Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Associate Minister of Health: I move, That the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill be now read a second time. I would like to thank members for their contributions in the first reading debate.

I think it would be worth just reminding ourselves of the key provisions of this bill. Interim approvals for products are revoked. There is a recall order for all these products with interim approval. Interim licences to sell psychoactive products by retail or wholesale are revoked. Retailers and wholesalers whose licences have been revoked must comply with the recall order as though their licences were still in effect—this is the issue of the 2 weeks that we were discussing by way of interjection across the House earlier on. Licences for the products are going to be cancelled forthwith.

At 12.01 a.m. on Thursday the products are illegal. We are allowing a 2-week period for the seller’s licence to exist because that gives us the ability to have greater enforcement powers during that 2-week period. So we can access the site; we can ask for information.

Another point is that the Crown has no liability for losses or damages arising from the enactment of the legislation, and, of course, there is to be no animal testing of psychoactive substances. As members know, there is this exception where information from an overseas trial can be used if it will help protect public health.

The impact of the amendments will be that there will be no products permitted to be sold from the legislation’s commencement until regulations are made, which is expected to be within the next few months. New products will have to be developed and trialled and go through the processes.

I would like to thank those members for their contributions, and I commend the further progress of the bill to the House.

Labour continues to support this legislation, the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill, because it does remove untested drugs from the shelf and it also precludes animal testing from being used to prove that psychoactive substances are either low-risk or no risk. Those are two policies that we wholeheartedly endorse.

There has been a lot of debate this evening about who voted for the original legislation, the Psychoactive Substances Act, and why people voted for it. This bill should not be misinterpreted as overturning the original legislation. This bill amends the original legislation. It takes the transitional provisions out of the Psychoactive Substances Act, and it precludes the use of animal testing, which was already somewhat restricted in the principal Act due to a compromise position that was able to be reached at the Health Committee. This bill should not be interpreted by the public as somehow overturning the overwhelming vote in favour of the original legislation, the Psychoactive Substances Act.

I just want to respond to John Banks, because he seems quite tickled with himself that he was the one MP who voted against the original legislation. He then went on to say that, somehow or another, voting against the legislation meant that he was saving youngsters from using these drugs, saving them from the perils and dangers of these drugs. Well, let us be really clear here. If Parliament had followed John Banks’ lead on this legislation, all the drugs that were out there before this Act was put in place and all the ones to which temporary ban notices had been applied would still be out there—something between 200 and 300 different products. We had so little idea about what was out there. We do not even know how many drugs were on the market, and we have no idea how many stores they were being sold from. It could have been 3,000 or it could have been 4,000.

On the day that the Act was passed we went down to 47 drugs on the market and we went down to around 160 licensed retailers. That was the impact of that Act. So, imperfect as it was, and as much as we are back here, as we predicted, 12 months after the first reading, trying to fix it up, it was a vast improvement on what we had before. For John Banks to get up and crow about how his vote against the original legislation was somehow protecting the youth of New Zealand I think is bunkum, and it needs to be called for what it is. John Banks seems—

💬 Louisa Wall: He loves animals.

Look, John Banks loves animals, and he prioritised the protection of animals over the protection of kids, but, in fact, there was more than one way to deal with this issue. Although National blocked the amendments that would have dealt with animal testing at the time, those of us in the Opposition who actually cared about protecting our youngsters from high-risk drugs said we would pass the legislation regardless and we would find other ways. Trevor Mallard offered a Supplementary Order Paper to the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill, and that is one mechanism by which we have been pursuing this. Today we are finally going to get there, with the mechanism in this bill.

The principles behind the Act are still sound. It is just the implementation, in a lot of ways, that has been poor. We have talked about how it has taken a long time to get the regulations in place and, therefore, the untested drugs have stayed on the market for much, much longer than I think Parliament really anticipated. When we passed the Act we were being told by the Government and by the advisers that this was going to take the high-risk drugs off the market. We were told that the transition phase would be short and that it would be dealt with before now, and that—getting the regulations sorted out—has been one of the biggest failures, which, of course, we discovered, in part because of the Prime Minister’s discomfort with animal testing, could have been dealt with if National had voted for Mojo Mathers’ amendment in the first place.

The other question that is now in front of us goes to implementation and resourcing as well. We have heard about how there are half a dozen people in the Ministry of Health trying to deal with all the licence applications, trying to deal with writing the regulations, and trying to deal with the complaints about different substances. Half a dozen people simply have not been enough to implement this legislation properly.

But there is the other question: how well-resourced is our addiction treatment sector to deal with the potential for a large number of people coming off these drugs? I am going to be honest. We do not know what the impact is going to be. Some people might be able to come off these drugs and have no need for addiction treatment services. There may be a flood of people accessing addiction treatment services. There is no way the Government is going to be able to step those up to respond to that crisis, because we simply do not have the trained people out there and addiction services do not have the resources, and will not be given the resources, to respond should there be a flood of demand on those services.

The other thing that has been missing in all of this is information—information for families, information for users. I was talking to someone in my electorate the other day who works for youth justice, who was telling me that the young people whom she deals with were telling her which products were the bad ones and what the effects of them were. She said: “We’ve gathered all this information.” I said: “What did you do with that information?”, and she said: “Oh, we didn’t really know what to do with it. We haven’t passed it on to anybody.” She did not know—this is someone working for a Government agency—that what she should be doing is passing that information on to the Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority so that it could be making decisions about which products needed to be recalled. That is how poor the information has been from the Government on how to make this Act work properly.

It is important, as we go through this next phase, that the Government ensures, through the district health boards, that families have information on how to support people coming off these drugs and how to support people who are addicted to these drugs. That information simply has not been available, and that has been a lot of the cause of the community outrage. People have not known what to do. The Government has not run any programmes. There have been no social marketing programmes to tell people how to report the harmful effects of psychoactive drugs. There has been no programme to teach people what low-risk use of these substances is.

It was not enough to pass the legislation. It had to be implemented properly. Our Ministry of Health had to be resourced properly. Our district health boards had to be resourced properly. Our addiction service treatment centres had to be resourced properly. Our public health services needed to be resourced properly. None of that has happened. That is another reason why this Act has had a really unfortunate start, and that is why we are back here, trying to tidy it up again.

We support the amendments in this bill. We think they will tidy up some aspects of the Act, but the Government needs to do a lot more. It is not just about passing legislation. It is actually at the feet of the Government to make sure the resources are available to make this legislation work properly.

Thank you for the opportunity to take a short call on this second reading of the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. There has been a fair amount of self-righteousness coming from the Opposition parties as to how they could have easily themselves solved this question. But in actual fact it is a complex situation that this Parliament and successive Parliaments have been trying to grapple with for over 22 years. In fact, the Misuse of Drugs Act, back in 2005, was not successful in addressing the problem. Those were the good old days when benzylpiperazine, which was sheep dip, was cheap and available. It was legal, and people were getting highs from it. But since then these substances have mushroomed substantially throughout New Zealand, so that by 2008 a whole array of them was being manufactured. The manufacturers are indeed individuals who are extremely ruthless and care not one jot for the young people of New Zealand.

Attempts were made by the Hon Peter Dunne when he issued temporary class notices, and, of course, prior to that there was the Law Commission’s extensive paper, when the genesis of the present bill came into being in 2013. The idea behind it was to minimise risk, to protect the public health, and with the thought that the manufacturers would be required to show minimal risk. As it has turned out, this is not easy. The inventive minds of the manufacturers are there to do everything they can to sabotage.

But I know that Hunua, the electorate I am very proud to represent, is a classic example of what has happened right around the country. After this Psychoactive Substances Act came in, people were a little confused, even though the substances were less available. I know there were marches in every town and hamlet in my electorate, saying “We do not want them. They are causing significant problems throughout the country.”, and that is why the Government has, quite rightly, responded.

The enforcement is starting tonight. The police and authority enforcement officers will be visiting retail premises to ensure the affected parties are aware of their obligations. This is happening over the next 48 hours. As the Minister of Health, the Hon Tony Ryall, has pointed out, active enforcement will occur on 8 May. Police and enforcement officers will visit all retailers to ensure that products have been removed from sale and are being removed to the wholesaler. It is clear. It is concise. The message to the public is absolutely clear. I support the bill.

There is no doubt that Parliament wishes to pass the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill as soon as possible, but that does not mean that there are not issues that we ought to raise. I do agree with those who have said that there is no good in going around beating ourselves up on who did what and when. We need to correct the original Psychoactive Substances Act. I think it was a genuine attempt to do something about the issue. We did not get it right and now we are attempting to address it, but there are a couple of issues that I want to raise and hopefully when the Minister of Health is in the chair he will be able to help with some of the answers.

I have read carefully the regulatory impact statement from the Ministry of Health. It is dated 2 May. In it, it talks about animal testing and it says that Cabinet agreed in November to test on animals. That was a decision that was made 4 months after the legislation was passed. It says: “In November, Cabinet agreed that animal testing for psychoactive substances should be limited to rodents”. Unfortunately, Cabinet members were given poor advice at the time in that they were told that rabbits were rodents as well. In fact, rabbits are not rodents. What is interesting though is that, when you go on to read this part of the regulatory impact statement, it says this: “The Psychoactive Substances Expert Advisory Committee has considered this issue and advises that animal testing using rodents and lagomorphs,”—which are rabbits—“would allow the Act to function largely as intended. While it would mean that some products could not be assessed, due to the application using data from non-permitted animal species potentially ruling out some low-risk products, it would allow robust assessment of the risk of at least some products.”

The word in here is “advises”. The ministry was advising Cabinet as recently as 2 May to continue to test on animals, including rabbits. The Prime Minister announces on 5 May that the Government no longer will test on any animal. I would like to know what changed the Government’s mind between 2 May and 5 May. Why was it going to happen? Why was it agreed by Cabinet and what made it change its mind? We can guess, and I guess there are a number of reasons, including the work of Mojo Mathers, the work of Trevor Mallard, and the 43,000 signatures that have appeared very quickly on a petition. I do not believe that this was a principled decision made by the Government. It was a decision made out of the thought that it would lose votes from animal lovers. I am glad that it has made the decision, but I have to say there is no evidence that this was a principled decision.

The second issue also comes out of the regulatory impact statement. Nothing has really been made of this at present, but it very much is in the Minister of Health’s area. The regulatory impact statement tells us that it does not have good data on the number of people who use psychoactive products with interim approval. It has gone on to do an assessment of what services would be needed for people who could be addicted, and it has done it by extrapolating from an area that is called the largest provider of alcohol and drug addiction treatment services, and that is Waitematā District Health Board. It seems to me that that is a pretty rough way of guessing, because it might be the largest provider—and some of that could come from very good work by the district health board—but does it mean it has the most addicted people?

My concern is that it has been estimated that between 150 and 200 people “might be sufficiently dependent on these products to require a degree of professional withdrawal management”—and that comes straight out of the regulatory impact statement. My concern is what services will be put in place, because there is no doubt there is going to be the need for services come Thursday when the substances are removed, and people do not have access to them. I am not saying “Don’t do it.” I am saying you have to look at the consequences, the ongoing consequences, and what is in place to ensure that we give the best possible to people who are addicted.

There is a very good email sent to the Hon Maryan Street from one of her constituents raising this issue. A client of the Pascoe Street alcohol and other drugs clinic is saying there will be a significant increase in clients presenting with withdrawal issues and related difficulties. It asks what provision the Government intends to make in order to address the likely increase in demand for addiction services while maintaining—and here is an important point—the present level of services to existing clients. Although there will be a need for these people to have services once we withdraw these illegal highs from the market, you cannot do it at the expense of existing clients. They need to have their ongoing support.

There have been many reports, including out of the Auckland City Mission, that say—and I am sure Mr Sabin will be interested in this—that this could be a bigger problem than methamphetamine. The big worry is that at this point—and this was late in April—“At least 90 percent of clients coming through detox have used synthetic cannabis.” So even then, those who were wanting and needing detox had been those using synthetic cannabis. The person who is quoted in this story is saying it is the hardest thing they have ever come off. So I do think it would be useful for the House if the Minister was able to tell us what services will be available for these people come Thursday. Will we have enough staff, do we need additional resources, and will additional resources be made available to assist people coming off these highly addictive and soon-to-be illegal highs? I would feel some comfort if they were able to be answered, because there is no doubt that for members of the House it will turn from our banning them to what services are available and the stories of people not getting the services they need in different parts of New Zealand.

So it is going to need to be very carefully managed. I think the Minister ought to ask every district health board to provide, as soon as possible, information about what capacity and facilities they will have to be able to provide services to those who are highly addicted and are going to need to be detoxed off these illegal highs. Hopefully the Minister will be able to answer those in the Committee stage.

I want to start by picking up on a comment from Dr Paul Hutchison about the actions that police are apparently taking tonight, going around to stores and advising them what the outcome of this debate will be. I have to say that I am slightly offended by the assumption about my rhetoric in advocating against the interim prohibition.

I sat on the Health Committee that considered the psychoactive substances legislation and was very pleased with the outcome from the select committee process. I have to say that this bill we are considering tonight, the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill, leaves me with very mixed feelings. On the one hand, one of the issues that was raised in the select committee was the matter of animal testing, and members will be very familiar with the Green Party minority view in the select committee report, which sets out the arguments against using evidence from animal testing. It sets out what the alternatives to that are. We went on, in the Committee stage, to advance a Supplementary Order Paper in Mojo Mathers’ name. Unfortunately, it did not gather the necessary majority support at that time. I am very pleased that apparently, I think, all members of the House are now convinced by the arguments for the change that Mojo Mathers proposed at that time.

On the other aspect of the bill, however, I am sure that all members of this House are aware that we oppose, in fact, the effective repeal of the interim regime and replacement of that interim regime with a prohibition regime until the Act takes full effect. So our party probably disagrees, I think, with all other members in the House on this point. I just want to take this opportunity in the second and third readings in this debate to advance our reasons for that and to respectfully disagree with other members.

We believed that that interim regime established by the Act, although very far from perfect, was the best way of approaching the period between the completely unregulated regime that had previously applied and the Act taking full effect. We thought it was the best way to go about that. We think that the prohibition regime that is being substituted for that regime now is the wrong approach and is being taken for the wrong reasons.

Paul Hutchison also spoke about some of the opposition to the Act, in his electorate, being based on wrong information or misleading information. I think that is a bit of a common theme. I have been travelling around the country quite a lot, and people have been saying things to me like “We don’t understand why Parliament chose to legalise synthetic cannabis.” Well, OK. There are two problems with that idea. The first is that these substances were many. They were not a single substance, and the substances that are still legally on the shelf tonight are, in fact, still many. They are different products. They are made up from different compounds. They have different effects. Some of them are very low risk. Some of them may be higher risk. It is a mistake to assume that they are all the same thing or that they all pose the same level of risk. Yet that is the assumption that members of the public have been led to believe in.

The second point, of course, is that Parliament did not legalise the availability of these substances. They were legally available. In fact, Parliament chose to impose a very substantial regulatory regime on the interim regime, and an even more substantial regulatory regime would take effect when the Act comes to be in place completely.

The third thing that I have heard from members of the public who are justifiably concerned about what is occurring out there in the community is the assumption that the harm caused prior to the Act is still being caused. So, for example, there was a national day of action that community organisations held some little while ago. The Television New Zealand piece that preceded it was largely comprised of an interview with someone whose son, tragically, had suffered some very major psychological effects of consuming a psychoactive substance. That consumption had occurred some 3 years prior, and that substance had not been on the shelves for some considerable period. In all of the debate that I have seen about substantial harm still being caused, actually, the debate has related to substances that are no longer available.

Fourthly, there is, I think, a widespread belief that problems have got worse. In fact, I think, as some speakers in the debates on this bill so far have probably alluded to, that is not the case. The number of outlets has drastically reduced. The number of products on the shelves has substantially reduced. Sales have reduced and harm has reduced. I want to quote from the Ministry of Health. Nicola Kean, who is a producer for The Nation programme asked the Ministry of Health, I guess, 2 weeks ago now—so just prior to the announcement of this approach—what the trend is, if any, for people presenting at accident and emergency for problems with psychoactive substances since the law was introduced. The ministry’s answer was: “While it is early days the Authority has received anecdotal reports demonstrating the number of severe presentations to emergency departments has reduced since the Act came in. The Authority monitors approved products received from the Centre for Adverse Reactions Monitoring (CARM), and calls from the public to the National Poisons Centre on a regular basis. These reports also show a reduction in the number of severe issues being reported. Where severe adverse reactions are reported the Authority has the power to act and has already removed products from the market where reports to CARM identified they posed more than a low risk of harm.”

There you are. The Act, as we passed it, was working. The interim regime was reducing harm, and the power existed for any products that were identified as causing harm to be removed from the shelves. And the ministry, the authority, was taking that step. Therefore, it was a bit of a puzzle when I heard Mr Dunne on the television saying that this new regime, an interim prohibition on all of these substances, was being introduced but it was not possible to identify any particular substance associated with reports of adverse reactions. That is unbelievable nonsense. The regime absolutely existed to be able to identify reports of harm with a particular substance. The ministry, the authority, had already been using that fact to suspend products, to take them off the shelves.

The fact is that the community concerns were being driven by increased visibility. That is precisely what we wanted to happen. For every shop still selling these products, at least 20 had been closed down. So although usage had been reduced, it was being concentrated and being made more visible around the surviving outlets. Visibility, access to treatment, is precisely what we want. I absolutely understand those community concerns, but the way that the Government should have responded to those concerns was with better quality information for communities, better quality information for local bodies, better access to information about treatment, and better resourcing for treatment services. Communities deserved leadership, and, instead, what we have is a knee-jerk response that, although popular, is based not on fact but on populism. Thank you.

It is no surprise that the Green Party is not actually voting against the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill; they are abstaining. I actually think that the New Zealand public deserves better than that. The Greens are either for it or against it. To sit somewhere in the middle on an issue that has concerned and affected so many people in this country—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: The member’s been on both sides of the issue.

Well, OK, let me pick that up, Mr Mallard. I actually think that the starting point for this legislation is that no drug use is the safest drug use. No one forces people out there to take mind-altering substances of any sort, all right? People should all be grown up enough to know that when we take a mind-altering substance—surprise, surprise—it will alter our mind. For some people that will be substantial, and for some people that will lead to addiction. The legality of a substance will never alter the chemical nature of a substance.

So I think the starting point is that not only in this House should we acknowledge and accept the issues around drugs but also the populace of New Zealand and those who choose to ingest those drugs should do that too. One could argue that once people are addicted then possibly there is an excuse. They take because they cannot not take, but the reality is that they have made a conscious choice to take them in the first place. So there is actually a responsibility in this that should be shared by all of us, not just parliamentarians.

The second point I would say is that because of the ability of the drug manufacturers—or those I like to think of as drug peddlers, actually—to beat the legislation through altering chemical compounds, the starting point of this new approach is actually to put the onus on to those people who are manufacturing to show that the drugs are low risk. And what does low risk actually mean? Actually, low risk will mean that it is something that is not capable of causing addiction, because we know that addiction is harmful. Therefore, it must be something that is not capable of stimulating sufficient dopamine, or neurotransmitters of that nature, for people to get withdrawal symptoms when they stop using them. So, therefore, by definition it should be something that is not capable of giving a high and, therefore, not capable of creating an addiction.

So what we should end up with here is drug peddlers who spend countless millions of dollars and a long period of time to end up with a product that will not make people high and, therefore, will be low risk. So I actually think that this legislation has merit. It is a legitimate track to take. I just want to remind us all that the difficulties that this legislation and that New Zealand has been traversing is pioneering sort of stuff. There is no one way to reach the promised land, I guess, of eliminating the harm that drugs cause, but we all have a responsibility in this, and this Government is taking its responsibility seriously and is doing something about it.

I rise again on behalf of New Zealand First to support the passing of the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill, which will see synthetic cannabis and other untested substances removed from sale in our country. We are absolutely delighted to hear that the police and the enforcement officers are out visiting shops at this point in time and ensuring that vendors are aware of changes as a result of this legislation.

New Zealand First hopes that the call for specialised support for families and for those addicted to these substances will be listened to. The current mental health and addiction counselling services are not set up to deal with the huge problems that we anticipate will be out there. Support has to be provided for those who are caught up in this synthetic drugs crisis. Resources must be made available for young people and their parents. We know that these chemical substances are very difficult to get off. They are highly addictive.

It is very important to ensure that drugs are subject to lengthy testing. We do not want to see any come back on to the market that have not gone through the whole rigorous testing regime. On Campbell Live tonight it was interesting to hear a scientist who helped develop synthetic cannabis say that it was never meant to be consumed by humans—very interesting, I thought, because, really, who else was going to consume it? So it was interesting.

We need to ensure that any changes to these products incur huge financial disincentives for the manufacturers. At the moment, they are making millions while they are putting New Zealanders at risk. In New Zealand First we stand by our original position, which is that these products really need to be banned, and this legislation effectively does that. So we are very pleased to be supporting this bill tonight.

I rise to support the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. The reason is very simple. This is a very short call but I will say a few words. As an immigrant from China, I was not familiar with legal highs simply because legal highs are illegal in China. We have now heard about all sorts of problems relating to legal highs. When we came to New Zealand, one key reason was to live in a good, safer environment—particularly safer communities. So this amendment bill will provide a better and safer community for our young people. That is why we will support the bill. Thank you.

I want to start by doing something sort of slightly unusual, and that is to compliment the Minister of Health. It is not something I have done that often, but I think it is important to say that the world has improved a lot since Associate Minister of Health Peter Dunne was packed off to Bali and this Minister took charge of this particular policy area. A degree of rationality has come into the debate. We have stopped having the embarrassing appearances on Campbell Live when the Associate Minister goes to places where legal highs are sold but he has no understanding of the communities that are involved.

I also want to compliment the Minister of Health on the consultation on this legislation, the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill, and the fact that he worked hard to get it to go back and forth to the point where an overwhelming majority in Parliament are prepared to vote for it and no one is prepared to vote against it.

The other person whom I would like to thank for his work in this area is David Farrar, because what has become absolutely clear to us over the last couple of weeks is that there has been a massive change of view following the questions that have been asked in Mr Farrar’s polling of people around New Zealand as to their attitudes to these legal highs and also to the testing of them on animals, which are being asked, I understand, both in the quantitative research and also in the focus groups that the National Party is running, I think, four times a week. You know, I want to say that it is good in this particular case, and, in fact, generally, that the National Party is working hard to understand the limits of the tolerance of New Zealanders and to accept—and I accept, and I accept with regret—the fact that as a Parliament we got the original legislation wrong. We got it a bit wrong.

If Tony Ryall had been in charge of the regulatory system that went with the original legislation, then the legal highs that are being sold today and will not be sold on Thursday would have been not gone by lunchtime but certainly gone by Christmas. Any competent Minister would have set up the regulatory regime. Peter Dunne worked on this legislation for years. He worked on it. He had his little moment—not moment; he had his year—of problems, and he had the leaking of the report. He had a bit of time off, but he came back and he had responsibility for the regulation in this area. And did he do his work? He did not. As recently as 15 April—15 April—he wrote a letter to me. He probably wrote one to everyone else as well, because we do not have a special or close relationship, Mr Dunne and I. He was saying what good legislation it was and to give it a chance. Well, how wrong he was.

Again, I want to congratulate David Farrar and his protégé, the Prime Minister, on getting to the point of understanding what Kiwis think. What having this legislation did was allow us to focus on the people who were using these products. They were widely and generally available, but, in my particular case, it was only when there was a store 30 metres from my electorate office and I saw the queues there before school, waiting for the shop to open, that I really understood the addictive nature of this stuff. That is how I got to understand the fact that in Naenae so many people—mainly, but not only, young; I have seen mainly, but not only, young—were being affected by it. Seeing the kids in the pushchairs being pushed in and out of these places by their parents, and seeing the transactions that were occurring within metres of the shop between people who had an ID that said they were 18—although I must say that some of them did not look like it to me—and people who were clearly much younger than that age, and the exchanges, the drug deals, that were going on there, was shocking.

I am not absolutely aware of the sort of kawa or the protocols, and I do not want to breach anything that is confidential from a select committee that you, Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch, and I sit on, but I might say, without referring to that, that generally we got to the point in the discussions on this where I think we got a better understanding of the dangers of it. We got from the officials a defence of the testing regime but a defence that was not convincing—a defence that promoted the position of Mr Dunne but was not convincing, I think, to parliamentarians.

I came to this debate not as an expert in the drug regulation area and not as someone who has had any experience in the health policy area—I think the only experience I have had in that was discussion with Heather Simpson when I declined to be the Minister of Health in 2005—so I respect the knowledge of a number of colleagues who know much more about this. But what I have been for many years is an owner of pets and, in particular, an owner of dogs. I came to this issue as a result of the representations that were made to me by my constituents and other people from around Wellington who pointed out what could happen under this legislation.

Without going into any detailed family matters, I have a close relative who is actively involved in medical research, and that involves, on occasions, animals. I do not think it is wrong. I think there are occasions when it is necessary, and where people are working in research with therapeutic outcomes, I think that that can, in fact, be vital. I hope that in the future, as computer modelling moves on, animal testing will not be necessary. I know that it is substantially reduced, but if it is for a good purpose, then I think that it is important that it occurs for now. But there can be no excuse for killing animals for the purpose of boosting the profits of dealers in recreational drugs. There is no moral argument for that. To say that it is OK for rats and not for rabbits, as the Prime Minister tried to do for a week or so—now we understand that Cabinet took that decision and then reversed it—is wrong.

We have come, I think, to a good position on this. I regret my vote for the original legislation and that I did not understand the legislation and I did not understand the requirement to have a competent Minister administering it when I voted for it, but we have got to the point now where we have made some progress.

Bill read a second time.

In Committee