Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill

I earlier presented to the House a legislative statement on the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill. I move, That the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill be now read a second time.

As we have heard in the debate already, this bill amends the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 and the Psychoactive Substances Act 2013. As this House is already aware, this bill ensures that those who are providing drug-checking services at festivals can do so without the risk of criminal prosecution. Also, those who are hosting events at which drug-testing services are taking place can also host those events without the risk of criminal prosecution.

The way this regime works is that the Director-General of Health can designate an outfit to be a drug-testing service. The director-general can attach conditions to that permit to do so, and we expect it won’t take long to put that sort of machinery in place.

I listened very carefully—although I wasn’t in the House—to the contributions from the members opposite in this debate, and I listened very carefully to hear an argument about why we should not in this day and age, knowing about young people’s access to illicit substances, be taking measures to keep young people safe, because that’s what this legislation is about. I heard the Hon Simon Bridges make his speech about being soft on drugs, and all the rest of it. So he dusted off those tired old tropes, but didn’t make a great deal of sense.

I heard—let me see. I heard Dr Shane Reti, who brings, of course, considerable experience and knowledge to just this as a health matter. Not only that, but as an MP based in Whangārei, he will know the success of the Te Ara Oranga project up there, which is the joint venture between the DHB, the police, and others, in dealing with the scourge of meth in that area up there, and he knows that the benefit and the success of that approach is that we don’t judge people. We see people who are afflicted with addiction to meth and we offer them a health pathway to deal with it, rather than criminalising them. It’s supported by the police, it’s supported by the medical sector up there, and it is achieving great success. It’s so good, in fact, that we’re now seeking to roll it out in other parts of the country.

That is what a sensible approach to drug use and those who have problematic drug use looks like. You don’t judge the person, you don’t judge them for possessing and consuming; you deal with the issue. For those who are pushing it, for those who trade on the misery of others: different story—and we continue to do what we can to stop that kind of evil trade. But for those who are using, often people resort to psychoactive substances, to mind-altering substances for a reason. It often relates to other things in their lives, trauma in their lives, and those sorts of things—that’s what happens. So perpetually criminalising people in that situation is not an answer.

You would have thought that after decades of what we’ve done, we’d realise that that, in fact, is the response, and so I was intrigued. In fact, I was interested to hear Dr Shane Reti’s contribution, but I don’t think, with all due respect to him, that it addressed the issue that this bill is seeking to address, and, indeed, when we get on to a long-term solution, what that will ultimately address.

I heard some criticisms of the changes made last year and whether or not they’re working. They are legitimate questions to raise, and a review of the way the new provisions of the Misuse of Drugs Act is working is under way and we want to know exactly how that’s being operated on the front line and the extent to which it’s making a difference to people. But that is not an answer to the challenge that we have of a festival season about to be upon us, young people getting their tickets to the various events around the country and going into an environment where we know as a matter of fact there will be illicit substances, and where we are saying to young people, “You don’t know. You’re going to take that risk and we don’t care.” Well, actually, that’s not the right response.

If people are going to make that choice—it’s not a choice I would make. But if they’re going to make that choice and we know there is risk—and, in fact, even the member Simeon Brown acknowledged that and said, “These are dangerous. These are dangerous drugs.” He knows that; he just doesn’t want to do anything about it. He just doesn’t want to help young people. I don’t know why members opposite don’t want to help young people and make their lives—their more challenging lives—safer for them. They know it’s unsafe. They know that young people are taking risks, but they don’t want to do anything about it. They know there is an easy step that could be taken—and this is it—that would help young people and keep them safe. That’s the disappointing thing about the contributions we’ve heard opposite.

We heard the Hon Dr Nick Smith dust off his speech that he’s given about 53 times in the last Parliament—

💬 Kieran McAnulty: Every year he’s been here.

—and then I heard this long, slow thudding sound, actually, as he spoke, and I realised it was the leadership of the National Party in the headquarters and the strategists banging their heads against the concrete wall, thinking “Not again—not again!” Nick Smith, who did not speak to the bill, but talked about anything but—he talked about another bill that’s on its way through Parliament, which is the roadside saliva testing of drug users, and complained that his Government was unable to do that.

So no contribution at all, a sort of moralising, judgmental—and at some point, I suspect, in the next three years, members opposite will say, “Why did we lose so many votes in the 2020 election? Why did we lose so many seats?” Some bright spark amongst them—because I know they are there—will say, “You know what? We’re actually out of touch. We actually don’t know how New Zealanders live their lives any more. It’s time we learnt.”

I know it’s early in this parliamentary term, and I know I’m their political opposite and I shouldn’t really be trying to help them, but you cannot help but have a sense of pity. And we saw it trotted out tonight: more of the same. I just despair for those citizens who are represented by National MPs, who must also now be tearing their hair out, thinking “Really? We put them back in again?”

So I just simply invite members opposite—I know it’s hard. I know it’s hard, and it’s been difficult times, but I think that if we just focus on the issues, there are risks. There are risks that some in our community are taking. We are not going to stop young people experimenting, trying new things, trying other substances—we’re not going to stop them doing it. But what we can do is keep them safe, and this is a measure that keeps them safe. The members opposite know, and they can describe those people as breaking the law and as criminals as long as they like, but they’re not going to change the patterns of young people of the last 50 years or 60 years or 70 years.

At some point, it’s actually the role of the nation’s conservative parties, and conservative parties around the world, to accept reality. That’s actually what defines a conservative party. They’re so bedded in the reality of today that they sometimes forget how to make progress. But, actually, on this issue—on this issue—I would have thought it was time for them to accept the reality that this stuff is out there, young people are using it, they’re taking risks, we know those risks, and we can do something about it.

For those who say, “Well, we’ve never had a death”, actually, it was only a term or so ago that members opposite—and Simeon Brown was one of them—were lecturing us all about the peril of synthetic cannabis and saying that we had to do more about that because that was compromising lives. All of a sudden, he’s changed his tune. His factual basis has changed, and there is no risk any more—people aren’t in danger using substances and chemicals that they don’t know the origins of. Well, actually, you know, sometimes you’ve actually just got to focus on the facts. You’ve got to accept reality and you’ve got to say that where there is risk and we can do something about it, then maybe we should help to mitigate that risk.

Our moral duty in this Parliament is not to stand there moralising about citizens of New Zealand and it is not to stand in judgment of the citizens of New Zealand, but it is to accept that where we see, on public policy grounds, that there is activity that is putting people at risk, we take the practical step of mitigating that risk. That is what this bill does, and, once again, I commend it to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. You know, listening to that speech I’ve got no idea why the Labour Party rolled Andrew Little. I mean, you know, he’s a charmer! He’s just such a charmer! He didn’t condescend us at all! He didn’t condescend us at all! He didn’t talk down to us! He didn’t moralise! No, no—he’s a charming individual! And I say in all seriousness to Andrew Little, the shame of it is, actually, he and Chlöe Swarbrick, dare I say it, have come along to this House with that tone that’s quite personal, putting down members on the other side rather than actually genuinely engaging in the argument and the issues.

I’ll tell you why I think that is. I think the real reason for that is they know what they’re doing is trying to come in on a zeitgeist and a feeling but actually without the evidence, the hard evidence, and the reality of the studies, and what is happening, and the long-term effects of this bill—without any of those things on their side. I think that’s why actually we saw the fun and games from Andrew Little. We get the same tone from Chlöe Swarbrick and from other members of the Labour Party because, actually, the arguments aren’t on their side. They’re smiling right now, they’re laughing, but, actually, they don’t refer to any studies. Kieran McAnulty, give me one right now. He can’t. He can’t. I actually wonder if he can even give us the title of this bill—

💬 Kieran McAnulty: Who’s “Kieran McNulty”?

I don’t know. Whatever his name is—the list MP who’s now an electorate MP, whatever. [Interruption] Yeah, and congratulations.

But, actually, on this side of the House we come to this debate armed with the facts, and, you know, it seems quite clear to us use will go up. You see, we heard from Andrew Little and from others. We heard from Angie Warren-Clark. Her reason for supporting this bill she says, and the Labour Party, is she wants to know her kids will be safe. The problem is she won’t know that through this bill. She won’t know that and so that’s a real problem. People are going to say to other people, “You know what, actually Parliament said it’s safe. We’ve had this test.”, so use will go up and the studies show—

Chlöe Swarbrick: That’s not what happens.

Chlöe Swarbrick says that’s not what happens. Well, I think that’s absolutely what happens. You go along to a concert, a party, and the guys next to you say, “Come on, take one of these. Why won’t you?” and you say, “No, look, it’s illegal.” “But, look, even Parliament says this test is safe. That’s what Angie Warren-Clark said. That’s actually what she said.” That’s the signal we send. Use will go up. Actually, in the only study referred to in this House on what’s happened to use when pill testing has been legalised in the United Kingdom—well, what happened? Use went up—right—from 1.2 to 1.3 to 1.7. By the way, deaths went up as well.

That’s the second point. If use goes up, harm goes up. I don’t think, actually, that’s a particularly difficult, controversial statement to make. And it has to be made, because for all the sneering that we’ve heard on the other side, all the mockery of the good-faith positions that the National Party are taking, if the pill is tested and has ecstasy, that’s where the harm is. It’s the ecstasy. Actually, it’s not the impurities. It’s not the other things. By and large, in the overwhelming majority of cases that are harming and killing, it is the ecstasy. And we’ve seen that again from the very clear, hard data of the hundreds of fatalities in Australia. So there is a false security that comes from going along with this.

I mean, the third point really is this. We’re rushing this. We’re rushing this. If the evidence is as I say it is, it’s shameful. But, actually—and Chlöe Swarbrick tries to make light of this point—if it is at any level equivocal and if she’s so confident, despite the fact she didn’t refer to a single scientific survey or study in her last contribution, if she’s so confident, why doesn’t it go to a select committee so these things can be thrashed out?

Chlöe Swarbrick: Stop lying, Simon.

So civil society, so the scientists—point of order, Mr Speaker.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Point of order, the Hon Simon Bridges.

The member just said to me to stop lying. I take offence at that.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Responding to the point of order.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, no, no, no—you sit down. I didn’t hear the comment myself. I will take the member’s word. If the member Chlöe Swarbrick did use that term, she knows it’s out of order. She should stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Responding to the point of order, Mr Speaker.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, you either stand, withdraw, and apologise, or you haven’t done it.

Chlöe Swarbrick: I stand, withdraw, and apologise. Mr Speaker, point of order.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Point of order, and if this in any way questions the ruling, be careful.

Chlöe Swarbrick: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Could I please request your guidance on how best to approach you?

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, that’s not a point of order.

Chlöe Swarbrick: An absolute mischaracterisation.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: That’s not a point of order. No, it’s not.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Looking forward to debate. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

I was just saying, the point is this: if Chlöe Swarbrick is so confident of the evidence, why isn’t this going to a select committee? As we rush this through this Parliament as quickly as any law in any country in the world can be passed, we haven’t done the serious harm-reduction work that needs to be done. Andrew Little says, “Look, you know, don’t judge this. Deal with the issue. Don’t judge people who take drugs; deal with the underlying issues.” The Government hasn’t done that. It’s reaching for this non - evidence based, unscientific bill that’s just trying to capture the sentiment, the feeling, the feel-good feeling out there rather than having done the hard mahi.

Fourth, I say, this bill is part of a wider agenda that’s soft-headed and soft on drugs. And we saw that from Mr Little’s mouth. He was quite clear himself. He said, and I’m paraphrasing, but this is in his first contribution, “It’s a health matter. The fact is some take it. We can carry on criminalising or accept it.” That’s what he said. The Labour Party, the Government of the day, is accepting hard illicit drug use in New Zealand. And then he said this: “It’s not a criminal matter. It’s a health matter.”

💬 Rachel Boyack: It is.

And the member over there, the member for Nelson, says it is—it’s not a criminal matter; it’s a health matter. Except they’re wrong—it is a criminal matter. The Misuse of Drugs Act makes quite clear it is criminal to take and consume class C, B, and, in this case, ecstasy, an A drug. And the issue there is this. You say, “Well, it doesn’t matter. Why are you going on about that?” Well, because that’s the honest truth of what Andrew Little says and thinks he wants to decriminalise. The actual agenda here is to decriminalise, except what he knows is we’ve just had a referendum on a much lighter drug, cannabis, and New Zealanders wouldn’t stand for it. And so because they know they don’t have any mandate—in fact, quite the opposite for decriminalising wholesale drugs in this country—what they do is through the side door in a de facto way, and they did it in the last Parliament and they do it in this Parliament: they keep winding along with their soft-headed, soft on drugs approach, decriminalising. Andrew Little’s true view is we can carry on criminalising or accept—and he accepts—that it’s not a criminal matter; it’s a health matter. Of course it’s a health matter. But, actually, we need to take these things seriously and the Government clearly isn’t.

Minister Little also said parents want to know their kids are safe and I dealt with that, really, when we talked about the point Angie Warren-Clark’s making. But Parliament needs to face up to the fact—and I say it again—that this bill won’t make young Kiwis safe. It sends the wrong message. It’ll ensure more drug use. It gives a false confidence that they’ll be safe when they won’t because the ecstasy is what in the vast majority of cases kills.

I want to come back to Chlöe Swarbrick’s contribution. She berated us on the evidence and, as I said, apart from referring me to a website, she doesn’t refer to any case studies, evidence, surveys, and now I’m sure she’s on Google. She’s got—

Chlöe Swarbrick: I seek leave to make a personal statement.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Look, thank you. That member will resume her seat and will wait until Simon Bridges’ speech is concluded.

All there is, frankly, from every single speaker on the other side is a bill, is law, by anecdote. What they feel real life is and what they think works—they impute bad faith on the National Party but, actually, we come to this Parliament with good faith. We put forward what we think are serious arguments and serious views that we genuinely hold.

I want to finish with something Nick Smith said, which I thought was a phenomenal point. There hasn’t been a single death from party pills in this country at dance parties and the like—the things that we’re talking about here today—so far. And yet this is what we’re spending all our time on today. And yet over a hundred die from drug-driving and this Parliament is on go-slow on that. If that’s not posturing, if that’s not playing politics rather than dealing with the real harms and the real issues on drug use, well, I don’t know what is. And so the National Party’s going to continue to oppose this and do all we can to make sure this goes through the night, because what’s happening tonight is wrong.

Madam Speaker, I seek leave to make a personal statement.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): OK, thank you.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: My understanding of the convention of the personal statement is that I cannot use this time or this space to, obviously, attack the Opposition, and I have no intention of doing so. However, I think that it is really important—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Sorry. Order! Sorry to interrupt—the member will resume her seat. Sorry, I’ve very much got my training wheels on this evening, and so, in terms of procedure, I must put leave to the House for the member to make a personal statement. Is there any objection to that course of action? Yes, there is. OK.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Reading this bill this afternoon brought back some memories of my time working in emergency departments at the weekends. Often we’d see young people coming in having ingested an unknown substance. I think the issue was having to spend time with those young people with often quite frightening symptoms and working out what it is that they’d taken and how best to look after them over the next few hours or days that they were in hospital. It made me reflect on the two options we’ve got in front of us: one is to have drug testing at festivals and other events, and the other is not to do so.

Just looking at the New Zealand Drug Foundation website, it describes what actually happens if you do go to a festival and turn up to have your drugs or substances tested. What it says is you will receive a one-on-one service, and it takes about 15 minutes. So what will happen is trained volunteers will take a very small sample of your substance, and they’ll divide it into three piles. Two of those piles are tested with reagents, and what that does is it’s got acids and it makes colour changes if certain substances are present. Then one of the piles is tested with a spectrometer and what it does is it compares your sample against other known samples of known substances and it can detect the presence of unexpected substances, adulterants, or additives. Then what you get in that 15 minutes is you get a report, and you also get some harm reduction advice. As I was mentioning in my previous contribution, about 20 percent of people’s substances don’t turn out to be what they thought they were and another 11 percent have got additives that were completely unexpected. So then it’s your choice whether you go ahead and you take that substance or not. In many cases, if there’s a difference in what you’re expecting, you don’t take the substance—harm reduction and issue averted.

If you actually, though, think about what happens if you don’t go down that route—you can do a quick google and if you put “MDMA” into the search engine, what comes up is a range of headlines. For example: “13 hospitalised in Christchurch after taking drugs they thought were MDMA”; “Substance behind mass hospitalisations was three times stronger than MDMA”; “Dodgy batch suspected in Christchurch Hospital emergency admissions spike over the weekend.” And they go on to talk about the spike of cases where nine patients turned up in the emergency department over a very short period of time, patients with agitated state, dangerously high blood pressure, elevated heart rate, and the health team was so concerned that they started to put out warnings talking about how serious this stuff could be, talking about the fact that permanent damage to the heart, long-term mental health problems, severe kidney failure, heart attacks, and seizures may occur. So it’s just weighing up 15 minutes—basically getting your pills tested to find out if they contain what you thought they did, versus the risk of turning up to a hospital department with long-term side effects potentially on the radar. So I think what this bill does today is make sure that our young people can be kept safe over summer when they start to attend their festivals, if they do choose to take drugs and have those tested.

But in the longer term, Andrew Little, Minister, will be going through and putting a more detailed proposal through to Cabinet so that over the next year we can go through and create the legislative framework we need that’s got more time. Thank you, I commend this to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure, in the legislative process, to then have the report back from the select committee, and this is that report. Yes, this is the report from the select committee—because there was none; because there’s been no select committee process. I’ll talk to that in this hurried legislation that’s going to give us problems in the future—exactly as to what some of those problems will be. I want to identify five of them.

The first is we’ve heard the statement made that the country is not less safe after pill testing. Well, we’d make the point that that false sense of security that young people may have may well indeed make us less safe.

Also, there was some discussion around decriminalisation and the health approach. No one actually wanted to discuss the facts we put on the table from the Official Information Act request—the failed decriminalisation health approach with the Misuse of Drugs Act and the fact that that health approach is just a text message, as I alluded to earlier.

Now, Te Ara Oranga was commented on. That is indeed a very good Northland programme. It’s actually a methamphetamine reduction programme modelled on the Matrix—it’s “Matrix-lite”—which is an intensive outpatient programme, fundamentally. But, quite in contrast to what was commented here, the Matrix programme, in its full implementation, actually has a urine-testing, or a drug-testing, component as well, and it goes like this: you urine test or you drug test; if you’re positive, there’s a consequence: you’re kicked out of the programme. This is quite different. You have a test. If you’re positive, you give the drugs back. I don’t see quite how you could map those two programmes together. By the way, the magic in Te Ara Oranga is what’s called the pouwhenua, which are the lived-experience community people who have often had a drug experience themselves, and so they’re excellent teachers. If you speak with the people there, that’s actually the magic to Te Ara Oranga.

David Seymour emphasised it was a funding issue. I found that kind of interesting. The principle would seem to be that if it needs Government funding, then it’s not good legislation, but, if it doesn’t, it’s OK to pass. I hope he’ll reflect on that and think if that’s really what he wanted to convey.

I think, though, as is often the case with this Government and with hurried legislation, you can hang them with their own policies. I think the policy that’s missing here from the table is a regulatory impact statement, and it shows the hurried nature of this legislation. Let me read a few parts from the departmental disclosure statement: 2.3. “Were any regulatory impact statements provided to inform the policy decisions that led to this Bill? NO”, and, as it says here, there was insufficient time to revisit parts of this question.

If we look at part 2.4. “Has further impact analysis become available for any aspects of the policy to be given effect by this Bill? NO”. We had a member over here saying the evidence is not controversial, it’s incontrovertible, it’s really clear, and there’s lots of it, and here we are with their own departmental disclosure statement saying, no, the evidence isn’t available—no, it hasn’t been done. Remember, this is the Government’s own policy.

3.3. “Has advice been provided to the Attorney-General on whether any provisions of this bill appear to limit any of the rights and freedoms affirmed in the New Zealand Bill or Rights Act 1990? NO”.

3.6. “External consultation”—“Has there been any external consultation on the policy to be given effect”. “YES. The broad policy has been discussed with KnowYourStuff, a drug checking organisation.” Is that the limit of external consultation on this bill? KnowYourStuff—do you think that could possibly be a biased piece of advice in this consultation?

3.7. “Have the policy details to be given effect by this bill been otherwise tested or assessed in any way to ensure the Bill’s provisions are workable and complete? NO”.

With the Government’s own departmental disclosure statement, they, fundamentally, say we’ve been out to an external organisation who is in keeping with the intent of this bill—there’s no real balance to that. Do they think it can be deployed? Has it been tested in any way to show it can be deployed? No. Are there external articles, external provisions? They make a comment that Victoria University of Wellington is due to come up with some policy, but, at this point in time, no, there’s not particularly any evidence that they can bring to this.

By the way, it’s dated 30 November—so dated yesterday. It makes a mockery of all the evidence that was available and how incontrovertible it was. No, it wasn’t. With their own departmental disclosure statement, it says there’s no evidence, we don’t know if it’s going to work, but we’re just going to do it anyway.

So I think, really, that just adds weight to the point that we’re making: hurried legislation. We remain unchanged from our first views in the first reading. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, and it’s a pleasure to see you sitting in the Chair. I look forward to working with you this Parliament.

The Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill is an omnibus bill, and it amends two Acts: the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 and the Psychoactive Substances Act. This bill does not change the status of any drugs, and it does not make any changes to possession or supply. It does none of those things. These things stay in place. What it does do is enable a regime of testing to support the safer use of these drugs.

We would hope that at the time that those drugs are being tested, the conversation with the person having that drug tested would help them make a decision not to take it. They are still going to take these drugs, or if they do, we know prohibition does not work. We know that harm is occurring, and it is, therefore, a good bill and a useful bill, and I commend this bill to the House.

E te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. As we have gone about debating this bill through its first reading tonight and now into the second reading, and the theatrics from the National Party on the notion of a select committee, I’ve been working through in my head how best to articulate the history that brought us to this point. I want to begin by referring to a situation in our relatively recent history.

So I want all MPs to put themselves in this situation. There are hundreds if not thousands of New Zealanders who are contracting HIV/AIDS from intravenous drug use. Heroin usage is becoming rampant throughout the country and we know, based on international research and what is being recommended by domestic experts and professionals and academics and those who work in addiction services, that the best way to deal with this spiralling out of control issue of HIV/AIDS being contracted amongst intravenous drug users is to legalise needle exchange services.

Well, we did just that in 1987. We were the first country in the world to do just that, and as a result we have amongst the lowest rate of HIV/AIDS amongst intravenous drug users in the entire OECD. But if that same decision were confronting the National Party of today they would be standing in the way of that drug harm reduction procedure in the same way that they are standing in the way, or at the very least attempting to, given that they are a small minority in this House—they would be standing in the way of it in the same way that they are today.

The National Party also keep riling themselves up about the notion of consultation. And on this I’d ask them where they were in October of last year when I presented to the Health Committee—which the National Party was supposed to make up approximately half of—a petition on behalf of 6,200 New Zealanders, those New Zealanders that they claim to represent, calling for the legalisation of drug-checking services at festivals ahead of the summer festival season. Yet they decided to leave empty seats and not turn up. Yet here they are yet again railing against the lack of opportunity to engage in this debate in a thorough way that they pretend to want to.

This isn’t at all about anything to do with any form of progress or conservativism at least as far as I can tell. It’s just that the National Party want to take a position of opposition. They just want to stand in the way of the inevitable direction—

💬 David Seymour: Simon Bridges has crossed the floor!

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: —towards harm reduction. And Simon Bridges was also asking about other forms of research—where else this has been happening. So I’d refer the National Party to the Netherlands, which has been doing legal drug-checking services since 1992. I’d refer them to Austria, which has been doing it since 1997; to Switzerland, which has been doing it since 2001; to Spain and Portugal since 1999; and to the UK, which they invoke in quite a cheeky way, having done so since 2013. And here I’d like to give them another spin on the research that they are dubiously putting forward through a very specific, very niche, and very interesting lens, which is that study from the University of Durham in 2018, published in the International Journal of Drug Policy, that showed demonstrably that in the years subsequent to the implementation of legal drug-checking services provided by The Loop, which they invoke, there has been a 95 percent reduction in hospital admissions for those who have used illicit substances.

Simon Bridges also spoke about me not using research or evidence, and I sought to respond to that point by way of a point of order or otherwise. I understand that the processes of this House do not enable such things. However, what was so frustrating about that is that we have multiple National Party MPs standing up tonight and saying that they want to do this by virtue of good faith. I think they demonstrated just how little good faith there genuinely is in a debate like this, when they are willing to stand up and say the complete opposite of the reality, which is that I have, multiple times over, referred them through to six years’ worth of domestic research out of KnowYourStuffNZ.

I have also referred them to the New South Wales chief coronial report, which came out after more than a dozen young people had died. We also had the Hon Simon Bridges saying, “There hasn’t been a death yet. Waah!” You know, what are we supposed to do, Simon? Are we supposed to wait until somebody does die? Because that’s exactly what they’ve done, and that’s the impasse that they have seen in New South Wales. Over 13 young people have died in the past year. The Chief Coroner has reported on top of multiple coronial reports that legal drug-checking services will save lives and they need to do it. Yet you have the Premier of New South Wales saying exactly the same things that the National Party is saying right now.

So it would seem as though it doesn’t matter if we have a death count or not. In fact, the National Party just don’t want to see this change occur for the same rationale that would have seen them opposing the changes to legalise needle exchange services in 1987, which has resulted in us having the lowest number of HIV/AIDS amongst intravenous drug users in the OECD.

I don’t know what that is, when you are unwilling to engage with the research and the data on that level, but purely ideological, purely retention of the status quo for sake of holding on, clinging on to some life raft of how the world works. Well, I just really, really hope that those National Party MPs that I know for a fact want to vote for this tonight are really looking into their consciences. I really, really appeal to those MPs, including some of those who I know sit along the front bench, right now to really think about what you believe in, think about the research, the data, the evidence, your past statements, the conversations that you have had, the tents that you’ve gone into with Wendy from KnowYourStuff.

And on that point, on this second reading tonight, I also want to say thank you to those who have stood up constantly—Wendy Ellison from KnowYourStuff—despite constantly being shot down, talked down to, patronised for continuing to persist in building the evidence base that is bringing this to the House tonight, that is enabling us to pass a measure that will reduce harm.

Just finally, if I may—because it seems as though many National Party MPs who are speaking about this tonight have not engaged with this process and have no idea how it occurs—when you go in to get your drugs tested at these currently legal grey area drug-checking services, the first thing they say to you is “Don’t take drugs. Do not take these drugs. The best way to reduce harm is to not take drugs at all.” That is far from the green light that the National Party Opposition is mythologising tonight and, to be honest, I’m just thoroughly gutted. I mean, I’d hoped that with this new term, we’d have the opportunity for some good faith, evidence-based debates, but it would appear as though the likes of the Hon Nick Smith are just really keen to lean back on old behaviour.

I am incredibly proud to have worked alongside those grassroots activists, those who have been pushing to build the evidence basis for the past three years, to bring legislation like this to the House tonight. And I hope that it definitely leads to a complete repeal and replacement of the absolute demonstrably unworkable Misuse of Drugs Act 1975. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in support of the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill. I support the bill’s primary objective, which is this: to reduce the harm of illegal substances by allowing drug and substance checking services to operate legally in New Zealand. It’s pretty straightforward. This is not a debate about whether drugs should be legal or illegal, nor is it a moral question on whether people should or should not take drugs. Drugs do exist and, even though they’re illegal, people do take them.

This bill doesn’t seek to change whether these drugs are illegal. This legislation simply seeks to clarify a legal uncertainty over whether testing services provided can operate or not. It will make it legal for someone to handle illegal drugs for a few minutes, simply to test them.

It might not feel like summer’s coming any time soon to Wellington, but as we head into summer, as happens every summer, young people, school kids, and university students will head out to festivals and music concerts all around New Zealand. Many of these young people will be presented with illegal substances. Most parents would hope that their kids wouldn’t be the ones taking these illegal substances, especially when they don’t know what’s in them, but it does happen. These are not bad kids. Young people just take risks—some with adverse consequences. No one wants to be the loved one of a tragic fatality that could have been avoided. This bill will reduce a lot of that risk. Passing this bill will reduce harm from drug use.

The present situation is that people are likely to consume substances with less information than they could have about its potential to do them harm because the origin, composition, and toxicity of the substance is unknown. I think it’s useful to acknowledge, when we’re discussing how to address this issue, what actually happens now. Drug testing already occurs, but it does so in a grey area. The testing sites are used, but they’re far and few between—operating through volunteers unable to touch the drugs themselves, rather allowing young people to use the drug machines and avoid touching them because they face the risk of prosecution through possession or supply.

This simple law change makes that operation clear. It will take away that uncertainty for a drug-test site, gives a person better information about what drugs and substances they’re using, and allows a person to make a potentially life-saving decision not to consume it. I believe that this change is needed and the ACT Party will support this bill. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Kia ora e te Mana Whakawā. Thank you for the opportunity to take the second contribution to this bill. I want to acknowledge the last speaker who just sat down, Brooke van Velden. It’s refreshing to hear a youthful voice from that side of the House.

The Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill—what it also does is that if the concert organisers find substance in a certain pill that is dangerous to the population, what they can do is publish on their social media warning signs that this drug is circulating at this festival, and that would warn festival goers not to use that particular drug. That is something that this bill would do, be a warning sign at festivals of the dangerous harm of whatever is circulating at that festival. I commend this bill to the House.

We are at the second reading of this very first bill of this Parliament, and our Standing Orders tell us this is where we talk about the evidence that we heard at the select committee. This is the debate where we look at and consider every one of the clauses, and members will be thinking, well, what did happen in the select committee? What evidence did we hear from officials and experts? The answer is absolutely diddlysquat, because the very first bill that this Parliament is passing under urgency hasn’t gone anywhere near a select committee, and it’s impossible for any member to have a thoughtful contribution.

Now, the job of this Parliament is to scrutinise legislation. I know we’ve got many new members in the House. It’s a 34-clause bill. Here’s my question: how many members in the House have read the 34 clauses?

Chlöe Swarbrick: Me.

Chlöe has. I’ve got three. So here we are, a Parliament of 120; I can see at least 15 new members who are voting for a bill and they haven’t even bothered to read it. Are they taking their responsibilities as members of this House appropriately when they are prepared to just nod and agree and slam a piece of legislation through all three stages when the bill has only been introduced to the House today?

Now, I’ve been once bitten, twice shy on the sorts of arguments that have been put forward by those of the likes of Chlöe Swarbrick. This Parliament, eight years ago, passed legislation for psychoactive substances. We were told that it was better to regulate those party pills, that it was better if we had a proper regulatory regime, that we would make it safer. Within eight months, every member of this House was confronted with situations in their communities where, actually, that psychoactive substance had made our communities a lot less safe, our accident and emergency departments were full of people who had used substances that had been approved by this Parliament, and, actually, over 200 New Zealanders died.

So I say to this Parliament this is a life and death issue and deserves far more scrutiny than being introduced and rammed through on a single day. I would love to have the sort of evidential challenge that the Green Party’s Chlöe Swarbrick wishes to have, and so I say to the Green Party and I say to the ACT Party: why won’t you support this bill going to a select committee? If they want to have a detailed evidential debate, let’s hear the evidence. Why do we bypass the very processes of this Parliament and not give a single opportunity for that expert evidence?

Now we come to the issue of making drugs safe. They say that if we pass this bill, we’ll make them safe. Well, here’s the evidence—

💬 Hon Member: You’re not interested in the evidence.

—let’s have some evidence—392 Australians died as a consequence of using party pills, and the research by the University of New South Wales found that not one of those deaths were due to impurities. Yet every member says this is all about making sure that our people going to concerts are only going to have access to safe drugs. Actually, it’s not the impurities that killed 390 young people in Australia; it was the drug itself. So when members opposite say that we must pass this law to make party pills like ecstasy safe, on the basis that it is the impurities that are leading to people dying, that is not backed up by the evidence. The evidence is that the use of the drug, the ecstasy itself, is causing those deaths.

The last point is that when the Government, as with the psychoactive substances, says something’s safe, there will be an increase in use, and with that increased use will go increased harm. That’s the sort of evidence that I want to test and I want to scrutinise at a select committee, and members opposite are denying that sort of robust process on this bill.

Madam Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to take a brief call on this bill. I’m not going to canvass many of the arguments, but I am going to respond to the Hon Dr Nick Smith, who is asking the question: why is this bill not going to a select committee? I would like to raise an important point that I think it’s important for the House to know and for people who are listening at home to know—that at the end of 2019, Chlöe Swarbrick took a petition to legalise drug-checking services to a select committee of this House. It had support from the Ministry of Health, over 6,000 petitions, and the National Party didn’t turn up to that select committee to look at that petition. So that petition was suggesting exactly what this bill is doing, and the National Party showed no interest in it. Now, all of a sudden, they’ve got interest. Are the National Party playing politics here? I’ve just put that question out there. That’s for them to decide. I hope they aren’t, but I put that question out there. This is a good bill. It’s an important bill. I commend it to the House.

Madam Speaker, is mine a 10-minute or a five-minute call? Ten minutes. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Madam Speaker, I just want to say thank you for the opportunity to take a call on the second reading of the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill. I must say, that was a bit of a strange call from the member opposite around a petition which came to a select committee back in 2019. Not a lot of detail about that petition, some people didn’t turn up, but the point is: it wasn’t a bill going through Parliament. This is a bill which is going through Parliament, and the process which we follow when legislation goes through Parliament is we put it to a select committee. Sometimes we only put it to a select committee for a few days or a few weeks—standard time is six months. This isn’t even going to a select committee for one minute, it’s being rammed through this Parliament as the number one priority for this Government after the election, which they won. The number one issue that they are ramming through this Parliament is the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill.

I wonder how many New Zealanders out there are actually wondering whether this is their number one priority for our country at the moment. Because when I was campaigning up and down my electorate in Pakuranga I didn’t have one single person come up to me and say, “The number one issue that needs to be solved is we need to legalise pill testing at music festivals. That’s what I want you to go down to Parliament for; that’s what needs to be done.” I didn’t have queues out the door of my office this Monday, when I had my constituent clinic, of people saying, “Simeon, when you go to Parliament this week, can you please pass legislation to legalise pill testing?” There wasn’t one single person saying that this Monday morning at my constituent clinic, but this is the Labour Government’s number one priority coming into this term in Parliament. And let’s not mistake it, it’s the Labour Government’s number one priority, because they control the majority in this House. For the first time under MMP, the Labour Party controls the majority in this House. So the Labour Party and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s number one priority coming into this Parliament is to make drug testing of drugs legal in New Zealand. I would’ve thought it would’ve been something to do with COVID-19. I would’ve thought it would’ve been something to do with addressing the issues facing our country with the pandemic.

💬 Barbara Kuriger: Housing.

I would’ve thought it might’ve been to do with housing, the Resource Management Act, that’s right, or the issues facing our agriculture sector, law and order, all of those important issues—the health system—which matter to New Zealanders. Here we are facing a piece of legislation to simply legalise drug testing so that people can get their drugs tested before this summer’s festivals. Well, surely this could have gone to a select committee and been considered prior to that actually taking place.

The bill will not reduce harm. We’ve heard lots of arguments—well, not arguments. We’ve heard lots of slogans. “This will reduce harm—this will reduce harm.” It doesn’t matter how many times you say it, it doesn’t prove it. Actually, we want to see the evidence. At a second reading, we’re meant to be considering the submissions from submitters. And as Dr Shane Reti outlined from the departmental statement, the only people consulted on this issue has been KnowYourStuffNZ, the organisation which does and has an interest in this issue. No one else in New Zealand has had their views taken into account, and the departmental statement doesn’t even articulate the view that this will even work or that there is any evidence that this will actually work.

When we look overseas and we do look at the evidence around the world, we do not see that this will reduce the harm caused to young people because the reality is that the drugs which are being tested are harmful. The argument getting put across is that these drugs are full of impurities and if only we can find out those impurities, young people won’t take them. Well, the reality is that the drugs themselves are dangerous. Ecstasy is a dangerous drug. The evidence we see from Australia where they examined 392 ecstasy deaths between 2001 and 2016 found that none of those deaths came from impurities or contaminants in the ecstasy drug. The deaths came from the ecstasy or from people taking ecstasy with alcohol or cocaine or another substance. That is the evidence that we see. So by testing the drug, or testing it multiple times, you’re only going to find out that it’s ecstasy and that ecstasy is dangerous, and we need to be telling our young people it’s a dangerous drug which kills people and that they shouldn’t be taking it. It is illegal.

The other issue in this is around dosage. It’s one thing to test it and say, “This has X, Y, Z substances.” It doesn’t tell anybody anything about dosage in the amount of drug that they have. It simply tests for what type of substance might be in there. And dosage is important because dosage will make a difference because people’s bodies will react differently to different drugs in different quantities of drugs. This bill does not address that very important issue.

We’ve just had a referendum in New Zealand in regards to drugs. We’ve just had a referendum on the topic of whether we should be legalising marijuana. The decision made by New Zealanders is that they did not want to see drugs being legalised. But the people now coming to this Parliament to push through this bill seem to have some sort of Trumpian way about them where they don’t want to accept the will of that referendum and want to instead bring this through as the consolation prize for the people who voted Yes to marijuana. This seems to be the agenda which is being brought here today.

So what should be done? What should we be looking for in New Zealand? What are the things that we should be looking for and what would be talked about at a select committee? We’d be talking about drug rehab. Have we got enough drug rehab spaces in New Zealand? Do we have enough addiction treatment services across our country to help young New Zealanders who are facing addiction to these types of drugs? These are the issues which we would have been able to address if this bill had actually gone to select committee. We would have been able to look and examine as to whether the Government’s $1.8 billion that they’ve put into our mental health and addiction services is actually having an impact and whether it’s delivering the services that we need to help reduce the harm of drugs in New Zealand. We’d be able to hear from the public and hear their perspectives on this issue. But are we able to have that conversation? Are we able to stand here at this second reading and have that debate and debate the evidence to and fro? No, we can’t, because it’s been rushed through under urgency without being able to have that conversation.

So the National Party will be opposing this piece of legislation and is deeply disappointed that this has not had the opportunity for New Zealanders to be able to have their say so they can put their input in so that this Parliament can look at the evidence fully and have a full debate on it at the second reading. We will oppose this legislation. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s with a little bit of sadness we come back to the House and hear the usual scaremongering and inaccuracies on the issue of drug safety. The fact of the matter is that the National Party is standing between someone trying to make something safe for a citizen. Under the current law, the moment a person takes a drug, takes ecstasy, and says “I will test it to make sure this is what it says it is”, they’re committing the offence of possession of a drug. These people would have our law keep it that way. Well, on this side of the House, and around the rest of the House, we say, “No.” We say, “If people are going to make decisions—decisions which might not be the wisest decisions—we want to make that as safe as we possibly can.” That’s really all you need to say about this piece of legislation. We will make people as safe as we possibly can. This bill is part of that, and I commend it to the House.

Point of order. I seek leave to move a motion for the bill to be referred to the Justice Committee.

Is there any objection to that? There is objection. The Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill is set down for committee stage forthwith. Oh sorry, I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill—you know, I was just giving my new assistant a bit of time to get here. Madam Chair.

In Committee

Part 1 Amendments to Misuse of Drugs Act 1975