Psychoactive Substances Bill

Just to clarify, we are debating Part 1, beginning at clause 3—is that correct?

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Yes, Part 1.

Right—very good. I am very pleased to be able to take a call on Part 1, the preliminary provisions. Let members not be led into any false sense of what the preliminary provisions part of the bill might mean. This is a substantive section of the bill. Each part of this bill, actually, is substantive in its own right, and I think is worthy of considerable debate. I have got no doubt that there will be lengthy debate on aspects of Part 1.

Part 1 covers the purpose, the principles, the interpretation, the meaning of psychoactive substance, which was something that we considered at length, the establishment of the Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority and the Psychoactive Substances Expert Advisory Committee, and indeed clause 11A, which I have no doubt will be the subject of considerable attention, which is the duty of the advisory committee relating to the use of animals when evaluating a psychoactive product for approval.

I would like to start at the beginning of the bill—a very good place to start—and that is with the purpose. With what appears to be a small amendment, I think the Health Committee has made a significant change to the purpose of this bill. The purpose now reads that “The purpose of this Act is to regulate the availability of psychoactive substances in New Zealand”—which is essentially what it originally said, and we have added the words—“to protect the health of, and minimise harm to, individuals who use psychoactive substances.”

This was the subject of many of the submissions that we heard at the select committee. I know that many members spoke in the first reading about the need to have this concept that this bill is about reducing harm right there at the beginning of the bill, in the purpose, because this is about a lot more than just regulating these substances. If we wanted just to regulate them we could have perhaps proposed to ban them. We could have come up with all sorts of very simple things. But really what this is about is reducing the harm caused by drugs. It has been the Government’s policy, and it has been the policy of various Governments for a long time, to take a harm-reduction approach to our drug regulations and the way that we approach drug use, both in the legal framework and in the health and treatment response to drug use. However, it has been missing from the legislation relating to drug regulation.

I think it is a really important step that this new piece of legislation that relates to drug regulation includes this in the purpose; that the purpose of the legislation is in fact to reduce harm. I think a lot of people will probably hear this time and time again, that this bill is a good step forward in terms of drug regulation, and that it may prove to be a good template for how we might approach the regulation of other substances as well. This concept of harm reduction actually appearing in our legislation I think is one of the most important steps forward. It was disappointing, actually, that it was not in the original bill, but it was clear from the outset that all members of the Health Committee thought that including that sentence about harm reduction in the purpose was important for us to do.

One of the issues that we considered at length was the definition of a psychoactive substance. We had a range of different views at the select committee about whether or not there should be a definition of psychoactive substance, and how we might define psychoactive substance. I know this was something that tested the officials as to exactly how we would define a psychoactive substance. I think what the select committee has done is exactly the right thing, in terms of leaving the definition of a psychoactive substance sufficiently broad. The bill now says that “In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires, psychoactive substance means a substance, mixture, preparation, article, device, or thing that is capable of inducing a psychoactive effect (by any means) in an individual who uses the psychoactive substance.”

That definition, that meaning, of psychoactive substance is deliberately broad in order to capture all potential new substances, or even devices, that may have a psychoactive effect. This is a response to exactly the problem that this legislation is trying to deal with, and that is the fact that the Misuse of Drugs Act, which was perfectly adequate in 1975 but is utterly inadequate in the 21st century, was very narrow in its definition of exactly what substances fell under the Misuse of Drugs Act. Therefore, as time went on and the technology became available to develop the novel substances that this bill covers, we constantly found ourselves in Parliament trying to add to the Misuse of Drugs Act to regulate all the new substances as they arrived. It was just impossible to keep up. So this meaning of “psychoactive substance” is deliberately broad, to capture all of those new substances as they potentially come on to the market.

I have been asked by a number of people whether people will be able to get around this bill by simply labelling a substance that could potentially be used or could be ingested by a person for psychoactive effect as something else, like incense or bath salts, or by labelling it as having some other purpose. The intention of this clause is to overcome that problem where there is a deliberately misleading name given to a substance that tries to distract from the point that it can be used as a psychoactive substance. It does not matter what people call something—this clause is designed to capture it. So anybody out there who thinks they can be a bit cute and try to call something by another name, and everybody knows it can be used as a psychoactive substance and can be ingested by a human being as a drug for a psychoactive effect—this clause will capture it. It does not matter what they call it. The hope from Parliament is that that kind of workaround will not be possible, given the broad nature of that clause.

Probably one of the most vexed questions that will no doubt get some considerable debate today is exactly what information the expert advisory committee can receive from clinical trials, and the nature of clinical trials that can be conducted. This all hangs off the issue of animal testing. I am quite sure that members from around the Chamber will address this issue at length, but I want to make a really important point that I want New Zealanders to understand. The reason we have got ourselves into this position—where we are debating the amendment from the Greens—is the very, very poor process from the Government and the National Party. They have done two things that have absolutely overridden democracy, in the consideration of this bill. The first was to delay the introduction of the bill. Actually, the introduction of the bill was delayed, but then once it was introduced it remained languishing on the Table and did not receive its first reading debate for months after it was initially introduced. That goes to show the New Zealand public just what a low priority the sorting out of the regulation of legal highs has been to this Government. Because the Government wasted time and dithered, it insisted that the Health Committee had a shortened period of time to consider this bill.

Then when we got the numerous submissions on animal testing, the National members voted not to hear those submissions on animal testing. That was not a matter of scope, which is what Paul Hutchison is going to try to tell the Committee. That was not a matter of scope; that was a decision for the National members. The Labour, Green, and New Zealand First Party members voted in favour of hearing those submissions. The National members voted against it and blocked it. We could not hear all sides of the debate, and that limited our ability to consider this issue properly. The second thing that the National members did in order to block this was to limit that debate. The first thing they did was not introduce the bill in time. The second thing they did was stop us from hearing those submissions.

I was really pleased, actually, when it became clear that National would not support any changes on animal testing, that the Labour Party members at the committee managed to actually get National members to reach a compromised position. It is not the position that we would like to have. It is not the position that we support; we support the Green Party amendment that would rule out animal testing. But in order to get National to move at all, we worked with National members at the select committee. The clause that now sits in the bill that says animal testing can be used only in the event that no other suitable forms of testing are available is a long way—

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on Part 1 of this Psychoactive Substances Bill. I think that all members of all parties agree on the main purpose of this bill, which is, indeed, to regulate the availability of psychoactive substances in order to protect the health of, and minimise harm to, those who use them. That is the main point about this bill, and it is a great pity to hear the porkies that I do hear from none other than Iain Lees-Galloway, the drugs spokesperson for the Labour side, when it comes to other issues.

It was, indeed, the Health Committee that listened to the submitters and added the amendments in order to protect the health of the public and to minimise harm. They were not there in the original bill. After all, there are tens of thousands of young people and not-so-young people who use these substances. For the young people, their brains are growing and they are highly sensitive to these substances. The requirement of this bill for manufacturers and importers is, indeed, now to demonstrate minimal risk. This is novel and it is world leading, but it requires the same rigour in testing as any other medicine to demonstrate minimal risk. I think it does, indeed, behove the Labour Party, a mainstream party, to recognise that that rigour of testing is required.

No doubt the controversy and mischief of this bill does revolve around clause 11A, which refers to the duty of the expert advisory committee relating to the use of animals when evaluating these substances. In essence, no one wants to have animal testing if it can be avoided, and the select committee did go to extensive lengths to arrive at an amendment that would not rely on animal testing if suitable alternatives exist. I think the members of the select committee worked hard at this. They worked consensually on this and they all voted for that amendment—they all voted for that amendment.

The expert advisory committee recognised that in order to demonstrate that substances are of minimal risk, in order to protect health and minimise harm, it is likely that some animal testing is necessary, although the amendment is worded so that it would be minimised and not done if at all possible. The expert advisory committee’s advice is backed up by best-practice mainstream scientific evidence from around the world. It is extraordinary that the Greens choose to follow best-practice scientific evidence when it suits them, as in climate change, but that when it comes to protecting the health of human beings, and particularly young adults and sometimes children, they say: “Oh, no, in Europe there’s no animal testing for cosmetics.”. But cosmetics clearly are not ingested; these substances are ingested. So we do have a difficulty in the credibility of the Greens. The argument is contrary to the aims of the bill, which are to protect the health of, and minimise harm to, the user, let alone the mechanism with which the bill has its intent, and that is about completely demonstrating minimal risk.

Sadly, the Labour Party’s stand and vote on animal testing goes to the very heart of why the Labour Party is not fit to govern and why the Labour Party is in such a shambles at present. The Labour caucus has literally rolled the health team and its health spokesperson, the Hon Annette King. It has literally made Iain Lees-Galloway feel extremely uncomfortable—or else he is not showing it in the House—as well as Louisa Wall. When it comes to the Labour leader, Mr Shearer, he should have supported his health team—we are talking about clause 11A. He should have supported science, because he is Labour’s science spokesperson. So what has happened? Almost certainly, the Mallard faction of the caucus has taken over, and I do not know what has happened to Mr Mallard recently. I do not think he has suddenly become soft and cuddly. They have either rolled David Shearer, or David Shearer is basically being utterly irresponsible and caving in to fringe science. David Shearer, as the Opposition spokesperson on science and the leader of the Labour Party, is clearly not demonstrating the responsibility he should for a mainstream party. I am very sad that the Hon Annette King, who voted with her health team to support this amendment, is now also caving in after the pressure of their dysfunctional caucus.

I think that it is excellent that the National Government has gone to such lengths to bring out a scientifically based, pertinent, and appropriate amendment dealing with this controversial area.

I was looking forward to this debate because I had thought that, apart from the Psychoactive Substances Bill being a very interesting and different bill for us to have handled, and to handle in such a short time, in the Health Committee, there has been across this bill very good cooperation. But Dr Hutchison wishes to take it to a lower level, so if that is what he wishes to do, then let us have a look at how long we waited for a bill that we are now told is so important. Perhaps I would like to just tell Dr Hutchison that it was in 2007 that the Government invited the Law Commission to review the Misuse of Drugs—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: What were you doing for 7 years?

For the benefit of the Minister who is chirping over there, I say that in 2007, a year before the election, we asked the Law Commission to undertake a review of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 and respond to the concerns about the new psychoactive substances.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Seven years of doing nothing.

So the Law Commission put out its first-principles review with a mandate to make proposals for a new legislative regime, Dr Smith, in February 2010. The National Government has had this since 2010, so when it finally responded to it, it was 2011.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Nine years, did nothing.

There were not substances like this 9 years ago, Dr Smith, so get up and get with the programme. In 2007 the Law Commission did a proper review, in 2010 it reported, in 2011 the National Government responded, in 2013 we finally got a piece of legislation, and now we are told that it is really urgent. Well, it has been urgent for 2 or 3 years, Dr Smith, and we know it is urgent from the impact it has had on mental health and the impact it has had on violence in society. It was something that we needed.

So I am disappointed in Dr Hutchison’s comments, because we did work hard on this bill in a very short time frame, and quite significant changes to improve the bill have been made. I suppose the one real sticking point was around animal testing, and I will get to that in a moment. But I think we struck it right when we looked at what the purpose of this bill is all about, and that is “to protect the health of, and minimise harm to, individuals who use psychoactive substances.” That principle and that purpose should run right through the decisions that we make within this bill. There are some conflicts, I have to say, and we will no doubt get on to those a little later, but I think that we got the purpose absolutely right.

Then we need to look at what the bill is actually going to do. We know that it is going to ensure that before people use them, psychoactive substances will have gone through a process—a process to ensure, as much as possible, that they are of low risk. The evidence goes on showing they are low risk before somebody consumes them and uses them, which is a quite different approach from what we have now, where they use them, we have problems, and then we try to fix the problem up.

I think one of the important clauses in this part of this bill, however, is around requiring the Ministry of Health to conduct a review of the policy and the operation, and we have changed it to be no later than 5 years. It was originally to be after 5 years, but we changed it to no later than 5 years after the commencement of this Act. I think that is a very sensible thing for us to be doing, because we are not altogether sure that everything in this bill is right and that it is going to work. It is really, at this stage, suck and see, because it is so new in terms of legislation. I totally support the idea that we would review, we would look at how it worked, and we would see what changes we would make to make it the best possible legislation that we could.

Another area in this bill that I think is important to mention in this part is also around the setting up of the Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority—and that regulatory authority is actually the Director-General of Health—and the Psychoactive Substances Expert Advisory Committee. This expert advisory committee can be made up of up to six members, and this committee is going to have the functions of evaluating, with regard to the results of pre-clinical and clinical trials, the psychoactive products to assess whether they should be approved for individual use, to advise the authority about whether a psychoactive product should or should not be approved, and to increase public awareness of the advisory committee’s work in relation to the psychoactive substances by releasing reports and so on.

I think those are two very good parts of this bill, which put the braces and belts around what we are trying to achieve. So we have got the authority and we also have the expert advisory committee.

I do want to move on now to the issue of animal testing. This probably was the most testing part of this bill. There were very strong views about animal testing. I think it was a shame that the submissions on this were not able to be heard. That is something that has already been raised by Iain Lees-Galloway, and I know that Kevin Hague felt very strongly about it. It was ruled by the chair that the submissions on animal testing were not within the scope of the bill. In fact, we did find out later from the Clerk of the House that they could have been in the scope of the bill. [Interruption] Had the chair—yes—decided so to rule, they could have been within the scope of the bill.

What I believe happened was not necessarily the chairman’s choice. I would say the chairman had Hobson’s choice. I believe the directive not to hear the submission on animal testing was not one made by him, but one where he was given a directive that there would not be submissions heard on this, and that came from the top. It came from, not the new Associate Minister of Health—I believe the new Minister came in after that and tried to find a resolution around the animal testing—but from the former Associate Minister and from Cabinet. They did not want to hear submissions on animal testing. I do not know why. It would not have mattered. In fact, it would have enhanced our decision making, and we would not have had this wrangling about animal testing. It would have given us the opportunity to have heard also those who supported animal testing and the scientific reasons that they put forward.

What we did was we looked at how we could change the bill to put as much protection around animals as possible, and it is true that at the select committee all members said that this was a good compromise. We now have Supplementary Order Paper 260 from the Greens that bans it, and the Labour Party will vote with the Greens on the Supplementary Order Paper. Then, if it is not passed, we will support the amendment that the Associate Minister finally put forward at the last moment.

We believe that there could have been a much, much better process around this. It is not like the chairman to have run a process like this because, actually, he is a pretty good chair, I have to say—one of the better ones in the National Government. But in this area he did make a mistake. He made a mistake, or he was told that he should not hear those submissions.

So for this part, there are some very good things in it. We have made some significant changes to this part of the bill to improve it, and I think, with the exception of the animal testing, this part is in better shape than it was when it came into the House.

I thought I would take a brief call at this stage, really only to recognise the work of the Health Committee. Before I became the Minister with responsibility for this bill, the Psychoactive Substances Bill, I had the opportunity, the honour, to sit through one small part of a committee meeting when this issue was being discussed. I can tell you that once I became a Minister, I was not hopeful that we would reach resolution earlier because, you see, it was evident to me, and it was obvious at all stages in the committee, that there was a lot of passion, a lot of determination, and a lot of thought being put into different positions. But what also was apparent was that all members were looking to do what is best for New Zealanders.

So I want to recognise that all parties in the House are putting aside some of the issues that are more challenging for us, and we will be able to talk about those a little bit more later in the stage. Certainly, we recognise that when it comes to the safety of New Zealanders, and when it comes to having good rules around these products, we all know from our interactions with our constituents, with parents, and through reading newspapers and reports from doctors and nurses, that these products are causing significant harm all over this country, and we have been able to come together and, I think, do what is right.

Indeed, the legislation’s passing in this House will be a world first. I do know there are many countries of the world that have been grappling with the challenges of psychoactive substances and so-called legal highs for as long as, if not longer than, we have been grappling with them in New Zealand. Some have tried to ban them outright, which we looked at doing a year or two ago. We know that those chemists sitting in laboratories around the world move faster than we are able to make the changes to take these harmful products out of circulation. Much of the world now is looking at us in New Zealand and in this House for leadership, and I would guarantee that all over the world—certainly it is the case in New Zealand—there are mums and dads hoping that we will do our job properly, and we will get this into law as quickly as we can so that no more New Zealanders are harmed by these products.

Again, I want to recognise the work that has been done. Indeed, the Minister who was last responsible for the portfolio, Peter Dunne, did a great amount of work and gave this priority. I come at the very late stages of this legislation to finish the job that was started by Mr Dunne, whom I have great respect for and who has made it easier for this House to come to this position.

I too want to recognise the chairman of the committee, who had a very difficult job because there was great passion, not only amongst members of Parliament but also amongst submitters, and we are all receiving emails at the moment. I am yet to have an email from anybody who I view as being credible that says we should do nothing at all, so what we are now debating is the finer points of how we make this fair and reasonable, and give certainty to New Zealanders and greater protection to young New Zealanders. So I would like to recognise Paul Hutchison as the chair and also thank him for this work.

I have a number of Supplementary Order Papers that we are bringing forward, and I do accept that they are later in the stage than the Committee might otherwise want. In part, that is because I am a Minister who has taken responsibility only a short time ago. The Hon Annette King mentioned that I tried to broker a position that was acceptable to the Committee around the testing regime. Indeed, I think I was in only my second day as a Minister at the time that I was faced with that decision. So I have had to rely upon the advice of officials, but I have also taken time over the last month to go around the country and talk to doctors and nurses, our police force, experts, and individuals about their concerns. Some of the changes that I am bringing in by way of the amendments in Supplementary Order Paper 268 are based upon my learnings over this last month, and are also based upon suggestions that have been brought to me from experts in the field about how we need to make sure that the rules that this Parliament is about to adopt are going to have the effect that we want.

Finally, the issue of animal testing is one that there is a lot of passion about. As a member of Parliament, and certainly as a Minister, I do not want any animal to have these products tested on it where that is not absolutely necessary. But as an Associate Minister of Health with responsibility, I must accept the scientific advice that has been brought to me, and it is that a degree of testing will be necessary to ensure that these products are safe and acceptable and will not harm people. But that is not enough for me, and I thank the committee for its work on agreeing to a compromise that says that where there is a test that gives the same certainty and does not require the use of animals, then that test must be used; the test that includes the use of animals cannot be used. To those who are saying that it is possible to bring these products to market without testing them on animals at all, I point out that the amendment put forward and accepted by the committee means that no tests on animals can be used. In that case, actually, I think we are very close to what many members of this Committee want.

The advice that I have received tells me that there will be some degree of testing needed, and I believe that I need to accept that advice rather than overrule it. We have an expert committee—not members of this Parliament—that is going to look at exactly what tests should be in place, what tests are acceptable, which ones are not, and which will give certainty. But the select committee’s decision—and the message that this Parliament will be sending should the select committee’s position that was adopted stand as part of the bill when it becomes an Act—says that where there is a test that does not require the use of animals, then it must be used; a test on animals cannot be used.

I hope that the advice that I have received is not correct. I hope that those who have come to the select committee and who have been emailing us to say that it is possible to bring these products to market and ensure their safety so that people will not be harmed without the use of a single test upon an animal are correct, because if they are, there will be no tests upon animals. But if they are not correct, as an Associate Minister of Health, it is my responsibility to ensure that New Zealanders of all ages will not be harmed by any product that makes it to the market. Therefore, I believe that the compromise that was reached in the select committee is one that is as far as we can go at this time.

What we are also doing in the Supplementary Order Paper is saying to the experts and the committees—these experts whom we need to put trust in—that they need to keep assessing these tests and their validity and acceptability on a frequent basis, and at least annually. There is another Supplementary Order Paper from a member of the House who I think has brought something to this legislation that says that a report from that committee must be brought back to the Minister at least once a year, so that the Minister can be assured of the work that has been done, and so that the Minister can be assured that the committee is taking its responsibilities seriously and that where greater changes are needed, the Minister can consider that with his colleagues and the rest of the House.

I will leave it there. We will have a chance to talk about this at greater length as we go on. To finish where I started, I thank all members of the Committee of the whole House who will put aside some of the feelings they have when it comes to the final vote to do what is right for New Zealanders. They will make sure that New Zealanders have certainty, that mums and dads do not need to worry as much, and that every New Zealander—particularly every younger New Zealander—is protected from the considerable harm that so many of these products are causing.

This is a good point for me to pick up from, after the contribution from the Associate Minister of Health, Todd McClay, which I welcome and thank him for. Indeed, I thank him in general for what he has added to this bill, the Psychoactive Substances Bill, because it is a better bill than the bill that the Hon Peter Dunne introduced to this House.

Indeed, what the Minister says is quite right. I am sure that no member of this Committee is interested in passing legislation that increases the risk to New Zealanders—that sees unsafe products on the shelves. This issue of animal testing, I think, highlights an error of logic on the part of the Government, and I am going to come to that shortly.

As Iain Lees-Galloway has said, the amendment made by the select committee to the purpose statement of the bill is a very good one. We now clearly set out with the objective of protecting the health of, and minimising harm to, individuals who use psychoactive substances. That is a great step forward, and, indeed, that should be the prism by which we evaluate the rest of what is in the bill. Actually, through consideration of the rest of the bill, by means of that prism, some errors, in fact, emerge. Those are errors around the issues of animal testing, and they come up in Part 1 and Part 2 and around possession offences in Part 3.

I want to briefly touch on clause 9 also, which relates to the meaning of “psychoactive substance”. That meaning needs to be read against the offences for possession that are in Part 3. I am going to come to that later, when the Committee is discussing Part 3, but I want to highlight clause 9, because that definition of psychoactive substances is pivotal to determining whether or not a person actually is in possession of an unapproved psychoactive substance, and it goes to the heart of a fundamental problem with that possession offence as it is cast.

In this contribution I want to speak specifically about clauses 11 and 11A in relation to the expert advisory committee, and in particular about the provision in subclause 11A(2) and in clause 11A generally that is made for there to be no animal testing, provided that a suitable alternative exists. What I want to say to the Committee is that this is a clause that, although superficially attractive, in fact ensures that the meaning of our law will be determined by the courts and not by this House. I believe that that is not the certainty that Kiwi mums and dads and users of psychoactive substances actually need. It is not the certainty that the manufacturers, importers, and retailers of psychoactive substances need. What this Committee needs to do instead is actually be clear about what kind of testing is or is not permitted. Given that we are all concerned about safety, it seems to me that those who are opposed to animal testing are not saying we oppose animal testing and that therefore an increased range of substances not tested on animals should hit the shelves. What we are instead saying is that there should be a higher standard, a narrower range, of tests that are appropriate. That, in fact, imposes a higher standard on the manufacturers, importers, and retailers of such substances.

Dr Hutchison, chair of the Health Committee, has referred to the response from the interim expert advisory committee. I have to say that the select committee was taken rather by surprise on receiving the letter from this interim expert advisory committee. It was a letter addressed to a previous Associate Minister of Health, the Hon Peter Dunne, in response to a letter that he had sent to the committee seeking advice. It is important, when we consider what that group had to say, that we acknowledge that the group did not have in front of it the submissions that had been made by members of the public, by experts, and, indeed, by animal welfare organisations in relation to this. It did not have in front of it any of those submissions.

What had occurred was that the chair had ruled all issues related to animal testing out of scope. The National members of the select committee had refused a motion that I had moved and that had been supported by members from Labour and from New Zealand First to hear those submissions none the less. The National members and, in particular, the National chair of that select committee, Dr Paul Hutchison, ruled all of that evidence out of scope. It was not heard by the select committee, by the Government, by the Associate Minister, or by the interim expert advisory committee.

It is a bit rich for the chair of the select committee to then come to this Chamber and talk about the consideration that had been given to expert advice, because actually so much of the advice, so much of the evidence, that would have been available was ruled out of order and not even considered. I need to address the excuse that has been given by the chairman of the select committee, Dr Paul Hutchison. He says—and he said it at the second reading also—that the Clerk of the House actually gave advice that forced him to rule those submissions out of order. In fact, when the Clerk came to the select committee she was very specific that that was not the case. She said to us that any amendment to the Supplementary Order Paper that sought to amend the Animal Welfare Act would be out of scope for the bill, but that did not mean that any submission that had been made to the select committee was automatically out of scope.

I point out to this Committee of the whole House that, in fact, we now have in front of us an amendment made to the bill as introduced that very extensively deals with the issue of animal testing. Those amendments in clause 11A are not out of scope, and therefore submissions that could have led to those very same clauses or improved clauses would have been very useful indeed to the select committee. I draw members’ attention to the submission of the New Zealand Anti-Vivisection Society in particular, which is addressed in the Green Party’s minority view in the select committee report and which sets out all of the suitable alternatives to animal testing that could have been used. I have to say that in the Chamber this afternoon, today, we have already heard that the National Government members will be voting against Mojo Mathers’ Supplementary Order Paper 260, but we have yet to hear a single argument as to why that Supplementary Order Paper is not a useful addition to the bill. I think that is a major problem.

In my time remaining, I wish to deal with one extra problem with clause 11A, which relates to animal testing that occurs overseas. The reality is that this clause, which is now in the bill, will not result in no animals being tested; it will result in animal testing, and much of that will occur in other countries. Although the clause as drafted actually puts a requirement on the authority to ensure that such overseas animal testing complies with New Zealand’s Animal Welfare Act, in fact there is no realistic way in which the authority can ensure that that takes place.

Clause 11A is certainly a major advance on the bill as introduced, but it contains very major issues around monitoring and compliance, and it ensures that on the pivotal issue of whether or not animals are actually harmed in order to determine whether or not these recreational drugs hit our shelves—on that very pivotal issue—it ducks responsibility. What it will ensure is that it is the courts that actually make that decision. I believe that that is not the correct way for Parliament to go about this. There is no requirement for us to do that—no requirement at all. Thank you.

I appreciate being given the opportunity to partake in this process of democracy. As anyone who has worked with affected youth would attest, this Psychoactive Substances Bill is probably one of the more noble bills to come through this Parliament. Speaking to Part 1 of the bill, Supplementary Order Paper 271 in my name, and also the honourable Mojo Mathers’ Supplementary Order Paper 260, which would delete clause 11A in this part—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Why does the member want to sacrifice puppies?

—and turning first to the principles—I have heard that line before somewhere, and it is thrown across to the other side. I would have that member know that I own two dogs, and they love me unconditionally, as, I am sure—[Interruption]

Since the introduction of synthetic cannabinoids in 2002 there has been a steady increase in work-related incidents, near misses, and accidents requiring investigation or disciplinary action. It is rather ironic so much emphasis is placed on companies complying with occupational health and safety regulations to minimise risk in the workplace, only to allow our workers and children direct access via the corner dairy to a dangerous chemical mix of mind-altering substances. Synthetic designer drugs have been identified as causing a multitude of medical and psychiatric symptoms, including hallucinations, fearfulness, paranoia, insomnia, depression, bizarre behaviour, anxiety, psychosis, schizophrenia, aggression, hostility, and, in some of the more severe cases, kidney failure and even stroke.

Last Tuesday I arrived in Wellington and I drove straight away to Foxton, at the behest of local people who invited me. One of those people was a mother whose adult son is currently in prison for crimes committed whilst under the influence of synthetic and psychoactive substances. I am pleased to say that, thanks to the visit that I had to two local dairies, those dairy owners in Foxton have committed to cease selling these synthetic substances, so the entire Horowhenua is now free from dairies selling psychoactive substances. I am very proud of that.

This bill requires commitment by the Minister. It is just the beginning. I must say to the Minister that that includes also getting other Ministers on board. Twelve months ago, for instance, the Hon Simon Bridges said that the Government would not be supporting random drug-testing on our roads, so where is the commitment? I must say it is great that finally the cowboy era, this wild west time, of psychoactive substances, synthetic cannabinoids, being openly sold with no controls is coming to an end. We are putting in place a regulatory framework, with broad support across Parliament. Before a psychoactive substance can be sold, it must be tested and be shown to be safe. I congratulate the Minister in charge of the bill, the Hon Todd McClay, on being willing to make changes to make this a better law.

My amendment on Supplementary Order Paper 271 makes a change to clause 11, which establishes the Psychoactive Substances Expert Advisory Committee and sets the parameters for the committee. The amendment would add a new clause 11(10) requiring a comprehensive annual report. That is a change that I hope the Committee can support. The change will have an important and ongoing impact. Many advisory committees and other similar entities are required, in their enabling legislation, to produce an annual report. This is good practice. It results in open and transparent government. Annual reports of such bodies provide a comprehensive report of the operations over each year. Interested people and various groups seize on the information and use it, quite properly. The media can, and do, provide coverage of these reports. It is all about letting in the disinfectant of sunshine on the work of this new committee. It is about bringing awareness to families and communities that dangerous psychoactive substances cannot and will not be tolerated in New Zealand. If this Supplementary Order Paper is adopted, New Zealanders will be able to become informed about the work of this new committee as it produces its report in each year of operation. I ask the Committee for its support.

The honourable Mojo Mathers’ Supplementary Order Paper 260 proposes to delete new clause 11A. I initially thought that I would be supporting that Supplementary Order Paper, and, in good faith, I indicated that I would. However, the Health Committee then reported with the first version of the new clause 11A, and that has since been updated by the Minister’s Supplementary Order Papers, which are being considered now.

I believe it is vital that we address all the provisions before us—that we keep our eye on the most important aspect, which is that we must get dangerous, untested, unproven drugs off the streets and out of our communities. Safer communities mean safe families and safe children. This is war. What happens in America—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: The member’s making it easier, not harder.

—mirrors more or less what happens in New Zealand in the fight against psychoactive substances. Although that member may go on about murdering puppies and carrying on and distracting us from this bill, the truth is that our children are being hurt. Our children are being harmed.

During the weekends we have children who are going over and having what are called “pillowcase parties”—that member probably does not know what a “pillowcase party” is. These young people stuff all the designer drugs they can into pillowcases and they go and make a dangerous cocktail mix at somebody’s house and they get high. That is happening. In the States at the moment, psychoactive substances are being marketed to the young as lollies. So this is war. When it comes to animal testing, I am actually confident that New Zealand has a robust—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Why is the member on the side of the drug dealer?

—system under the Animal Welfare Act. That member has been in this Parliament for over 30 years and I thought he would have made sure that animals are safe in New Zealand.

I would say that annual reporting by the National Animal Ethics Advisory Committee is also in here. [Interruption] Again, I resent being called names. As I said before, I love animals and, generally, they love me. I hope also that the name-calling of the Minister will disappear. I benefit from the unconditional love of the two dogs that I own, but, on balance, I actually prefer the Minister’s approach to changes made to the bill. We need to stop cruelty to people. We have to get the dangerous drugs out of our communities. We need to keep people safe. We need to get these drugs off our roads, off our streets.

The process for an annual report will over time inform us and may well bring about change in the activities of the expert committee, but I would again reiterate that this is actually a beginning; it is not an end. It needs the commitment of all Ministers. I support this part and this bill.

It is my pleasure, as a member of the Health Committee, to speak on Part 1 of the Psychoactive Substances Bill. To begin, I want to communicate my interpretation of the process that happened within our select committee. I think that really there has to be an acknowledgment that the chair did seek some advice. He received some advice and the select committee had a vote. It is fair to say that all of us from the Opposition wanted to hear from submitters who were particularly interested in the relevance to animals of this piece of legislation. I know about the integrity that the chair has, and I too want to acknowledge the working relationship we have had on this bill and agree that that process took place, and that it was in fact the National members of the committee who then decided that we would not hear submissions.

I think that has been a flaw in this process, but, other than that, what we have been through as a committee has been robust. We have allowed all sectors of society that have a particular interest in this bill to have their say. That is one aspect of this bill that, I think, if we reflect upon it, and if we could do it again, we probably would have allowed them the opportunity to formally be part of the select committee process.

What we have done as a group of parliamentarians is acknowledge what New Zealanders have known for a long time—that the unregulated use of these psychoactive substances has particularly influenced negatively on many sectors of our community, particularly the young members of our community. So I am really keen, like many of us, for this bill to be passed.

I want to take the opportunity to commend the Associate Minister of Health for his new role. I have seen him actively engaging particularly with his dairy owners, with the police, and with health officials. I think the critical challenge, once this piece of legislation goes through, is to make sure that the police, the ministry, and everybody involved in the administration of this piece of legislation are ready to hit the streets running. Obviously, like many of us, I have been very active in my community, because for me the purpose of this piece of legislation is to regulate and to go through a process of deeming some substances safe. What I would like to state for the record is that we have basically treated these low-risk psychoactive substances as alcohol or tobacco. We have said as a Parliament that these substances are akin to alcohol and tobacco. We did not want to differentiate, particularly for young people—to encourage them that this was a better substance for them to take—but I think that the intention of all of us is to make sure that we protect the community and that we provide the tools for our communities so that they can decide whether or not, and where, they want these substances to be sold.

I want to focus very much on clause 11, which establishes the Psychoactive Substances Expert Advisory Committee, and to note the expertise around that committee. We will have a pharmacologist, we will have a toxicologist, and we will have somebody with neuroscience expertise, medical expertise, and anything that we deem, or they deem, to be relevant—maybe addiction expertise is something that we think is relevant.

What I really wanted to highlight in the formation of this expert advisory committee is one of their mandates, when we look at the risks to public health. For me it is the ongoing, I guess, assessment about some of these products that are going to go through the testing regime. They will be deemed safe—but, actually, are they? That is one aspect of this piece of legislation that I would like to highlight, because we did specifically talk about the requirement within emergency departments for medical experts to categorise an incident, but also to look at whether or not we could be very specific about the actual psychoactive substance that had been consumed. When this bill goes through, I think all of us know that it is not the end of psychoactive substances; it is really the beginning. What we are all concerned about is making sure that this piece of legislation is fit for purpose, and that purpose is to protect the community and particularly the young people of New Zealand.

I am also incredibly interested in the relevance and the appeal of certain products to vulnerable populations. I know that historically, for example, Māori males have been overrepresented in the use of “PZP”, I think, or benzylpiperazine (BZP)—somebody can correct me if I have got the terminology wrong—but, obviously, if these substances are being used by a specific group of people in our society, I hope that there will be an ability to identify who these people are and ensure that they get the help where it is needed.

One of the other things I wanted to clarify is in clause 9, “Meaning of psychoactive substance”, and I am going to be very interested in Kevin Hague’s use of that definition. Essentially what we have said is that a psychoactive substance is a substance that induces a psychoactive effect. We said it was not a food and it was not a herbal product. I guess the relevance of that definition will be interesting when we do look at clause 63. The committee initially chose collectively to delete it, and then, again, the National members of the Health Committee thought that it should be reintroduced, in spite of the overwhelming evidence, particularly from the police, that said this was going to be incredibly difficult to administer because of the need to test the particular product and the long time frame between testing it and then laying an offence against those over 18. My colleague Iain Lees-Galloway will speak to that specifically because it is something that he has proposed a Supplementary Order Paper to address.

I would like to also contribute to the whole discussion around animal testing. I think as a select committee we have to acknowledge that there was nothing said about animal testing in the beginning and that there has been really good, collaborative movement towards creating a piece of legislation that will ensure that if other tests exist, we will not, in fact, test any of these products on animals. But I think the fundamental question is really about the dignity and ability for us to not put any animals at harm in testing these products. If they are, in fact, low risk, we do have to question why we would have to test products on animals in the first place, and I think my colleague Kevin Hague has been very clear about outlining what those alternatives are.

So we in the Labour Party have moved. We have moved because, as I highlighted before, there was a flaw in the select committee process. If we had been able to listen to those experts, those people who are engaged particularly in those fields, who could have let us know what alternatives there were, maybe the consensus around our select committee table would have been that we would agree with Mojo Mathers and it would have been in the amended bill that is before us today. My contribution to that part of the discussion is really to highlight that it was a flawed process that could have been rectified at the beginning.

My concluding comment is to thank all the dairy owners around the country who have not been selling these products. They have not been selling these products because they are members of our community and they, in fact, took it upon themselves to protect, particularly, young people. Some of them could have been making thousands of dollars, and they chose not to do that. So I would like to congratulate them on being the leaders in our community, and on having a sense of social responsibility within the context of this Parliament not providing the appropriate tools to protect the community. I thank the people right around the country who have made the effort. That effort now will complement what we are doing in the Committee today. I look forward to the swift passage of this bill and, again, I thank the Minister for his leadership. Kia ora.

It is a pleasure to rise to speak on the Psychoactive Substances Bill, particularly after the previous speaker, Louisa Wall, who I know is genuine in her desire to see this drug brought under control, although I would suggest to her that sometimes those who are in Opposition tend to rewrite history in a way that may not be exactly as I myself remember it in the Health Committee. One of the things that I think the member might be careful to not allow herself to be drawn into in Opposition is trying to manage the process in the select committee to delay the passage of the bill, which is entirely what was intended by the proposals brought forward when the chairman tried to rule out—

💬 Hon Members: That’s not true.

I have listened to the puppy-dog campaign from the other side of the Chamber for the last three debates on this, and I can see straight through it, and you can see by their reaction that I am absolutely right in what I am saying. The only reason that they were trying to introduce these new submissions, which were clearly outside of what was intended in this process, was to delay the process through the House and delay the passage of this bill.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: What a lie. Tell the truth.

Then to listen to them—the Hon Trevor Mallard talking about his newly found concern for puppy-dogs. My goodness! We have stooped to a new political low in this House when that starts to happen. The reality is—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: I’ve bred dogs for nearly 40 years.

Read the bill, Trevor—read the bill. What it says is that there will be an expert panel that will decide what testing is required and not required—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: I didn’t need anyone to read it to me, unlike the member.

If you have a look at that for a moment, Mr Mallard, you will find that one of that expert panel—conveniently left out by the previous speaker, who highlighted all of the expertise that will be brought to that panel in regard to the medical background, but she did not mention the expertise that is going to be brought to that expert panel in regard to animal welfare, and that the panel will decide whether or not there is a need for animal testing. What I am understanding the suggestion to be from the other side of the Chamber is that if the drugs cannot be proven to be of minimum harm, then they will rule out animal testing. They will rule that out by supporting a Supplementary Order Paper from the Green Party. To me, that is beyond comprehension.

Regarding the reference to puppy-dogs, I understand that most of this testing is done on rats and mice and other animals like guinea pigs. But, of course, puppy-dogs are going to stir the emotions of everyone to achieve the goal that the Opposition wants to achieve, which is to slow this process down—to slow the process down. What the member needs to go and have a look at is what the expert panel’s job is and what it intends to do in regard to how it decides what drugs may or may not be determined as being of minimum risk, and how it is going to go about that. I would suggest to the members who have raised this white herring that they go and have a look at that. Go and have a read of that. Look at the science and have a look at how that process will take place.

Further, the suggestion that the chairman somehow or other controlled or manipulated the process so that some expert submitters could not be heard is about as far from the mark as it is possible to be. To suggest that the honourable Paul Hutchison would do such a thing is beyond comprehension, and I think most people would accept what I am putting forward. That is not what happened. What was deliberately being set up was a delay of the process by allowing a range of submitters that had nothing to do with the core of this bill, and that is exactly what the members were trying to achieve. I say to the new members that this is not a new process; this is a common theme amongst Opposition members of Parliament.

💬 Louisa Wall: How many submissions did we have that were ruled out of order?

Well, how many were there?

💬 Louisa Wall: Over 200 from—

Right. What does that suggest to the member? What would that suggest to the member? That over 200 people were concerned about animal welfare, not about young people’s welfare. That is what it would suggest to me. So go and have a look at what the expert panel would suggest, and then come back and have a look at some of the other things that this bill will do. It will stop the sale of these products in places where children can get access to it. It will minimise the harm that is inflicted on society.

I was really concerned to hear some of that rhetoric from the other side of the Chamber, and it went through all three speakers. Whether it is a mouse, a guinea pig, or, as some call it, a puppy-dog, no animal needs to be tested under the testing for these psychoactive drugs. If the Health Committee had actually listened to those submitters—the ones whom we heard only because we needed to, because they were being let down totally by the chair of the committee—those members would not even be differentiating between the size of animals; they would be saying: “No animal testing.”

Earlier we heard from Dr Paul Hutchison talking about science and suggesting that the Green Party did not understand science or that it was particularly selective. He insinuated that we had it all wrong regarding the science around this testing. It is quite the contrary. Again, if he had listened, and maybe even if he had read the report from the committee that the Green Party set up to hear those submitters and he had then gone through the submissions—because, of course, he had access to them—he would have had no grounds to be saying that. It is science-based, and the science says that you do not need to animal test at all.

💬 Shane Ardern: Well, then, it won’t happen, Steffan. If that’s the case, it won’t happen.

Well, I do not have total confidence in the Psychoactive Substances Expert Advisory Committee. We can have hope, but do not have any absolute confidence or proof. I was looking through the bill and thinking, where does it give me confidence that it will come out really certain in that? Maybe it is lost in Supplementary Order Paper 268. But I did feel very assured by Associate Minister of Health Todd McClay, who was very helpful in saying that, effectively, when a suitable alternative exists, there will not be animal testing. He was very, very adamant about that. That is heavily on record, and I appreciate that. In fact, I do not think there will be any excuse for the Psychoactive Substances Expert Advisory Committee to ever allow animal testing. If it did, it would be in direct contradiction of the science that is available.

On that basis, I would suggest that the parties or members who are prevaricating around Mojo Mathers’ Supplementary Order Paper 260 should reconsider. There is time—it has not come up. There is time to reconsider. I am really disappointed in the parties that may be sitting on the fence or those that are totally opposed, and I suggest that they quickly reconsider and do the honourable thing, because, as we have said, this bill is potentially a world first in terms of what it is doing around psychoactive substances, but it would be even better if that Supplementary Order Paper was given the nod.

I found it, I suppose, a privilege to hear the submissions from those people, who had put them together very, very professionally. They had put together very, very good evidence, but they had been disadvantaged. They had been left out of the democratic process. In fact, I think about the time that they had put in, and then they had the rug pulled out from under them because of what I would suggest is the National Government looking at the costs and thinking: “Have we got mates in there who are going to actually end up having to pay a little bit more”—in fact, a reasonable bit more—“to do testing that is not on animals?”. Instead, we can do the cheap one and effectively torture some animals to get the effective protection.

If a drug is to be allowed—and it will be allowed only if it passes certain tests—is cost really the issue here? I would suggest that it is not. I would suggest that it should not be about the cost; it should be about the ethics, and this bill can really get down into that. We are concerned about our young people. We do not want young people to be admitted to hospitals with psychotic episodes and to have their lives destroyed—of course we do not. So it is not an either/or here; it is about both. We can have an ethical result in terms of our young people, and we can have an ethical result in terms of animal welfare.

I will speak further on the bill, but I implore those parties and members who are at the moment prevaricating about, or opposing at the moment, that Supplementary Order Paper to reconsider, because this could be a wonderful day. Thank you.

The original sponsor of this Psychoactive Substances Bill, the Hon Peter Dunne, said that it was not the intention to have these fun drugs—these mind-changing chemicals, these Sunday afternoon recreational highs—tested on animals. If that is not the intention, then let us put it in the bill by way of accepting Mojo Mathers’ Supplementary Order Paper 260. I do not think there is anyone in this Parliament who really believes in torturing animals. I do not think there is anyone in this Parliament who really wants to put any animal, whether it is a mouse, a rabbit, or a beagle puppy, to any pain or suffering. I do not believe there is anyone in this Parliament who is like that. I would be terribly surprised and disappointed if there was. But if we want to call this world-class legislation, and if it was not the intention of the original sponsor of the bill—not my friend the Associate Minister of Health, Todd McClay, who is the Minister in the chair now, but the original sponsor of the bill—to test these mind-changing drugs on animals, let us put it in the bill and seal it up once and for all in the name of protecting those creatures that live with us in this world and cannot protect themselves.

It was not so long ago that the EU said it would put an end to a generational regime of testing cosmetics on rabbits. Let me just give you the story on that. The reason rabbits are put on to gurneys and tested by cosmetic laboratories across the world—which is now banned in Europe—is because, as you know, rabbits do not blink, so you can drip the chemicals into their eyes. The efficacy of cosmetics can be tested in terms of causes of harm to humans by dripping them with needles into the eyes of rabbits, which do not blink. The EU said that this is palpably wrong, it is a generation of maltreatment of these creatures, and it was going to stop it.

These animals that will be tested are growing puppies—beagle puppies are the animals of choice—mainly in countries like India and others in Asia, where there is no standard of animal ethics whatsoever. I can recite chapter and verse where these places are and what is done in the name of testing drugs on animals at cut prices and cheap rates. I say to the drug dealers and the drug manufacturers that if you want or need to test these drugs on animals, well, we say do not bother. Do not bother; it is not needed. If you cannot prove your fun drug of choice is safe without putting animals into abject misery, then you cannot sell your drug. You cannot sell your drug.

I say to the Committee today that I condemn the use of these mind-altering substances on a Sunday afternoon by those of the fun-loving fraternity who think that it might be good to get high. But if they want to use these, and if they are their drugs of choice, well, so they can, but they should not subject animals—whether it be mice, whether it be rats, whether it be rabbits, or whether it be puppies—to the testing of their safety. The reality is that the bill could well result in drugs being tested on animals in places like China and India where animal welfare is shamefully non-existent.

Even worse, these animals are man’s best friends. There is not one single member of this Parliament who will put up their hand right now and tell me that their much-loved puppy at home, dog at home, cat at home, or rabbit at home would be available for the testing of these chemicals—the fun chemicals for a Sunday afternoon. There would not be one member who would say “My dog, Fido, would be a candidate for these people who want to take these drugs and want to test that they are safe.” Is there one person who would volunteer their poodle pup, or, more important, their hapless little beagle pup, which happens to be one of the best creatures ever invented? There is no reason to put animals to extreme pain. If we want this to be world-class legislation, then this Parliament should take a step back and say that this afternoon we are going to put in place world-class legislation to test the safety of mind-altering chemicals for our young people, but we are going to make sure that there is no possibility at all that animals will be used to test these substances. And we would go up in lights around the world.

I care about young people, and I say from this Parliament that we should not have young people taking these substances. But I care about animals, their welfare, and their rights just as much. I want to put on record today that I like animals quite a lot better than I like a lot of people. I feel it is my responsibility while I am here in this Parliament to get up and speak on behalf of those creatures that we live with together on this earth and that cannot speak on their own behalf.

This afternoon this is not about animal testing for lifesaving cancer research. It is not about that. We have to tolerate that in some form, although we do not like it, and I have been fighting the torture of rhesus monkeys for the purposes of drug testing for years across the world. That is another story for another day. But we could have world-class legislation because the sponsoring Minister, the original Minister, the Hon Peter Dunne, said: “It’s not our intention and it won’t be necessary on many occasions”—

💬 Shane Ardern: Most.

Most occasions, my friend and colleague for a long time says here—most occasions. Well, on the occasions when it is not “most”, why do we not say to the drug peddlers that no, this is not a substance we are going to have, because we want to be ethical, we want to be world leaders, we want to respect animals. But we want safety for our young kids with these mind-altering drugs and we can have that by accepting Mojo Mathers’ Supplementary Order Paper today.

Finally, I say this to my Green Party friends. Do what I am going to do. If this is defeated in this Parliament, represent your credentials, which are good on these issues. Represent your policies, your philosophies, and your concepts about animal protection and animal rights, which are time-honoured in this House, and say no to this bill in its entirety, and take a stand, because that is how I feel about this today. It is important that we in this Parliament clearly understand that we have a responsibility to protect animals at every turn, at every corner, on every day. We are sacrificing animals at the altar of recreational drug-use, albeit in a minority, albeit it is not our intention, albeit it will not be often. Often is too often when it comes to sacrificing a beagle puppy.

Well, the world has gone mad the day that I actually agree with John Banks on one thing that he said, because, I tell you what, most of his logic is sheer claptrap. In that 10-minute speech, helping young people, which is the purpose of the Psychoactive Substances Bill, got a mention once—just once. There has been an enormous amount of claptrap come from the backbenchers over there this afternoon accusing this side of the Chamber of porkies. Well, there is an enormous porky that will be revealed in this Chamber, from the former Minister who was responsible for this bill. It has been members on this side of the Chamber who have done the hard work in their communities to make this issue into the issue that has been pushed before the House—to get this bill before the House as soon as possible. It has been members on this side of the Chamber who have done the heavy lifting in the Health Committee on hearing those submissions and coming up with a good piece of legislation.

It is a good piece of legislation except for just one piece of it and that is the piece around animal testing. The reason that that is not in the legislation is that the evidence could not be heard. Government members on that side of the Chamber refused to have it, so the evidence could not be brought before the select committee.

Let me just tell you that there was a very strange thing that occurred in the second reading of this bill during the speech by Peter Dunne, who was the original sponsor of this. He told a rather large porky and delivered that porky during his second reading speech when he called into question the reputation of a highly regarded health specialist in Dunedin. I wish to put the record straight on that. In his speech in the second reading, he talked about a red herring of the debate: the animal testing issue. He said that there was never any intention to embark on a programme of animal testing. He said: “Late last year an Official Information Act request was lodged with the Ministry of Health for a whole range of papers relating to this new regime. One of [those new] papers was a paper prepared by Dr Leo Schep of the National Poisons Centre in Dunedin.” Mr Dunne acknowledged that “Dr Schep has done a huge amount of work in this area, but is at one end of the spectrum in terms of the debate. He is a purist. … He is an exceptional toxicologist,”—which he certainly is. Dr Schep “produced a paper that was headed ‘Report to the New Zealand Government on Animal Testing’. It was his initiative.”

That report was commissioned by the Ministry of Health, from Mark Heffernan, on 9 December 2011, who requested that Dr Schep write a report detailing the necessary toxicology tests for this bill. The report was titled Regulations Governing the Control of Novel Psychoactive Drugs—defining parameters associated with toxicity. Here is that report. It is a peer-reviewed report. It is not an “own initiative” report; it was requested by the Ministry of Health, presumably one of a number of reports that contributed to the preparation of that bill. In that report, it set out the law that requires pharmaceutical companies to prove that drugs are both safe and effective before they can be registered for human use. It set out the process that you go through in those current tests, which include some animal testing. It did not advocate for it. It set out the process as was requested in this report commissioned by the Ministry of Health. Unfortunately, Mr Dunne has defiled the name of Dr Schep, who is one of our prominent toxicologists in this country and has done a huge amount of work on the effect of synthetic cannabinoids.

Dr Schep is currently running a study in three hospital emergency departments recruiting patients who are seeking medical attention following recreational use of these drugs. He writes monthly reports to the Government and to Government agencies, including the police and the New Zealand Defence Force, on calls to the National Poisons Centre. I would like to show you a copy of one of those reports. This is a copy of the report from October 2010 to May 2013, which sets out the number of calls to the National Poisons Centre for synthetic cannabinoids. What it shows is that the number of calls has shot up. It has shot up absolutely. This report is by one of the men who has been doing the really important work behind the scenes, and I want to read to you some of what this report contains, because what Mr Dunne said in the House during his second reading speech last week was a slur on this prominent specialist and it really does need to be corrected. He said that increasing rates of calls to the National Poisons Centre have continued into May with a 50 percent increase from April. Of those calls, 71 percent were associated with poison exposure, 21 percent with users suffering withdrawal effects, and 8 percent were poison inquiries. Such a substantial increase in calls may be explained in part by the increased media attention on synthetic cannabinoids, some of which were centred on interviews from the National Poisons Centre. Nevertheless, it suggests increased use of these products has resulted in increased incidence of adverse effects requiring medical attention. Discussions with emergency departments reinforce this observation.

Then he went on to detail what some of those adverse effects are and how serious they are becoming. He said that the National Poisons Centre is concerned by the increased incidence of adverse effects following exposure to these analogues. Nevertheless, it welcomes the Government’s initiative to bring forward the new legislation to July rather than August. I would like to ask the Minister in the chair, Associate Minister of Health McClay, during the course of this debate just what increased resources are going to be put into the health system, into our mental health system, into our emergency departments, for the people who are responding to these adverse health effects. What extra resources are being put in to counter the effects once this legislation takes place and the effects that are occurring now in our health system?

In my second reading speech in this House I outlined the concern that is coming from the health community on those increased effects that are occurring in our community at this very moment. I would like to know just what extra resources are going to be committed, or are we turning a blind eye to this? Because along with legislation comes the responsibility for the impact of the issue in the community. We have got it right here. We have the National Poisons Centre showing just how many extra calls are coming in about this issue. We are having detailed information now coming to light about the impact on mental health, on physical health, on crime, and on the effect on our young people in the community. The police are telling us that when these substances go off the shelves in our dairies they might go underground. What will happen to the people who are addicted to it and do not have a ready supply any more? What extra resources are going to be put in to counter the impact of this legislation?

I will take the opportunity to speak on this bill, the Psychoactive Substances Bill, for one reason, and that is to protect kids in this country. It is not the adolescents but it is the unborn children—often of young girls who will take these drugs, and who will be encouraged to take these drugs. We have absolutely no idea what will be the impacts on that unborn child. To sit in this Chamber I had to restrain myself from leaping up and attacking the Hon John Banks, who was going on about puppy dogs, and mentioned kids once or twice, I think.

💬 Iain Lees-Galloway: Once.

Once—once he mentioned kids. Look, I am here for kids first. I do not like to see any animals harmed either, but I do believe that there are some priorities, and the kids come first, in my view.

I guess if you were to take an ACT philosophy to this you would say: “Well, the market will sort it out. In fact we should not have regulation.” Is that not what the ACT Party stands for? Let the market sort it out. I have to say, to be fair, there is a little bit of that happening around the place where communities are marching on places where these drugs are being sold, and good on them. If you buy your goods at the local dairy and the dairy is continuing to sell them, do not go there—do not go there. There are, I accept—not because of Mr Banks—some accepted wisdoms around the market. If those shopkeepers hear the message very clearly that people are not going to buy their milk, bread, biscuits, or their ice creams from your store because you are selling those drugs, maybe they will get the message. But for the ones who do not get the message, there must be legislation.

For Mr Banks to say “Well, if it is not perfect according to me, do not vote for it.”, how bizarre! How outrageous, and what a dereliction of duty as a parliamentarian to protect the young kids in this country. That is what we are here for. It is not perfect. In fact, very few pieces of legislation are perfect. But politics is the art of the possible, and it is about numbers as well, and Mr Banks likes to play the numbers at times. Funnily enough, he is supporting the Skycity legislation. Do you know what that is going to do? That is going to increase the number of pokie machines, and science says it will increase the harm to kids in this country, and he is going to vote for it. There is a word. It is called hypocrisy. It is a word—

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! Order! I am going to red card the member—well, a yellow card warning. The member has strayed into two areas. He is getting off the bill that we are on, and using those words is going to bring disorder. I do not care how cleverly or obliquely the member is using them, it will bring disorder.

Thank you, Mr Chairperson. I appreciate that. If we are going to be genuine in our care through legislation for New Zealanders, and for animals as well, then let us be consistent. But there is too much inconsistency here, and I have to say to the member who says “If I do not get my way over puppy dogs”—it is, in fact, over rats and mice if the truth be known—“then I am not going to do anything to protect the kids and the young people of New Zealand.”, what a ridiculous position to be in.

So I say that we do support the bill. We need to. Indeed, my colleague has been calling for this piece of legislation for some time. The Government has been delaying, sitting on its hands and thinking, probably, in its own naive way that the market might deal with this—the market might deal with this—and people will just stop selling them, because good, wise people should not buy them. The reality is that these are drugs—people buy them for God knows what reasons. They are highly addictive. I have had a friend whose brother is a general practitioner say: “Please support Peter Dunne’s initiative in this area.” Although it has been slow, it is progress. The most important thing we can do here is shut down the supply of these drugs as quickly as we can, and protect many, many young New Zealanders from firstly, taking them, and secondly, being addicted to them.

I would like to pick up on a number of points that have been made in this part of the debate on the Psychoactive Substances Bill. But the first part is to continue on where Louisa Wall left off, and also Clare Curran, and that is around the possible increase for health demands, particularly because of banning these substances for people who have become addicted to them, and the fact that they may well need to have increased health services.

I would draw members’ attention to the front of this bill, to the commentary, where the Labour members of the Health Committee put forward that we would identify this as an issue. In the report from the committee we said: “We acknowledge that with the banning of some substances currently available there could be increased demand on mental health and drug and alcohol services, which health providers will need to make provision for.” Obviously, we will be ensuring at a future date that we ask questions about what provision is made because it was acknowledged at the committee that this could well be the case. Therefore, if there is increased demand you cannot ask overstretched services to provide within the resources they have got. So we have identified it as an issue, and we would be looking to ensure that, in fact, there were some resources to follow what could be increased demand for mental health and alcohol and drug services.

I was very disappointed with Shane Ardern’s contribution. He was full of bucolic noises, I thought. He was one of those members who did not see any evil, did not hear any evil, and did not speak any evil. In fact, at the select committee he did none of those things. He did not see, he did not hear, and he did not speak. So to come into the Chamber now and try to tell this Committee that it was a delaying tactic by the members of the committee who wanted to hear submissions is an outrage. He said: “Well, what do you think they want to hear them for?”. Let me get the words he said. “What does it mean that there were 200 submissions?”, he yelled out. What does it mean? Well, let me tell the member what it means. Two hundred people wanted to put a submission in. They are called the public. Good, the Minister in the chair, Maurice Williamson, always acknowledges that there is a public out there. But, unfortunately, the rural member for Taranaki, or wherever he comes from, does not recognise that there are more than cows out there.

You see, the public wanted to be heard on this part of the bill. To say that the fact that we might have wanted to hear submissions was a delaying tactic is a slap in the face to the public. Is not the select committee process about allowing the public to have a say—to have their voices heard? Is that not what the democratic process is about? So for the hapless member for Taranaki to say: “Well, what does it mean when 200 people submit?”, I say to him to listen to the public now and then, because they sometimes get it right. It is our duty and obligation to hear the public at a select committee. We have one House in our Parliament. We do not have an Upper Chamber. We use the select committee to be able to decide what changes we are going to make. One of the ways we make changes is to listen to submissions.

Can I just say also to Brendan Horan, who has brought forward an amendment in Supplementary Order Paper 271, good on him for bringing forward an amendment. The amendment that he brought forward is to say that the Psychoactive Substances Expert Advisory Committee must provide the Minister with a written annual report of its operations. Well, I went and spoke to the Minister, and I gather he is inclined to support this amendment, and, obviously, we are interested in it. We like transparency and openness about what is happening within advisory committees. What I would ask the member Brendan Horan, if he takes a call, is why he would have the advisory committee report to the Minister, and why he would not have it report to the authority. It is the authority that appoints the members of the advisory committee after consultation with the Minister, and it is the Director-General of Health who can report every year, in an annual report to the select committee, on what is happening to any advisory committee. So I am wondering why, if the authority is the Director-General of Health, the member would not have considered requiring the reporting to be directly to the authority, which is established under this bill. So good on him for coming up with an amendment, and I suspect that he will probably get his first win in this Chamber—[Bell rung] Mr Chairman—his first win in this Chamber—

I am not sure I am going to grant the member an extension. You have finished? Right. I think it is Iain Lees-Galloway’s turn.

I think it is too. Thank you very much. I feel the need to respond to a couple of the speakers on the other side of the Chamber. The first is the Hon John Banks. Let us be absolutely clear about what the Hon John Banks is advocating. If he does not get his way—if the Green Party’s amendment, Supplementary Order Paper 260, which we on this side of the Chamber support, and which John Banks supports, is not passed—he wants the status quo to continue. He wants unregulated, untested, unknown drugs available in your corner dairy. That is what John Banks wants if he does not get his way. He wants to continue the sorry tales that we are hearing from mental health centres and addiction treatment wards up and down the country, of the horrific impacts of some of these substances that are the result of the fact that we do not know what is in them and that our current drug law is not robust enough to deal with these new substances. That is what John Banks wants. I want the public to be absolutely clear about that.

This Psychoactive Substances Bill is a good bill. It is a really good piece of legislation, which I support wholeheartedly. I have been asking the Government to get on with this for a long time, actually. It is a really good bill. Unfortunately, the debate has been completely derailed. I see members opposite nodding, and I think we have some agreement here about the fact that it has been derailed. It certainly has not been helped by the Government’s intransigence on this issue. I think that for John Banks to get up and say that he will block this bill if he does not get his own way, and let young people continue to be harmed by these substances, sums up John Banks’ philosophy quite well. I do not think that it is actually the ACT Party’s philosophy all that much—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Oh, I think it is.

—but it is John Banks’ philosophy. Well, it might be the ACT Party’s philosophy. John Banks’ philosophy is clearly to take more interest in animals’ welfare than in people’s welfare, particularly young people’s welfare. I really object to that from John Banks.

I also object to the statements made by Shane Ardern. Shane Ardern was on the Health Committee. He watched the way it operated. He watched the really constructive approach—

💬 Hon Annette King: He said nothing.

Yes, he was a casual observer of the process. He watched as members from around the House—members from different parties—tried to work constructively. But let us unpick what Shane Ardern said. He said that the only reason Opposition members wanted to hear the submissions about animal welfare was that we wanted to slow down this process. He used that emotive statement deliberately, because he knows how much the public actually wants Parliament to get on with passing this legislation.

Let us just show how nothing could be further from the truth. This bill was originally introduced in the House in February. That was already 2 long years after the Law Commission reported back with a comprehensive report, one chapter of which has turned into this legislation. So the Government took 2 years to get the legislation before the House. It then let the bill sit on the table for months before it got before the select committee, and then when the Government finally took it to the select committee, it told us that we had only 2 months to get through the job of considering all those submissions, getting the legislation right, and getting the crafting of it right so we could bring it back to the House in a good form.

Guess what! The Minister got up and said: “I do not think there are going to be any problems here. Not too many people are going to want to submit.” Hundreds of people wanted to submit on this bill, and they got blocked because the National Party actually knew that it had got itself into trouble, and that if it listened to all those people—if it allowed the democratic process, which we think is so fundamental to life here in New Zealand, to go ahead as it is designed to do—there is no way we would have got this bill back to the House in time. That is purely a function of the Government’s failure to prioritise these issues and get this bill to the House before this year. That is why we had the issue of whether or not we could hear submissions.

The chairman took advice, and I appreciate that the chairman got advice that the issues of animal welfare were out of scope. That did not stop the select committee from hearing the submissions. It did not stop the select committee from hearing the submissions. The thing that stopped the select committee from hearing the submissions was the National Party members voting against it. We then did not hear those submissions. We then got advice, and this is where—

The issues of animal testing addressed by Mojo Mathers’ Supplementary Order Paper 260 are primarily related to Part 2 of the Psychoactive Substances Bill, so I will return to that theme later on. In the meantime, I wanted to address several issues in Part 1 and to respond to several of the other contributions that have been made. Firstly, Brendan Horan’s Supplementary Order Paper 271, requiring the Psychoactive Substances Expert Advisory Committee to report annually, is a Supplementary Order Paper that the Green Party will support, but I acknowledge and support the queries made by the Hon Annette King in relation to that point, which is around whom exactly that expert advisory committee ought to be reporting to. Like the Hon Annette King, I invite Brendan Horan to take another call to explain his reasoning and to consider making the adjustment that she suggested.

I want to address, as some others have, the defence mounted by Shane Ardern of Paul Hutchison’s decision to rule out of order hundreds of submissions that touched on the issue of animal welfare—in particular, Shane Ardern’s outrageous allegation that those people and other members of the select committee were, in effect, colluding to stall the progress of this bill. As Iain Lees-Galloway has been saying, this is a bill that members of the Opposition have been calling for for years and years, and, actually, the stop-start nature of the Government’s treatment of this issue and of this bill is the cause of the problem. That is the problem. It is not actually those submitters or the members of the Opposition. In fact, I think it would be fair to say that I have seldom seen more sincere and genuine submissions to a select committee than those that were ruled out of order. And as for the claim that those submissions all related to matters that were outside the scope of this bill, I give this thought experiment. A submitter to the committee might have advocated precisely the wording that is covered in clause 11A of this bill. They might have done that, and that submission would have been ruled out of order by Paul Hutchison. That gives the lie to the reasoning that has been advanced to support that decision.

One of the Minister’s now many Supplementary Order Papers to the bill expands clause 11A to define what a suitable alternative test would be. I believe—and I invite the Minister to take a call to explain his reasoning about this—that that introduces a new problem, which is that it, essentially, says that a suitable alternative test will be one that the expert advisory committee has publicly notified as being a suitable alternative test. And that is a problem because—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: It’s a bit circular.

There is absolutely a circular reasoning, but also, as the select committee has heard and as Paul Hutchison has previously advised the Committee, the interim expert advisory committee already has a predetermined view that animal testing will always be necessary. In other words, we have an interim expert advisory committee, at least—it may become the Psychoactive Substances Expert Advisory Committee—that believes animal testing is always necessary. In other words, it is introducing a de facto requirement for animal testing, and certainly on the basis of what we have already seen, we are never going to see an alternative test publicly notified by that group.

I also want to address the absolute nonsense that we have heard from a number of speakers so far today that there is, in some sense, a choice to be made between animal testing and testing on our kids. That is a false dichotomy. Nobody is arguing that psychoactive substances that pose more than a low risk ought to make it through this process to get on to the shelves. No one is arguing that. What is at issue is the process by which a substance is found to be low risk, and what Mojo Mathers’ Supplementary Order Paper 260 sets out is a narrower range of testing that will be acceptable to establish that. It will most likely result in a smaller range of substances actually making it to the shelves, because ruling out animal testing means that only those substances that actually survive a non-animal testing regime—which, as I am going to set out in the debate on Part 2, are more expensive; that is why they tend not to be used at present—will make to the shelves. It will rule out substances that rely on animal tests. So we are presented in the House today with the delicious irony that the National Government and those other parties that are not supporting Mojo Mathers’ Supplementary Order Paper are in fact advocating for a more liberal regime of establishing the safety and low risk of psychoactive substances. That strikes me as kind of an interesting irony.

The other matter that I want to address is a matter that the Hon John Banks raised in his contribution to this debate on Part 1, and in particular a challenge that he made to the Green Party towards the end of his contribution. He said that the Green Party ought to do as he is doing if Mojo Mathers’ Supplementary Order Paper does not become part of this bill—that is, we ought to oppose the bill. We do not do that. We believe that this is a very important bill. It is one that we have been calling for for a long time. It is, on balance, a good bill, but it is not a great bill. It is a bill that could have been great. Actually, I appeal to the Minister in the chair, the Associate Minister of Health, the Hon Todd McClay, because this bill still could become great by just a few adjustments made by the Government to make it a more logical bill and one that actually meets those highest standards. We hope that he will take the opportunity to do that. But it is a bill that is necessary. It is a bill that is necessary if we are to achieve the purpose that is set out in Part 1 of the bill—minimising harm and protecting the users of psychoactive substances.

What I say finally in response to the Hon John Banks is that I acknowledge the challenge he has made to us, and I politely decline that challenge and say that the Green Party will be voting in favour of this bill regardless of whether we can improve it or not. But I point out to him that his is a vote that the Government relies on for confidence and supply. So if we are, indeed, to look at who actually has leverage to achieve a great bill, he might look to his own house. Thank you.

I want to first of all say that, like all Labour members, I am going to vote for this bill. This bill, the Psychoactive Substances Bill, is overall a very good bill. There have been discussions around the timing, and it is wrong that it took a couple of years after the Law Commission report for the bill to come to the House, and it is particularly wrong that the Government did not prioritise it such that it could have its first reading and referral to a select committee in time to have a proper select committee process and hear those people who want to be heard. I am informed that my colleague Paul Hutchison, who chaired the Health Committee and went to a very good school, was not quite well educated enough at that school to ask the right questions, and as a result of that got a bum steer, and hearings that should have been taken place did not occur. I think that is sad because if they had taken place, we could have been in a position to take a different decision.

I have another preliminary comment. I have bred dogs. I have had a dog in my household for the vast majority of my adult life. My kids have had, and have, dogs. I care lot about them. To me they are important. Countering that, it is no secret to most members of the House that a close family member of mine is a research scientist and is doing the sort of research science that involves animal experimentation. The area that is being worked on has the potential to make an enormous difference as far as human lives are concerned. So I am not a person who is adamantly against animal testing where there are circumstances where, through ethical processes, it can be established that there are no alternatives and it is for a good cause. In my view, the improvement of human life—or even, actually, the improvement of animals’ lives—can be a good reason for that.

But what we are looking at now is a bill with a clause that, without Mojo Mathers’ amendment, has an out and allows animal testing for one reason and that is to make it easier for drug dealers to make bigger profits. I just make it absolutely clear. What this bill’s approach does means that it is easier and cheaper to get approvals, to have these psychoactive drugs approved. That is what it is for, that is what it is designed to do, and I think that is wrong. Frankly, if they cannot do the bench-based science—and I accept that that can be more expensive than killing puppies. I accept the view that it is cheaper and easier on occasions to use animals, and that that will be the case in a number of countries that have ethical standards that differ from ours. I accept that that will occur. But why should we accept that? Why should we lower ourselves to the standards of China and India and their approach to animal life, as we pass this legislation? Why should we do that, especially when it is to approve a drug that most of us, when we are asked about it pretty carefully—and even with that sort of approval—would think it better they were not approved anyway? A psychoactive drug is a mind-bending drug, and the idea that animals are killed for that is just wrong.

I want to say that although I agree with the vast majority of what the Hon John Banks says, and I admire his emotion, I think that those of us who have been around this House for the time that John Banks and I have been have seen him emotional about this sort of issue only on one issue before. He was emotional about an issue that we were on opposite sides of, and I deplored his emotive approach at the time. But what Mr Banks has shown is that within the ACT Party, at least on this issue, there is something that is caring.

The second to last point that I want to make—and I could come back again with a few others—is one that was often made by prominent National Cabinet Minister Ruth Richardson. She would ask the question: “What is the mischief?”. What is the mischief? I want to ask National Party members what the mischief is in the Green Party amendment. What is wrong with it? Who is going to be hurt by it? It might be, I agree, that slightly fewer drugs are approved to bend young people’s minds. Well, what is the mischief in that? It might be that the drug dealers have to pay more to get approvals. What is the mischief in that? I am yet to hear anyone on the other side tell me what the problem is, other than a bunch of self-interested professional experimenters and one other person who apparently used to be involved in the SPCA who thinks what they are doing, their approach, is right. I just cannot agree with it.

I am going to tell you what I suspect, and what I suspect in this particular case is that Associate Minister of Health McClay—and, you know, I am told he was a good chair of a select committee; he is not making a great start as far as this legislation is concerned—has been detailed to look after a fragile vote for confidence and supply, and that is Peter Dunne. And who is surprised? All of us—well, not all of us—quite a few of us have some sympathy for Peter Dunne. Although much of his problems are of his own making, I think we all make mistakes and he has clearly made a set of them now, which have resulted in him losing his ministerial arrangements. But at the moment, he is clearly someone who has to be managed for the next year and a bit until the next election, when, I think, we all know that he will not be a member of Parliament. He has to be managed with kid gloves. My view on the reason for the National Government taking what is such an illogical position on this—there has been no logic expounded by any National member—is that it is doing it in order to handle Peter Dunne, in order to ensure that it continues to have a majority for supply in the likely event that the Māori Party splinters going forward.

In speaking to Part 1, clauses 4 and 6, of the Psychoactive Substances Bill, and also on the Supplementary Order Paper in my name, I would just say that I am happy with the wording of that Supplementary Order Paper 271. The wording is very similar to legislation of other advisory bodies such as the National Ethics Advisory Committee, the Office for Disability Issues, the Advisory Committee on Assisted Reproductive Technology, and the Health Quality and Safety Commission.

What I would like to do is draw the Committee’s attention to a letter that I received from somebody who is currently serving time in Manawatū Prison. If you will allow me, I will read this letter. “Hi, my name is”—and he does not want his name to be known. “I am currently in Manawatū Prison doing a 19-month sentence. I am writing to the Government about the effects of legal highs. I started legal highs about 2 years ago so I could stop smoking weed. While I was smoking weed, the only thing that made me want to stop smoking weed was to pass a drug test for my job; it wasn’t any effects from it. Then I started buying legals. At the start of smoking, I would only need one or two cones, which is about the size of my fingernail, so not much at all, and then I would be completely smashed. So this happened for about 2 weeks, then after it, I started doing nothing or close to nothing, so I started smoking more of it. Now this is where I started to notice that I needed more to get a hit, so I was buying at least two bags a day and smoking it all very quickly.”

“Then I tried to stop smoking it, and this is when I noticed I couldn’t. I was 100 percent addicted to it and was no longer smoking it for a buzz, but was because I didn’t have any, I would become very angry, and it was easy for me to just flip out. I was having cold sweats every night and having to run to the toilet to spew up. This went on every day and every night. If I didn’t have any money, I would become nervous and lie to my family just to get $20. So now I went from smoking weed, which I was smoking ever since I was 14 and had no problems at all, to smoking this so-called legal weed, which changed my life, as for me to do anything—and I mean anything, like eat, drink, go to courses, sleep, leave my house, etc.—I would need to have a cone of legals, and as soon as I did, I wouldn’t feel sick or anything and could then get on with whatever it was. But it didn’t last long till I needed more, and also had to live with spewing up every day and feeling like”—and I will take a little poetic licence here—“[faecal excrement] when I didn’t have it. I am only one of thousands that this is happening to, and every one of my mates smoke it too, and they tell me the shops—by stopping legal highs from being available, it will stop the same things happening to them. But the thing is, we don’t want to smoke it any more, but it’s so hard to stop when it’s as easy as walking into a dairy and buying it over the counter.”

“I know making it illegal won’t stop it from being sold but will make it harder to get. It only takes up to 1 or 2 weeks of not smoking it and you can get your life back. But the only reason I have managed to stop is that my partner died, and I had to go from her funeral then straight to jail. Now I have been in jail for 1½ months, and I feel super good and off legal highs, and if I never was sent to jail, I don’t think I could have stopped smoking it by myself, because the craving for it is so strong. So I am begging you, please, help my family and my friends and all the New Zealanders that are stuck and don’t know what to do by stopping legal highs from being sold at our shops. And I know for a fact that everyone that is addicted will be thankful and be able to get their lives back. I don’t think the Government actually knows how bad it is until it happens to their kids or friends, so please get this [faecal excrement] banned and at least harder to get. Thank you for your time.” I think that sums it up. This is a good bill and I support it.

Members, we come to the vote on Part 1. Before we put the Minister’s amendments, I will just explain what will happen. If the Minister’s amendments are passed, then part of Mojo Mathers’ amendments on Supplementary Order Paper 260 will be ruled out as being inconsistent. I am just making that point now. The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Supplementary Order Paper 268—

💬 Kevin Hague: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I wonder whether you could explain for the Committee which parts of Mojo Mathers’ Supplementary Order Paper will be ruled out.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Well, I will come to that at the time because some of them are still in order, and some of them will be inconsistent. I am just making that point, but I will explain it at the time when we come to vote on those.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I have a further point of order. Your explanation could well influence our vote on the Minister’s amendments. Can I just seek the indulgence of the Committee to ask you to do the explanation slightly prematurely.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Members, I sought advice on this matter because it has been a possibly contentious issue, and I just felt it would be fair to the Committee as a whole if we knew what the process was and what the consequences would be in terms of an affirmative vote for the Minister’s amendments. I will answer the question that Kevin Hague has asked, which I think explains this to the Hon Trevor Mallard. In Mojo Mathers’ amendments the clauses that would be ruled out as being inconsistent would be 11A, 35, and 31—that is, 11A, 31, and 35. The other amendments would still be put to the vote.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I am not as familiar with the bill as Kevin Hague is, and he might be having a look at this as we do it. But I think that the Minister’s amendments are quite different and separate. They deal with different issues. There are trial periods, and there is a penalty clause change in there, I think, for clause 29, which is more technical, as is clause 48. I think it is hard to say that clause 83 is a substantive amendment, but it is a distinct amendment. I am happy to seek the leave. I want to make the point that we are going to end up in the same place in the end, but, I think, especially given the discussion, it would be a real pity if any substantive part of Mojo Mathers’ amendment did not get a proper, individual vote. I am wondering whether the Committee could be better served by my seeking leave for the Mathers amendment to be voted on first and dealt with, and then the Minister’s amendments after that, because I think there is a general view that the Minister’s amendments will, other than for that question, be supported. I am looking to Kevin Hague and Brendan Horan to make sure that they are—I know that people have a different view on the substance. We will end up at the same point, but I think that people will get the sense of being dealt with fairly if the Mathers amendment is put first, and I seek leave for that.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Sure. The leave to have Mojo Mathers’ amendment put before the Minister’s amendments is a matter for the Minister to decide. The Minister has indicated to me that he would accept that, and so we will put Mojo Mathers’ amendment first, and then we will go through the process of that. We do not need leave for that. The Minister has agreed.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 260 in the name of Mojo Mathers to Part 1 be agreed to.

I raise a point of order, Chairperson. This is me just trying to be a little bit helpful. I thought we had an indication in the Committee earlier that a member indicated that he wanted a vote recorded against it. I am just sort of reminding the National whips who are exercising that vote of that. Mr Banks?

Well, it is up to the whip of the Government to inform me if that is the case. It is not the case? No. OK.

Part 2 Psychoactive substances and approved products