FGC believes a mandatory standard for sunscreens would be a good idea as long as it was overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees the Cosmetics Standard.
It would a regulatory disaster for either Medsafe or the Ministry of Health to regulate sunscreens. Their role is to regulate medicines and so they tend to view all regulation through that lens. The last time they regulated grocery products such as toothpaste, mouthwashes and anti-dandruff shampoos many consumers did not get access to many new grocery variants available overseas because their over-regulation made it too expensive to launch them in New Zealand. This changed once these products were shifted from the oversight of Medsafe.
We need to remember New Zealand is a marketplace smaller than Sydney. The EPA is best suited to oversee this, and it would make sense to do this through the Cosmetics Standard.