Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill

Members, we now come to the debate on clauses 1 to 3, which are clauses on the title, commencement, and repeal.

Mr Chair, Minister, the commencement and repeal clauses seem to me to actually assume significant importance in this bill, given that—as I understand it—what you’re, effectively, doing here as a Government, and we as a Parliament, is to put this in place for a finite period of time and then repeal it, at which time you as Minister will bring to the Parliament a further, I presume more significant or something, bill. So I’d like you to explain that more. I don’t think I have a particularly good sense of that, and I don’t think it’s been set out so far in this Parliament—why the finite period? It seems to me quite clear that the Government’s position is that pill testing of hard illicit drugs will make people more safe, and that that’s a good thing, is the Government’s position. We’ve got a bill to do that, so why is it being repealed? What’s going on here, and does it mean that, in fact—as has been the contention of the Opposition, or certainly the National Party—that the Government’s rushed this, that it feels that it needs to see how it goes, because there are clauses that may need a bit of a tidy up, or it’s incomplete, or, indeed, you’re just not entirely sure? Because, to not put too fine a point on it, New Zealanders wouldn’t want to have a sense that there’s an experiment going on here where the Government’s just not quite sure and so it’s going to come round and do it right a little bit later in the law.

So I’d like to get a very clear sense of just precisely why this bill is being enacted and then repealed. My tentative position—I say tentative because I haven’t talked with any colleagues about this—is that firstly, and this isn’t tentative, do it once, do it right, but secondly, if you are sure, well frankly, why waste the time of the Parliament to come back and do it all again? Is it a case of actually getting rid of the repeal provision in this bill and going with this, as much as I disagree with the bill, rather than wasting Parliament’s time another time?

And then I come to something the Minister said in this committee a little earlier about what follows, where in an interchange with Dr Smith he made the point that, well, what’s going to happen here is we sort of are—I apologise if I’m not putting this phrase in this exactly right—kind of interested in the music festival side of all of this, but you know what? We’re going to come back and put this everywhere in due course. Well, I’d like to understand, as best the Minister can, a sense of what is coming, because it seems to me that is very relevant to what we are voting on in this bill today.

So, really succinctly, there’s two points I’d appreciate the Minister’s clear view on—why the finite period, and what is coming next?

Thank you, Mr Chair. And, again, for the benefit of those in the gallery who are rapidly being educated on what lawmaking looks like, they used to say about lawmaking that it’s a bit like making sausages. You really don’t want to see it happening, but sometimes the product can be magnificent, so we’ll see what happens.

So the first question that the Hon Simon Bridges asked is, “Why the repeal provision at all?” Totally legitimate question. This is because it has been pretty clear from the organisers and owners that we’ve heard from—including outfits that have been doing drug-checking services for some time—is that they feel an increasing risk they take when they offer these services, and they do so because they’re dedicated to the safety of people who are ingesting these substances, that they are liable to prosecution, and that by doing something that they see a public interest and public benefit in, they are afforded some protection for that. We think, in principle, that is right. We are on the cusp of the next summer music festival season, and we wanted to get something in place that affords that protection because we know, particularly in the year that we’ve had COVID-19, a whole lot of bottled up need for exuberance and happiness and joy that we think would be expressed awesomely this summer by a lot of people going to music festivals, we want to make sure that the services that do drug testing or drug checking can operate without fear of prosecution, and likewise the host of the events can encourage drug-checking services to be available at their events without the risk of prosecution.

But the member is right, and the members in the National Party who have spoken in this debate have legitimately raised the issue that this is a significant policy shift in the way we approach drugs—particularly illicit drugs—and the way we manage them in the community. We do want a regime that goes beyond just music festivals. We know that there are substances available on the street that are being sold and handed over, and people consuming substances they don’t really know the safety of, so we want a regime that deals with that element as well. But we want to take time, as Mr Bridges himself said, to do it right, to do it properly, and that will need a little more time to do that. We do want all of Parliament to provide the full scrutiny that Parliament would ordinarily give to any law to allow that to happen. Again, I’ll just take a couple of minutes to educate our friends in the gallery. We’re in a process called urgency at the moment, so we are putting a law through all of its stages in a very short space of time—

💬 Maureen Pugh: Point of order, Mr Chair. Just some clarification, if you will, sir, about the now three references to members in the gallery from the speaker in the chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): So what’s your point of order?

💬 Maureen Pugh: The Speakers’ rulings 9/6 and 9/7 that it is not appropriate to refer to members in the gallery.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): I think the issue is that the Minister’s speaking to the people in the gallery like he’s speaking to the whole of New Zealand. In terms of if the Minister in charge of the bill thinks it’s important enough on this bill to speak to whoever’s in the gallery, without naming them—which he has not done—then I think that’s OK. Members can take a call and dispute what he’s saying if they like.

And, of course, my comments apply to those who are looking on their television sets around the country and around the world.

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: There’ll be hundreds of thousands; possibly millions.

I’m sure there’s calls from CNN right now, wanting follow-up interviews. The point is that we’re passing a law very quickly, it’s called urgency, and members are quite rightly saying there needs to be more scrutiny, because ordinarily in the law—particularly on an important issue like this—there would be a lot more scrutiny. We want to make sure that when we make a permanent change to this law that it has the full scrutiny of Parliament, and I commit to that happening in the next phase of this lawmaking.

Madam Speaker, the committee has considered the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill and reports it without amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

Third Reading