Parties band against Government

By RUTH BERRY political reporter

The Government faces an uphill battle to get legislation passed setting up a transtasman regulatory agency after all other political parties yesterday united to oppose a key part of the plan.

But Health Minister Annette King played down the opposition as political posturing and said there was "a lot of water to go under the bridge" before the legislation was drawn up.

Ms King and Australian Parliamentary Secretary for Health Trish Worth yesterday signed a treaty to establish a joint agency to regulate therapeutic products.

On the eve of the signing, Parliament's health select committee released a report saying dietary supplements and alternative medicines - together known as complementary medicines - should be excluded from the proposed regime.

The regime would cover those products as well as prescription and over-the-counter medicines and medical devices.

The committee's findings were unanimous and MPs from all non-Government political parties sitting on it held a press conference yesterday accusing Ms King of abusing the democratic process by announcing she would sign the treaty just days before the report was released.

They said the committee's and submitters' time had been wasted, as well as thousands of dollars of taxpayer money.

Green MP Sue Kedgley said officials appearing before the committee had several times advised that no final decisions on the regime had been made.

In an unusual display of unity, all the parties said they would not "at this stage" support the parts of the legislation enabling the agency to regulate complementary medicines.

The minority Government of Labour and the Progressive Coalition has only 54 votes and requires the support of another party to get any law passed.

The committee recommended strengthening the domestic regulation over complementary medicines instead and the Opposition MPs said the Government would have to adopt its findings before they would support it.

Ms King said that the proposal had been worked on since 1996 and would provide both countries with a world-class scheme that would create a more cost-effective and rigorous regime than stand-alone agencies.

The plan had been well signalled and Opposition parties were playing "dishonest" politics by suggesting they were unaware of it.

"People knew all along what we intended to do."

Asked if the Government would have problems getting enabling legislation passed, Ms King said: "There's a lot of water to go under the bridge."

The report in fact assumed there would be a joint regulator and made 11 key recommendations around its establishment, she said.

"Account has been taken of those factors in terms of what we will be doing with the joint regulator."

Asked if the matter could become a confidence issue for the Government, she said: "We haven't reached that point."

A lot of work had been put into the plan by several political parties, including National, who first worked on the issue, and Ms King doubted they would want to risk the transtasman relationship.

Supplements

A 1997 survey found that:

* Three quarters of housholds use some sort of dietary supplement.

* Over half of those surveyed want at least one third of the health budget being allocated for natural therapies.

* Nine in ten people would be unhappy if the Government limited their access to natural health products.

* Eight in ten people would be unhappy if the Government banned the practice of natural health therapies or natural health products.

* Nine in ten people were unhappy about things like vitamins, minerals and herbs only being available on a doctor's prescription.

* Eight in ten people are in favour of qualified natural health practitioners having the legal right to prescribe natural medicines.

* Eight in ten people felt happy about qualified health practitioners being included in the total health care system.