report estimates the pharmaceutical companies will contribute 0.2% of turnover to New Zealand's contribution to the joint agency's costs; the complementary industry could cough up 2.6% of its turnover.
Law says the government is making a big-picture political gain while allowing the new system to send 200-300 small Kiwi businesses to the wall.
Annette King says she doesn't believe firms will close.
She rejects any hint that she has betrayed the sector.
The government ruled out a separate complementary product regulation over a year ago, the minister says.
Her move this week follows a process begun by the then National Health Minister Jenny Shipley in 1996, King told The Independent. "We would be the laughing stock of the international community if having gone through all that [subsequent work] in good faith, we said we had to wait for a select committee report we did not ask for."
Labour MPs on the committee voted against the holding of any inquiry but were outvoted, she notes. The inquiry report was due mid-year and the meeting with Worth arranged months ago.
King also rejects loss-of-sovereignty concerns.
A "totally new agency" with offices in New Zealand and Australia will be led by the Health Ministers of each country; a chairman and CEO will be agreed by consensus between the ministers; board members will consist of one New Zealander, one Australian and a third agreed person with commercial expertise.
King adds large natural products firms support the joint agency.
Legislation will be needed on both sides of the Tasman. The Health Select Committee report notes it should be the committee to consider the NZ law changes but King says that will be up to Parliament.
Chadwick, meanwhile, says she is confident the joint agency will be light-handed on complementary products.
She says she told the committee the work on establishing a joint agency was continuing in parallel with its inquiry and members knew the government "was moving along those lines."
Chadwick adds: "Our recommendations will be taken seriously." These include that the government commission an independent risk assessment of complementary healthcare products and a call to reduce the regulatory burden in Australia.
The NZIER report suggests the New Zealand sector would pay $8.3 million annually to a joint agency, compared with $40.9 million to fund an enhanced local regulator.
