Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 19/7/23

New law strikes at snake oil peddling, but rongoā healers will be spared because regulators can’t define what they do

The Government claims to be delivering certainty to displaced homeowners affected by the recent North Island extreme weather events, providing an interim payment to support them when their insurance payments for temporary accommodation run out.

But certainty for taxpayers is missing from the press statement from the Minister for Social Development and Employment, Carmel Sepuloni. It contains not one figure with a dollar sign. which means the sum being budgeted by the government for this initiative is a mystery.

We are told only that the interim payment will be available from 4 September, made weekly and directly to homeowners, and set at 100 per cent of the average rent declared by Accommodation Supplement recipients in the recipients’ region.

Sepuloni’s announcement had been posted on the government’s official website (when we checked early this afternoon) along with news that the Therapeutic Products Bill has been enacted. This was hailed by Health Minister Ayesha Verrall as “the most significant change to the regulation of medicines, medical devices and natural health products in nearly 40 years”.

This one is fascinating. Some providers of healing services are largely being exempted from the regulations (guess what their ethnicity might be?) because they employ “traditional” practices and you have to be a Māori to know what they are doing.

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The Therapeutic Products Bill provides New Zealanders with the assurances they deserve about the safety and quality of therapeutic products, Ayesha Verrall crowed.

But perhaps not if those New Zealanders opt to be healed, treated or whatever by practitioners of traditional Māori medicine.

The Bill includes an exemption scheme for small-scale natural health product manufacturers and removes obligations which might otherwise have applied to rongoā [traditional Māori medicine] practitioners, services and activities.

“Proposed changes to the Bill will ensure whānau can continue to use, create, and manage rongoā as they have for generations.”

The purpose of the Bill is to protect, promote and improve the health of all New Zealanders by providing for the:

1. Acceptable safety, quality and efficacy or performance of medicines, medical devices and active pharmaceutical ingredients across their life cycle; and
2. Acceptable safety and quality of natural health products across their life cycle and the substantiation of health benefit claims.

The Bill will replace the Medicines Act (1981) and the Dietary Supplements Regulations 1985.

The press statement notes that the Medicines Act currently provides insufficient coverage of the many products used in modern healthcare delivery and the Dietary Supplements Regulations are not fit for purpose, rejected as inflexible and out of date.

But the coverage provided by the new legislation to address those insufficiencies does not extend to rongoā, the traditional Māori healing system which treats ailments in a holistic manner with:

• spiritual healing
• the power of karakia
• the mana of the tohunga (expert)
• the use of herbs.

Associate Health Minister Peeni Henare – during the third-reading speech – explained why rongoā could not be subjected to rules that apply to other medicines and treatments.

In a nutshell, you have to be Māori to be able to define rongoā:

“ Māori have always determined what rongoā means, how it’s practised, and who can practise it. I’m proud to say that today, in supporting this bill, that still remains the same.”

The new legislation will not protect the patients of rongoā healers; rather, it aims to protect the practice of rongoā from those who may wish to exploit it, or

“…those who want to make a quick buck of ancient mātauranga Māori. They might want to ship it in bulk overseas, or even denigrate its value, or leverage off years of mātauranga Māori in the development of a particular product.

“The way this bill has been carefully shaped through its iterations, including by listening to the clear expectations of our people, means what has always happened with rongoā will continue to keep happening. Our romiromi will continue to keep rolling. Our mirimiri will keep soothing. Our taonga puoro will keep singing. Our mamaku who will keep healing and our karakia will keep soaring.”

To simply try and define rongoā as a pill was wrong, Henare argued.

And the bill sets out that rongoā and mātauranga remain in the hands of Māori.

“Its definition, descriptions, and explanations stay with our mātanga and with our tohunga. And its ongoing protection and recognition as a taonga is safeguarded in Te Tiriti o Waitangi in the Crown’s upholding of that responsibility.

“Ultimately, though, rangatiratanga remains with tangata whenua.”

Henare explained that rongoā services, supply, and activities would continue as they had done for generations.

But he recognised there was a role for something he characterised as “Western” science: during the promotion of COVID vaccines around the country, he recalled, rongoā Māori had worked hand in hand with Western science, where Māori could receive a vaccination and then go into a wharenui, have karakia, have romiromi, and “be able to reset themselves to get on with their lives”.

Māori would maintain tino rangatiratanga over determining what rongoā means to them and defining who can be a rongoā practitioner, Henare said.

In most cases rongoā would be excluded from the new regulatory system and not regulated in the same way that other natural health products will be. Healers and those who support them could carry out their services and activities on marae and the many places that are important to Māori.

The regulator can’t make rules about how rongoā activities are carried out or set training and competency requirements for rongoā practitioners.

“We know that rongoā is already appropriately regulated by Māori communities. The bill respects that and acknowledges Māori as kaitiaki of rongoā.”

But the exemption from regulation is not total.

“While we go through what this all means for our communities and how little will change, it is also important to clarify that there are one or two circumstances where rongoā will be regulated.”

For example, when rongoā is being sold for commercial wholesale activity, such as supplying rongoā products in bulk to a chain of pharmacies or grocery stores, either here or overseas. In those cases, rongoā products would be regulated as natural health products.

Oh – and a new layer of bureaucracy will be introduced to acknowledge that the Government doesn’t have all the expertise to protect rongoā in a way that upholds mātauranga Māori and upholds The Treaty of Waitangi.

A committee will be established to take on the protection role and guide the implementation of the bill alongside Māori. It will be made up of rongoā experts and Māori health leaders with experience in mātauranga in rongoā Māori.

The rongoā Māori advisory committee won’t screen or set qualifications or professional standards for rongoā practitioners,

“… but if questions come up around a particular activity that claims to be rongoā and is not regulated but perhaps should be, the committee will give its expert advice to the new regulator. The regulator would then need to take the committee’s advice into account before making the right decision.”

More work needs to be done, Henare said.

He looked forward to continuing to work with Māori in implementing the legislation.

Point of Order is a blog focused on politics and the economy run by veteran newspaper reporters Bob Edlin and Ian Templeton