Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill (No 3)

Last night, at about 3 minutes to 12, we started this debate, and I just want to recap on it for the benefit of members. There are two amendments in my name, and some members, I think specifically speaking for the National Party, have indicated that they would oppose those amendments—that is the indication I got. I want to point out to the National members, and to the Committee, that those amendments actually clarify the intention that the Health Committee had. If the amendments are not supported, some, I think, rather bizarre consequences will take place. I am not sure the National members fully appreciate that, and I would like to run past them again what this issue is about.

The first amendment on Supplementary Order Paper 377 in my name deals with the fact that this bill is intended to extend the application of customs and excise powers to investigations under the new importation offences involving precursor substances, such as ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. A number of other substances are also covered by the proposed new importation and exportation offences in the bill. If we do not pass the amendment on Supplementary Order Paper 377 to rectify the situation that the bill at the moment evidences, then the Customs Service will not be able to deal with illicit drug manufacturers, who have shown an ability to exploit legal loopholes and change their modus operandi. So I want the National members to seriously consider that if they do not support that amendment, they will restrict the powers of the Customs Service to deal with serious drugs. I hardly think that that is what National intends, but if it does not support the amendment it will have to stand accused of doing that.

The second amendment in my name is intended to ensure that the presumption of supply for a drug could be amended by Order in Council, and that the associated affirmative resolution procedure could be amended by Parliament. After hearing submissions, the Regulations Review Committee was concerned about the extension of this procedure not involving the full scrutiny of Parliament. The Health Committee—which did excellent work on this bill, and I thank the members for that—has recommended the following: “We recommend that the ability to amend the presumption of supply level for a controlled drug by Order in Council, as proposed in the bill, be limited to two circumstances (clause 5). The first is where the classification of the controlled drug is also being changed. We agree that changing this level in tandem with a classification or reclassification would prevent anomalies such as occurred with methamphetamine, where the drug was given a Class A classification by Order in Council, but the associated presumption of supply change required this bill.” So we had to go through two procedures and delay it.

I heard members of the National Party say last night that it would take only 12 months. We are talking about situations where young people are actually dying, for goodness sake! Coroners are urging Parliament to take action—

💬 Dr Paul Hutchison: On what?

On the misuse of drugs, on the importation of precursors, and all sorts of issues surrounding that. The solvent issue is one that I put forward and the committee has kicked it for touch, so I will have to go through another process on it. I suggest to members that the bill, as drafted, does not reflect the recommendation of the select committee. I urge members to think about this: the select committee has recommended something, the bill, as drafted, does not reflect that properly, and the commentary, when reporting back the bill to the House, states that the amendment to clause 5(2) in my name is necessary to rectify the situation. If we do not do that, we will have a problem in terms of getting changes to the default supply amount of controlled drugs, such as reducing methamphetamine from 56 grams to 5 grams, and so. We will have to go through two elongated procedures in order to achieve that.

I recommend these amendments to the Committee because I am certain they actually reflect what the select committee itself wanted. We have to change the bill in order to bring that about.

Thank you, Madam Chairperson, for the opportunity to speak on Part 1 of the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill (No 3). I think it is interesting—and somewhat rich—for the Hon Jim Anderton, at this late stage, to be asking for the National Party to make changes to its position, after he belatedly came into the debate with a poorly prepared Supplementary Order Paper. After all, the situation of party pills, and the legislation for benzylpiperazine and other such substances, have been known about for 9 or 10 years.

The firm view of all the advisers was that they are at quite a different level from the serious substances such as methamphetamine and their precursors, and other class A and class B controlled drugs. The firm view was that the less concerning substances that are getting so much publicity at present need their own well-considered, stand-alone bill. Indeed, I believe that the select committee was of the view that that would be the optimal situation, but, instead, it has reached a compromise with the Hon Jim Anderton, where this less considered situation has been tacked on to the end of the bill. Because of that, National is uncomfortable with supporting it.

Nevertheless, I, hopefully, will get the opportunity to talk about the details with the Hon Jim Anderton to see whether we can come to an arrangement. There is no doubt that National supports the substance of the original intention of this bill, which was to look at practical ways to ensure there would be better enforcement powers in New Zealand to stop the proliferation of class A and class B controlled drugs. There is absolutely no doubt that the situation has grown seriously over the last 4 or 5 years. We only have to look at substances like P, where we have had the police and the Institute of Environmental Science and Research saying that back in 1999 something like four or five clan-labs had been raided by the police. This has proliferated up into the order of 240, which reflects the enormous expansion of these illicit controlled drugs in New Zealand.

Certainly, we believe that the affirmative resolution procedure, which was reluctantly agreed upon by the select committee back in 2001 when the first amendment to the Misuse of Drugs Act came through, is a mechanism that should be used with great caution. The Regulations Review Committee has been absolutely clear about the need for this affirmative resolution procedure to be used very, very carefully. Because, after all, this gets to the heart of what democracy is about, and to the heart of what parliamentary procedures are about—where there is time to duly consider legislation, time for submitters to have their views heard by the select committees and reported back on, and then for a bill to be adequately considered in the normal democratic way through our Parliament.

It seems a great worry to me that the Hon Jim Anderton wants to bypass this procedure, which should have limited scope in a Parliament such as ours, and where the Regulations Review Committee was crystal-clear that it should not be used other than in exceptional circumstances. I do hope the Minister will indeed explain to the Parliament exactly where he stands.

First of all I want to say that I am standing in for Barbara Stewart on this matter, and to indicate that New Zealand First is pleased to support this part of the bill. Before I go on I also want to indicate our support for the Supplementary Order Papers that have been put before the House by the Hon Mr Anderton. We certainly support the arguments that he has put up to substantiate the need for Supplementary Order Paper 377.

We particularly support the proposed section 12AC, which is to be inserted into the Misuse of Drugs Act by clause 11 in Part 1 of the bill, where legislation that relates to precursor substances, such as ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, is strengthened. Both are key substances used in the manufacture of methamphetamine. We understand there is currently no offence relating to the import or export of precursors to the manufacture of methamphetamine. In fact, the legislation has not kept up with the trends of the day, so to speak. Given the adverse impact that this whole issue has, not only in this country but indeed the world, it needed to be responded to quickly, and we believe that this bill does that.

The lagging of the required legislation has meant that our law enforcement agencies, particularly the Customs Service and the police, have been hamstrung under the present law. It has also meant that the lesser charge of possession is the only charge that can be made in a whole lot of instances and, as we know, the penalties for possession are not as great as the penalties a person would face if charged with other matters related to this drug. In addition, it is difficult to make such a charge stick, where those substances are sent through the post, which has become a regular mode of transfer from one country to another. In that situation we need to ask who is actually in possession. That loophole needs to be closed and I believe that this bill will do that.

Parliament has a duty to support both the police and the Customs Service in their fight against the use of illicit drugs. This bill will certainly do that, particularly in the area of search and seizure requirements, and the amendments to that part of the Act are certainly appropriate.

New Zealand First also supports clause 14 in this part of the bill, which shifts the onus of proof for possessing a needle or syringe so that it lies with the prosecution. We all know the importance of the use of needles and syringes, and the dangers that second-hand use can cause, particularly with reference to the transmission of HIV and related diseases. So I stand on behalf of New Zealand First to say that we support this part of the bill.

Part 1 of this bill relates to substantive amendments to the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975, and National supports this part. This was the original bill that came to the Health Committee after the first reading and it deals with the issue of precursor substances for the manufacture of P methamphetamine.

When I was at medical school, we had to study some drugs that were just given to us, and ephedrine was one of the drugs pulled out for me to study. So I did an intensive study on it and found that it had very little use apart from the fact that it dried up one’s nose when one had a cold. At that time we did not realise that it would be used as a precursor for the very dangerous party drug, P, which has been responsible for a huge amount of harm in this country. That harm has come in the form of addiction, and we have seen many a TV programme on people who engage in theft to try to get the money to buy this drug and fuel their habit. Methamphetamine laboratories have been found throughout New Zealand. A large laboratory was found and destroyed in my electorate, Marlborough, 2 years ago. The people who engaged in that activity are now suffering the consequences, because P was able to be expeditiously scheduled under the Misuse of Drugs Act.

That process was set up by Wyatt Creech and progressed by the Labour Government when it came to office in 1999. It allowed us to act very rapidly to put P methamphetamine on to a schedule, which meant that those who were found to be producing that drug could then suffer the most severe consequences in respect of penalties and time in prison. Then we found that there was no restriction on importing the precursor substances. As chemists did more to protect themselves against theft of cold remedies that had ephedrine and pseudoephedrine in them, people were found at the border with suitcases and suitcases of those drugs. They were bringing them across the border in order to produce methamphetamine, and there was nothing to stop them.

There was debate within the Health Committee about whether this bill should be used to schedule something like precursor substances, but everybody agreed that we should do so because we should be helping the police and the border control authorities to try to improve the situation regarding this drug. But the extension of that form of lawmaking has been of concern to the Regulations Review Committee, which said that significant matters of policy and principle should always be dealt with in the primary legislation that comes to this House, and that process has stood us in good stead for most of the time that this Parliament has been sitting. The process means all members of Parliament look at a law and examine a bill, and the bill is subject to the select committee process, where the public have the right to make submissions. Then we bring it back to the House and, in the Committee stage, we once again see whether we have got it right and try to make good legislation that will achieve the desired effect. So the Regulations Review Committee said that that was what we should do.

We did make an exception to that with the expeditious scheduling of controlled drugs, because everyone here felt that the time it takes to get legislation through the House was too long for things like Ecstasy, Fantasy, or P, plus now the precursor substances. But when it comes to using that process for something that will need regulation—that is, benzylpiperazine, a drug that the Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs has said is not of high risk of harm—National members have concerns.

I rise to speak in the Committee stage on Part 1 of this bill, and I want to signal now that I have tabled an amendment, and will be seeking support from the Committee for it. It is to do with the Order in Council provisions and a recent concern I have about them.

It is important to state upfront that the Regulations Review Committee information to the Health Committee on the use of Order in Council provisions was very cautious. We know that that is often its approach to this sort of provision. United Future supports the use of Order in Council provisions within this bill where it allows us to respond with urgency to a situation that may develop. When a product comes on the market, or the drug scene in New Zealand changes in some circumstance, the police want the Government to be able to respond quickly and provide them with the legal framework they need to be able to act. There was some evidence that the methamphetamine situation might not have got away on us quite as quickly as it did if we had been able to respond a little more quickly to that situation, historically. We do not want to stifle that opportunity.

However, the problem that has developed with the Order in Council provisions is that, as the Act has been designed, they can be used in any direction. When one talks about recategorising a drug downwards—softening the impact of the legislation—by Order in Council, and that is not born out of a crisis of any kind but out of a policy desire, then I think the full scrutiny of Parliament, including the public submission process, should be considered.

The concern that we have, and that my amendment addresses, is in section 4(1B)(b), in clause 5. I will read what it presently states: “(b) the Order in Council increases”—and I think that was the word that some of us had perhaps misunderstood—“the amount, level, or quantity at and over which the controlled drug is presumed to be for supply.” Well, I think some of us read that as meaning it was a tightening measure, as we have with methamphetamine. What we are trying to address in this part is that the amount one can have in order to be considered as having a drug for supply was set at too high a level, and we are trying to track it backwards, so that one can have a smaller amount in one’s possession and be considered to be supplying it. That is extremely appropriate.

What does the wording here mean, when one understands what all the other substances in new schedule 5 of the principal Act are—which is what we are talking about here? Let me give members a hypothetical situation. By Order in Council we could decide to increase the amount of cannabis at which one is considered to have it for supply—I think it is something like 100 cigarettes—to such a level that proving supply would be a complete nonsense. The police would have a huge amount of trouble proving it. My concern is that we could do that by Order in Council, with paragraph (b) in existence. As far as I am concerned, and United Future is concerned, the people we most want to see the law able to ping is those who are supplying our young people. The law must be very clear as to the point at which somebody is considered to have a drug for supply, and we must be able to identify those people very, very clearly. If we are able, by Order in Council, to put the amount up, then I think a very dangerous situation could develop around that schedule.

So my amendment removes paragraph (b)—it just deletes it—and I would encourage the Committee to support it. I just remind members that the Health Committee members did agree that the Order in Council must be used only in response to a crisis that the police bring to our attention. It should never be used to implement a policy to liberalise drug law. That was not actually a danger until Supplementary Order Paper 298 was introduced, which is now Part 3 of the bill. By introducing Part 3 we have created the opportunity for drugs that are now classified as C grade to be dropped down into a new category.

It has been my experience in this Parliament that one can often get a better picture of legislation, and what is intended, if one comes to it completely fresh and has not been part of the process. I am happy to say that I have not been part of the process, so it was interesting to sit down this morning and freshly read the commentary back from the select committee, to read what the issues are, and then to make some determination about where I think I certainly would want to stand, and hopefully my party would want to stand.

What struck me very quickly with this was that although the National Party strongly supports the original Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill (No 3), the party has some very serious concerns about how far one extends the regulatory process to allow the inclusion on the list of banned substances. I can tell members of this House, having been here for 18 years, that I have had very strong views on something as an initial instinct, and then after having been through a very elongated select committee process with public submissions, and hearing from a number of officials, and not just the one official who may have been getting in one’s ear from one department, that the solution has been not quite as simple as it first looked; what finally emerges from the parliamentary process might look quite different, and in many cases one’s original instincts have been wrong.

For that reason I would very, very much not like to support a regime that looks about to be put in place here, especially with Jim Anderton’s Supplementary Order Paper, that will allow a Minister, through Order in Council, to start adding things to controlled lists and to banned substances lists, just at a whim.

I accept that there is some awful stuff out there. Nobody could want anything that P stands for to be in any way able to be sold, including all the precursors—the ingredients that are used to make P. They have all got to be, somehow, controlled to stop the dreadful process going on. But I have to say that one can soon slip off the straight and narrow with that thinking, because there are some party pills and herbal pills around, and so on. Now that sounds awful—party pills and things that make people feel better or give them a slight high. But in many cases a lot of those things do not do any more damage than a couple of glasses of wine. They sound like they are addictive, and that they are like heroin or cocaine, but in fact they are not as serious as that.

So one immediately comes to a conclusion that there is a whole continuum, from things that are almost no damage at all. Maybe they do not do much but the kids think they make them feel good. I remember at Matamata College, one of the highs we used to get was putting an Aspro into a glass of Coca Cola and drinking it. That was supposed to give one a high. Well, we all pretended we got high but I understand that it makes no difference whatsoever. At the other extreme there are things like the heroins and the cocaines that one wants to ban.

I see the Regulations Review Committee making a very, very good series of recommendations here. We must not give to a particular Minister—not just this Minister, but any other Minister—some draconian powers to start getting in and banning stuff that is probably no more insidious or no more addictive than maybe alcohol or tobacco. We should not be allowing the bureaucrats to develop a wish list at a whim and be able to bang that through some form of a regulatory process without the proper scrutiny.

I think ACT said the right words in its minority report. It said we need a proper legislative process to safeguard against some form of ad hoc hysteria. ACT’s minority report stated: “Regulations Review Committee warnings regarding amendment to primary legislation by Order in Council, subject to affirmative resolution have been largely ignored.” I think that is right when I look back at the points that the National Party included in its minority report. It stated: “We are mindful of the Regulations Review Committee’s statement that—the affirmative resolution procedure should not proliferate, the affirmative resolution procedure should only be used in limited and exceptional circumstances, any extension to the affirmative resolution procedure on the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 should only be permitted where it is: a necessary adjustment to altering the schedules of controlled drugs; essential in order to achieve the purpose of the Act in dealing with the serious risk of emerging drug threats.”

I have to tell the Minister that I am sure that when a new drug called “Q” arrives on the scene—the next one on from P, whenever it arrives—

💬 Hon Member: It is here already.

Well, if it is here already and “Q” is known to be a really serious, addictive, damaging drug like P is, I am sure this Parliament would want to almost—no, I think it would be unanimously—race to pass some legislation, but again with a proper process of consideration so that we did not suddenly ban “Q”. It is for that reason that the National Party will be voting against this.

I just want to make a short intervention, because it is good to put the facts in the way of anybody’s ignorance or prejudice. Mr Williamson says he comes to Parliament fresh to the issue. That actually that he does not know anything about it. To get up and say that, as though there is an important point he is making, is completely erroneous. The affirmative resolution procedure—[Interruption] If Mr Williamson wants to deal with the drug issue, we will deal with it. This issue is not a party political issue. It is a serious issue that affects the lives and the future of a whole pile of young New Zealanders, and here we have Mr Williamson making a few cheap political points.

I point out—[Interruption] Yes, he is still shouting them out. I point out that the affirmative resolution procedure is not a draconian procedure. It is a perfectly reasonable system for Parliament to use. Actually, it was one of National’s own members, Wyatt Creech, who started the process in the first place, and I support it. I have discussed the matter with the Clerk of the House to make sure that this process is perfectly reasonable to use. Here is the process, and how draconian is this? The Cabinet of New Zealand has to consider an issue that it wants to go to the issuing of Order in Council. The Cabinet is not an outfit of cowboys who have just turned up on the night. Cabinet Ministers were elected to Parliament, and then they were elected to Cabinet. Cabinet considers whether the procedure goes to the issuing of an Order in Council. Mr Williamson describes that as some kind of whim of the Minister, but it is not. It is the collective decision of Cabinet. The procedure goes to the issuing of an Order in Council, and the Governor-General signs it on the advice of Ministers.

Then what happens? Does the Order in Council automatically become law? No, it does not. It goes to the select committee. Did Mr Williamson know that?

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: Yes.

Oh, he did know that. But he says it is just a whim of the Minister, and the select committee does not have anything to do with it. Well, it has. The matter goes to the select committee for 28 days, and the select committee has to make a recommendation to Parliament—not to Mr Anderton, or to any other Minister, but to Parliament. Who makes the decision on the recommendation from the Order in Council? Parliament does. So to Mr Williamson, Parliament is some kind of whim of the Minister. It may be under a National Government, but it is not under this one.

Parliament decides this matter, and the process is determined by the fact that we have to be timely, democratic and relevant. How relevant is timeliness for Parliament? Last night we heard that 12 months should be all right to consider some of this stuff—that is what we heard last night. I think there may be a bit of a change in attitude on that, but 12 months was mentioned, and sometimes 2 or 3 years. It took us about as long as that to reclassify methamphetamine. Is that dangerous enough for someone? It took about 3 years to do that. Is that adequate? No, it is not. Should there be a better process than that, which makes Parliament relevant? There surely should be. Is there now? Yes. Does most of the Parliament support it? Yes. Does Mr Williamson support it? No. That does not make any difference, I do not think. I think that the rest of Parliament is right and Mr Williamson is wrong. Before Mr Williamson comes down to this House and gives us the benefit of his fresh ideas, he should inform himself about the process.

I thought the contribution from the Associate Minister of Health was most unhelpful. If anybody is attempting to score political points on this issue, it was quite clear from that last contribution that the Minister was attempting to score political points. He has to look at himself in terms of the amount of hysteria he has created over this issue by making such contributions. Mr Williamson, in undertaking a huge amount of constituency work in his electorate, sees at the front line the sort of problem that these drugs create. I think his contribution was very well-thought-out and raised some pretty important questions that the Minister did not deal seriously with in his contribution.

Many of the issues that come to Parliament are incredibly serious, but if we have a Minister who reacts to polls, public hysteria, or a lack of evidence about particular drugs, a whole bunch of things that have a normal, commonplace use will be banned. Imagine if the Government decided to do a poll on the use of hairspray or some nail polish removers! We get the impression from this Government that if a poll indicated that something was a point of huge concern to the public, a Minister would make a change and ban a whole group of products for which there was no evidence of harm. We are saying that knee-jerk reactions can be dangerous. Although the Minister in the chair might have huge confidence in his colleagues around the Cabinet table, that confidence is not shared by the rest of the country. We will have instances whereby Ministers, for the sake of a poll or for the sake of looking like they are doing something, want to ban products that have quite innocuous uses.

It has been suggested that this measure go back to the select committee. Well, we all know that the Government has the numbers on select committees. A select committee will not raise pertinent issues with, or point out issues to, a Minister who is hell-bent on changing the status of a particular substance. A select committee will not tell the Minister that he is nuts, that he should not make those changes, and that, frankly, there is no evidence that certain things should be banned. So the measure would come back to Parliament. Frankly, no one will stand in the way of a Minister who wants to react to what he sees as an issue for the public.

We need to make decisions on banning substances based on scientific evidence. So far, when it comes to party pills we have not seen any scientific evidence. We have had a whole host of anecdotal incidents where party pills have been proved to be the problem. It is usually a mixture of substances. Sure, those incidents are very concerning to any parent, but the role of Parliament and the role of any Minister is to look carefully at the science, the evidence, and the information before making a considered decision.

The contribution from United Future is interesting. I think many of that party’s amendments are more to do with a fear that cannabis will be legalised. I do not see that as being an issue.

One of the things that we are seeing is a bill to raise the legal age for the purchase of liquor, and I think people should consider how they will vote on it. Many members in this Parliament will vote for 18-year-olds to be able to buy party pills, but then will raise the age at which people can buy alcohol. There is certainly more evidence about alcohol than there is about party pills.

We cannot have knee-jerk reactions to those sorts of issues. We must act in a timely fashion, but with evidence, so that hysteria is not the basis for our making decisions about substances; otherwise, we will see a whole bunch of wacky decisions being made, driven by Ministers who want to react to public concerns about a particular issue that have no evidence to back them up. Yes, P has been an issue, but I do not think anything the Government could have done would stop it.

I just want to put a bit of reason into this debate and to point out that a step has been forgotten by the Opposition. With respect, Maurice Williamson was a wonderful former Associate Minister of Health, in terms of his attitude to the sensible regulation of drugs and management of drug policy, and I congratulate him on that. We all need to be reasonable about the way we approach this issue. What has been forgotten is the role of the Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs.

This was not the result of a decision of the Minister to put pressure on the Ministry of Health to get some evidence quickly on benzylpiperazine. The Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs, which is far more reasoned and scientific in its decision on any drug, illicit or licit, raised concerns to the Minister on this matter. Yes, we on the Health Committee—and members have forgotten this— also put a justice official on the Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs. We received evidence from the Ministry of Health about its concerns on benzylpiperazine, and it also raised concerns about the use of benzylpiperazine in conjunction with other drugs. The ministry did categorise it as being of “low risk” in the recommendation. It was not the Minister’s recommendation that benzylpiperazine, a low-risk substance, needed to be monitored very, very closely—not politicians to monitor it, heaven forbid—but a recommendation of the Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs, which is established in statute. The recommendation was not in response to receiving anecdotal evidence, as the Opposition members said. Yes, there has been a lot of hysteria about benzylpiperazine, but we received the ministry’s report. It will be watching this drug very closely, and we urged that in our report back to the House.

I want to put on the record here that this is not a case of the Minister or of Cabinet going around and finding another whacky idea that they think will get a few more votes. This is an issue that we should all take terribly seriously, and we should listen to the advice and the scientific evidence we received. Our problem here is what we should do about licit and illicit drugs, when we have a drug schedule and a statutory framework that looks only at illicit substances. The select committee made a very wise decision to deal with a substance that we were all very concerned about, rather than to tell officials to go away, draft more policy, consult, and come back to us with a restricted substances bill. We were not prepared to take the time for that process.

I would like to take advantage in speaking to this bill. It is curious to me that we have such reticence about moving ahead with the drugs that this bill deals with—the party pills and all the rest of it. It took 7 years—7 long years—before anybody moved on methamphetamine. We let the cat out of the bag, and, unfortunately, the police are now having to go backwards to try to deal with methamphetamine. What I do not want to see is this bill put aside, not dealt with here, and party pills and all the rest of it allowed to go on unregulated and unhindered.

The fact of the matter is that we may be able to assert that these party pills on their own may not cause the kinds of damaging effects that people might ascribe to them—and I would disagree with that statement, too—but the fact is that our young kids are using those pills in combination with alcohol and other drugs. We cannot isolate one aspect of it and look at just that. We have to look at the totality of the experience that young kids are putting themselves through, which endangers themselves and others, and, of course, it is hugely worrying to parents as a result.

Members should be going to the police and speaking to them. They should see what the results of these drugs are. They will find a completely different picture from the one we find as we sit in the comfort zone of our own offices. Down on the street, where these drugs are actually being abused in combination with other drugs, it is a totally different story. Very close to my office in Christchurch there is one of these party pill shops. I see, night after night, young kids standing around there, snorting, inhaling, and taking pills. There is always a litter of syringes and nose-cans. It is a combinational thing, and it has to be attacked that way. It is crazy to imagine that we can simply turn a blind eye to this problem.

This legislation is much needed. In the absence of anything else, we need this in order to protect our kids from themselves. Kids will experiment, but the problem is that they put themselves and everybody else at risk. This bill is one answer in terms of dealing with that. We can sit back and wait for all the research we want, but in the meantime real damage is done to real people out there, and it is time we acted proactively to deal with the scourge of party pills and other related drugs. The reality is that people taking these drugs are doing it in a way not considered in this House. That is a fact. We can sit here and debate until we are blue in the face about what should or should not be done—we could take more time, do more research, and all the rest of it—but it is the parents out there who look after their kids who are in trouble. Some kids come home worse for wear or have to be taken to hospital, and some die. That is the fact of it.

If people want to be reticent about passing this legislation and hold back and wait for more and more evidence, all I can say is that the evidence is already in our hospitals.

💬 Dr Lynda Scott: It’s Part 1 we are debating, not Part 2 or 3.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Could I just say to members that a lot of members have strayed across the paths, and I almost gave up trying to bring them back.

That is exactly right. It is quite a wide-ranging debate.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Yes. Please continue, Mr Alexander.

💬 Darren Hughes: It’s true that National’s position is very unclear, though.

It is very unclear. My understanding is that National members will end up actually supporting this bill. That strikes me as being strange, because they want it both ways. On the one hand they want to bag the Hon Jim Anderton for putting this legislation forward, but on the other hand they want to support it. They want a bob each way. That is actually quite disingenuous because it says they want to bag the intention of the bill but they do not want the public to go against them and ask why they have not helped.

The fact of the matter is that there is a huge public out there that wants something done. All we have to do is pick up the newspapers and read the letters that come in. They talk of doing something about the shops that sell such stuff; and it is not just what they sell—it is the activities that are taking place outside these places of purchase.

I am quite pleased to take part in this debate. I was going to confine my comments strictly to Part 1, but I feel the need to rebut some of the comments made by previous speakers, so I apologise if I stray a little from Part 1. The first thing I want to address is the comment made by Mr Williamson, who talked about the provision of the affirmative resolution procedure for classifying drugs under the new schedule. I think the member misunderstands the process. He seems to think that it is a simple Order in Council that will be done by ministerial whim. It is the same mistake that Judy Turner made, which led to her particularly distasteful amendment previously.

The fact is that this is not a simple amendment by way of ministerial whim. It is actually an affirmative resolution procedure. It is a new procedure—maybe the member is unaware of it—and it requires a parliamentary process. It requires the matter to go to the select committee for 28 days, and for it to be debated and voted on in this House. I accept that there are problems. I think there should be a requirement to consult the public, because there is no requirement at the moment for either the Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs or the select committee to consult the public. The other thing that I think is a problem with the process is that there is no ability for either the select committee or the House to amend the notice of motion. I think that that is a serious problem, and I think it is something that the Standing Orders need to address. If a matter comes before the House, the majority of members may agree in general with the proposal but think it is not quite right, and think a particular drug should be classified as a B2 instead of a B1, or as a D2 instead of a D1, if we get to those kinds of schedules. But the House has no ability to make those kinds of changes, and I think that is something that needs to be addressed.

I would like to address the amendment put forward by Judy Turner. I thought it was quite extraordinary that she got up in the Chamber, told us she went through the Health Committee’s process on the bill, which was pretty long—we went through the bill in a great deal of detail—and then told us she did not understand the amendment the committee has recommended. She seemed to think it was the opposite of what it was. That is not the kind of admission I would make to the Committee if I had made such a mistake, but that is up to the member—she can tell us those things if she likes. And, of course, it is not the first time that Judy Turner has not understood the way the legislation works, but that is fine.

Judy Turner expressed concern about the use of the affirmative resolution procedure to amend the presumption of supply levels. I was actually the member who raised that issue in the committee. The Regulations Review Committee was quite clear on the matter. It stated that the affirmative resolution procedure should not be used to amend the presumption of supply unless it is in association with the classification of a drug. It stated the procedure should be restricted to those circumstances only. I was the one who reminded the committee that we should listen to that advice. The committee, in the end, made the decision to put in a provision that allowed the presumption of supply to be amended by affirmative resolution, apart from classification, in one circumstance: where the amendment was to put the presumption of supply level up. The reason is that officials told us we had a serious situation whereby the presumption of supply level was set too low. People were being convicted on supply charges, when actually the drug was just for personal use. That is significant, because if the drug is a class A drug, the maximum penalty for supply is life imprisonment. It is a very serious thing; the maximum penalty is life imprisonment. The officials said that they needed the ability, if there is clear evidence that the supply level is set too low, to amend it pretty quickly, and that is what the committee agreed to do.

People say that the supply level is not a problem, because if a drug is not for supply that can be proved in court. One of the difficulties with a presumption of supply is that there is a reverse onus. It is a basic undermining of the fundamental principles of justice—of being deemed to be innocent until proven to be guilty—because if a person has a certain amount of a controlled drug and it is over the presumption of supply level, then that person has to prove it was for personal use. The prosecution has to provide no evidence to back up the idea that the drug is for supply, except simply to state the amount. The defendant has to prove it is for personal use, and I just do not understand how he or she does that. How does a person go to a court and prove that the drug he or she has is for personal use? That seems to me to be a very difficult thing to prove. I think that one of the fundamental issues with regard to the Misuse of Drugs Act as a whole is that reverse-onus issue.

The committee received some advice about the presumption of supply issue. At first it was advised that the presumption of supply was to an evidential level of proof, not a legal one, which was satisfactory, but the correction to that advice was that it was actually to a legal level. The difference is that an evidential burden of proof means that the assumption is that the drug is for supply, but if a person can show evidence that it is not, then the prosecution has to prove it is.

I move, That the question be now put.

I think it is of huge concern to Parliament and, hopefully, to the public of New Zealand when we hear the leader of the Progressive Party, the Hon Jim Anderton, making light of the affirmative resolution procedure. He said that it was not a draconian procedure.

💬 Hon Jim Anderton: That’s right.

Well, he is absolutely wrong. He should remember, and be reminded of, exactly what the Regulations Review Committee said about the affirmative resolution procedure. It said that the amendment of primary legislation by an Order in Council is commonly referred to as a “Henry VIII” clause, and is regarded as undesirable because it allows the executive the power to override Parliament. That is exactly what the Progressive Party, under the Hon Jim Anderton, would love to do.

He then said that Wyatt Creech, some years ago, had no problem bringing it in. Well, it was brought in with very careful consideration, because of the extreme concern about the proliferation of controlled drugs in New Zealand, and the very, very important need to make sure that law enforcement agencies had some methods to be able to reduce this proliferation. But here we have the leader of the so-called Progressive Party—

💬 Dr Lynda Scott: The “Jim Anderton Party”.

Yes, that is what it should be called. But the very important principle is that the leader of the so-called Progressive Party said that this affirmative resolution procedure is not draconian. It is a very, very serious procedure.

The other point the Regulations Review Committee made was this: “In our view, the classification of restricted substances is a matter of significant policy that should be dealt with by primary legislation. If a matter needs to be dealt with urgently, there are ways of dealing with primary legislation in an expeditious manner.” That is very, very important to remember. The other point—

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: The Regulations Review Committee said that?

Yes, the Regulations Review Committee said that.

💬 Hon Member: Are you going to repeat it?

I will say it again, if the member likes, because it is absolutely the nub of the matter: if, indeed, a matter “needs to be dealt with urgently, there are ways of dealing with primary legislation in an expeditious manner.”

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: That was my point.

That is exactly what the Hon Maurice Williamson was saying, and it is very, very important that Parliament is reminded of it.

The other practical point that was brought up by the Regulations Review Committee was that the Health Committee could use up all its time on this particular matter. That is of great worry, because surely the Health Committee should be spending its time on much more important matters, like the proliferation of spending—waste—that has occurred under the Labour regime over the last 5 years.

But we also had Steve Chadwick, the member for Rotorua and chairperson of the Health Committee, saying that, no, this matter of affirmative resolution is actually not all that important, because the Government is putting someone from the Ministry of Justice on the Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs. That is great, but all the people that one puts on the Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs do not make any difference in terms of the huge importance of the normal parliamentary process being carried out, when the leader of the Progressive Party, the Hon Jim Anderton, says that it does not matter, that there is a problem with party pills down in Christchurch, that he did not hear about it over the last 10 years but has finally woken up to it, so he will defy the normal, important democratic process and have a knee-jerk reaction to it.

I think it is very, very important that the people of New Zealand realise the lengths that Jim Anderton and his party will go to in order to defy the normal democratic processes.

I move, That the question be now put.