Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2)

I present a legislative statement on the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2).

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just a minute. I’m just checking with the Minister. Was that circulated before the deadline at 11? If it wasn’t, you can move it, but you have to seek leave to—

I signed it off first thing this morning and understood it had been lodged but, if it hasn’t been, then I’ll seek leave to present it.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, if that’s your—it’s just that it’s not on my list, so we weren’t expecting it. So if you move it again, I’ll—

I present—

💬 Matt Doocey: Point of order. Apologies to the Minister. Could we just clarify what we are seeking leave for? It would be helpful.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, at the moment, nothing. It’s just that, clearly—

💬 Matt Doocey: You pointed out to the Minister he’ll need to seek leave. I wasn’t sure myself. It would be helpful for the other parties if you could clarify your instruction to the Minister.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yeah, OK, so when a Minister presents a legislative statement, that has to be distributed by 11 a.m. each morning. I haven’t got it on my list and I’m just asking if that was correct. Can I ask the Clerk to reconfirm that with me? Has that been properly received? OK, we’ll check. Because if it has been received, then we don’t need to seek leave. Otherwise we do.

I can confirm that it was received and my sheet in front of me is incorrect.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. In light of that, I’ve just been advised that it was apparently lodged at 10.55 a.m.; I like to meet deadlines. I move that the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2) be now read a second time.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: We’ll do the legislative statement first.

Oh, you want that. Sorry. From the top. I present a legislative statement on the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2).

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2) be now read a second time.

This is a reasonably simple bill as part of the Government’s policy to treat drug consumption primarily as a health issue. It is about making sure people can get access to good, accurate, and appropriate advice on drugs that they may be intending to, or are about to, consume so that they can make informed decisions, and also, for some, an opportunity to get at least some interim advice on the risks they may be taking with the consumption of the substances in their possession.

What the bill does is establish a licensing system for drug-checking service providers. We have an interim arrangement at the moment. This will set up a permanent arrangement under which the director-general can issue licences under certain conditions or once certain conditions are met. This means that those drug-checking service providers can operate with legal certainty and Parliament and the public can have certainty that their services are fit for purpose.

I acknowledge the work of the Health Committee on the bill. I see they’ve made a number of recommendations for change, and I welcome those. I support those recommendations. There’s a number of elements that the committee has suggested could do with change. One of those is a matter that was intended to appear in regulations in the original draft bill but will now appear in the statute—will now appear in the bill itself—such as the provisions for suspending or cancelling a licence and appeal provisions. I think that is the appropriate place for those sorts of provisions to be. It’ll provide greater clarity and certainly, I think, to those in this field about what is required and what they must do to maintain their licence. It will also now include requirements for licence holders and failure to meet these requirements will be a breach of their licence conditions and may result in the licence being cancelled.

Some of these requirements include that harm-reduction advice is to be compulsory. So anybody who surrenders a substance to be tested by the drug-testing agency must get advice. That advice must be appropriate and accurate. So, for example, a drug-testing service in giving advice could not say that taking drugs is risk-free, because it never is, but they will tailor that advice to make it appropriate in the circumstances. If a person shows an indication of consuming alcohol at the same time as another substance, the advice can be: do not use this substance and take alcohol. That is about making sure that people’s experience is a safe one. It’s ultimately about keeping people safe and giving people good, reasonable, and accurate advice. One of the requirements is that the advice is tailored to the person and for people for whom their drug consumption appears to be problematic, it’s an opportunity to engage in a conversation about that and, ideally, to refer them to appropriate services if the person is prepared to accept that their consumption is problematic.

The bill now requires drug-checking services, who are licensed, to train their staff, to have properly trained staff, and also to make sure that any substances that they do retain are safely and securely stored pending destruction. And in handling all issues, obviously the service is to ensure personal privacy is maintained.

So I think the changes that the committee has proposed are good changes, are sensible changes, and they serve the interests of the bill very well. As I said before, the purpose of this bill is to accept a reality of a chunk of our population who are drug users, but who may be using substances the genuineness of or the validity of they just don’t know. This is an opportunity for them to check that.

I see from the reporting back to the House that the National Party has a view that this condones drug use, and I say it does not—it does not. The reality is, as I said, there is a group of people in our community, a cohort, and this will apply to any generation that happens at any time in the life of this great country of ours—there will be people who consume substances legal or illegal, and sometimes they will have substances they really don’t know what the substance actually is. They are the people who we do want to avail themselves of this service so that they do know what they are consuming and have the opportunity to get advice about the safe or otherwise consumption of it. That’s about de-risking that practice of some people.

So to the extent that the National Party argues in their minority view that it condones drug use and that there is no evidence that measures of this nature that the bill is setting up support harm reduction, I simply invite the National Party to look at the evidence. The evaluation done by a Victoria University health professor on the practice of the drug-testing services last summer showed that a significant number of people who used those services changed their behaviour as a result; either didn’t consume a substance, moderated their consumption of the substance, or didn’t take undue risk. That kept those people safe. This is about accepting the reality of humanity that people do this. We wanted to keep them safe. This bill does that.

I’m thankful for the work of the select committee. I look forward to the ongoing passage of the bill through the House. And, on that note, I commend the bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

The National Party opposes this bill. I wish it wasn’t so in some ways, because this is a well-intentioned bill. And I accept, I think, actually, the Hon Andrew Little is a person who is well-intentioned and wants to, and I think—there might be one or two notable exceptions—basically all members of this House want to. I’m not going to rehearse the various arguments that I made at first reading on this bill in any great length. I will just briefly recap though. This is well-intentioned, as I said. It’s in line with the zeitgeist of the time, the fashion, the fads of public health—

💬 Ginny Andersen: That’s a big word.

—and the do-gooders all around the place. Well, you can spell it for me later, member over there—let’s see how she goes. It’s in line with all of that, but, actually, I defy this House to come up with studies that show it is actually, in reality, an evidence-based law.

See, Andrew Little, he refers to the Victoria one. That is literally the only one in The New Zealand Herald, in Stuff, on RNZ, and that he can refer to. By the way, it is a self-selecting sample study. It’s not remotely scientific in terms of the kind of studies internationally from Australia, the United Kingdom, and Europe that I’ve referred to, both in the earlier bill which passed this—against National Party wishes temporarily—or this one. Even on that self-selecting sample though, I just make this point, because they go on so much about evidence without actually citing any of it. Even on that self-selecting sample, and there’s something like 90 pages in that report, there is a lot of evidence, or so-called evidence, that goes the way of the National Party view on this.

You see, pill testing provides a false confidence that somehow MDMA—because, fundamentally, that’s the illicit drug we’re talking about when we talk about pill testing—is safe. And so what happens? Well, as we’ve seen in Australia and the United Kingdom and Europe and other parts of the world, use goes up. And with that—surprise, surprise—fatalities, deaths, also go up as well. And the cruel irony of all of that is it’s not the additives that we are making legal in terms of the pill testing in this bill, it’s not them that kills people; it’s the substance itself without the additives. Yes, sometimes with alcohol; yes, sometimes with too much water, all of those things, but in the end it’s not the additives. And so there’s a false confidence, use goes up, and more deaths occur.

See, the Labour Party also says, because it’s fashionable and it sounds good, right—and I go along with that, actually, as I’ll come back to—in large part that this is a health issue. It’s about harm reduction. Well, of course it is—of course it is—but it’s also a criminal issue, and the Labour Party fails spectacularly to understand that fundamental point. They lost a referendum with the wacky Greens on legalising cannabis a year or two ago, and they don’t seem to respect that referendum and that New Zealanders decided—yep, not by much, but nevertheless a majority of New Zealanders and a big turnout—that this was also a criminal matter. And they keep marching on with their soft approach despite that.

Today, I want to make some additional points, actually, about this bill and about where we’re heading, because I think, personally, there’s something a bit slippery about the way the Labour Party in Government is treating this issue about the bad faith that they have shown. Firstly, they said this was just about music festivals, and that got the media on side and everyone thought that was good. Now though we find this legislation’s actually about legalising pill testing everywhere—not just festivals; everywhere. They never said that—they never said that anywhere—it would be everywhere, but that is what they have done. And call me old-fashioned, but I just have this small, technical view that you should kind of campaign on what you’re going to do, rather than do it and get the acquiescence afterwards.

Then here’s the kicker—and this is the challenge, by the way, to the ACT Party: are the ACT Party trendy, urban wokesters, or are they actually the party of the heritage of libertarians and the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers that they say they are, because here’s the next thing that Andrew Little has done with one sign of the pen: he’s now made it so that taxpayers pay for the pleasure of all this testing. There’s no user pays; it’s the taxpayers of New Zealand that are going to pay. And I say to the ACT Party, you’re going to have to decide sooner or later if you’re urban wokesters or if you’re going to go after the farmers’ votes and the various other votes in provincial New Zealand, because you’re not going to be able to for too much longer try and play both sides of the fence. And I tell you something for myself, I for one don’t want to pay, as a taxpayer, for all the legal testing of illicit drugs that’s going to be happening up and down New Zealand as a result of this bill. And I think there’s a lot of New Zealanders, regardless of their views on drugs, that also won’t want to be publicly funding this. How about this old-fashioned principle, user pays? You want it tested, pay yourself. Don’t make other New Zealanders pay for it.

So I say New Zealanders—despite this never being campaigned on, despite in the first reading the Minister never saying so—are going to see through this bill and through the changes Andrew Little is making, a situation where pill testing is coming everywhere. It’ll be on K Road, it’ll be on Courtenay Place, it’ll be outside the bars and the clubs. They never said that but that’s what’s going to happen. And, by the way, the cost will be on the taxpayer. Andrew Little says it started at $800,000. Well, how many ICU beds would that buy? How many booster shots for New Zealanders, when we can get them, would that buy? How many police officers, given the very real issues we have with not enough bobbies on the beat, would that purchase? But, by the way, that $800,000, that’s just the start. It will be—you bet my bottom dollar—by the end of this term, millions of dollars in funding of pill testing. So I say, actually, the Government didn’t campaign on any of that; not only that, it hasn’t post-election said any of that upfront from the start, even though I reckon that was probably the plan from the start. They’ve gone from just music festivals, to anywhere, everywhere, whenever they want, and the taxpayer is paying for it all. First it was just the legalising of testing at festivals, I say, then everywhere, and now taxpayers are paying for it, although they lost the referendum.

Finally, I want to come back to what matters: it is harm reduction, actually. Yeah, criminal matters as well. I actually think most New Zealanders—and we know that from the referendum—think that it should be a matter for the courts as well, but harm reduction, certainly, when we think of our children, is what matters. Every New Zealand wants to see that, but it’s critical for New Zealanders to realise that even with testing, pills can never be guaranteed as safe. It is a false confidence. In a very recent—I’ve got it here—coroner’s report, I think it’s the last several weeks, actually, that it’s become public, it’s made clear MDMA can cause respiratory depression, somnolence, cardiac arrhythmia, coma, and increases the risk of sudden death. Like I say, no use of MDMA is safe, despite the false confidence that many, often young, New Zealanders will have as the result of the passage of this bill. What I’m saying may not be fashionable. It may not be—here’s the big word again, Ginny Andersen—the zeitgeist of the times, but I reckon I’ll be proven right. I’m not up for this bill. More testing will result in more use and, in the end, more deaths in New Zealand from this soft-headed, soft-on-crime, soft-on-drugs Government. National will be voting against this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. So last summer, KnowYourStuff found that only 68 percent of the samples that they tested were actually what the person expected. What they found is that that was actually much lower than in previous years. But they also found that 68 percent of the people that had the substance that turned out to be not what they thought it was then said that they wouldn’t take the substance as a result.

So what this is about is about harm reduction, and it’s also about making sure that drug-checking services can operate with legal certainty. So as a Health Committee, we received 56 written submissions on this bill and we heard 11 oral submissions. I’d just like to say thank you to all of those who submitted because it did result in some changes being recommended to the bill. And one of the ones that we did change as a result was making harm reduction advice mandatory, because, previously, in the bill that was introduced, 35DB stated: “The functions of a service provider are to do 1 or more of the following:” and, basically, harm reduction advice was listed only as one of the things that could be done. When you think about it, actually, the drug substance checking—part of it’s the physical checking of the substance, but much, much more important is the advice that’s given, particularly if the substance turns out not to be what the person thought it was. So, basically, what the committee felt was that that should be mandatory and so we’ve added another section, 35DDF, which actually requires if you have tested a substance that you do give that harm reduction advice.

We did a range of other changes and some of them focused around the collection and use of personal information and also about the admissibility of test results in court proceedings. We also made some recommendations around shifting elements of the licensing system from regulations into the main bill. But, basically, just summing it up, this is a really important bill, and I think what it will do is it will significantly help to reduce drug-related harm and create that legal certainty for substance-checking services in New Zealand. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak in opposition of the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2). I was a member of the Health Committee that heard the submissions that my colleague Dr Craig spoke of then. The recommendations from the Health Committee were obviously not unanimous. The bill that was introduced was introduced as an omnibus bill that aims to minimise harm from controlled drugs and psychoactive substances. The thought was that it would do this by allowing services to check the composition of those drugs and substances. But, as we have said numerous times on this side of the House, we are yet to see the evidence that that actually contributes to harm reduction.

Of course, the bill is similar to the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Act 2020, which was brought in specifically, as we were told at the time, for festivals for that 2020-2021 summer. But now, of course, it is not limited to festivals at all. My colleague Simon Bridges talked about how it might be outside nightclubs and other venues. But also what needs to be made very clear is that the bill now allows testing anywhere. It includes mobile services, and, in fact, the Health Committee said that they considered it might help improve access to drug checking, particularly in rural areas. So we shouldn’t for one minute think that it might be limited to outside festivals or inside festivals or outside nightclubs. In fact, it could be rolling up to a town near you, to the centre of small rural towns, the playgrounds, any of the areas in a small rural town. It is specifically noted that it is to allow mobile checking services in vehicles.

So there are a number of things that we are concerned about in here, and I’m sure it will be characterised, as my colleague Simon Bridges said, that, you know, we’re old-fashioned and a bit conservative. But I would hope that the vast majority of New Zealanders want to see harm reduction. We want to genuinely see harm reduction for those taking illicit drugs. It’s how to get there, to that goal, that we differ in. This Government keeps telling us that legalising pill testing will reduce drug-related harm, but we’re not seeing the evidence except for one study which was, as my colleague said, self-selection. So you would expect to see a bit more than that. We can remain concerned that where the Crown looks as if we are condoning the use of substances, either implicitly or explicitly, it sends a really bad signal to the people of this country. So we certainly don’t believe that the harm reduction has been shown yet.

But what we do know about this bill is that it will protect drug dealers from being prosecuted for supplying illicit drugs, because the results of drug testing would be inadmissible in criminal proceedings. We believe that legalising pill testing is not going to keep people safe and that it will encourage more people to consume harmful drugs. As I said, we all want to see harm reduction, but it’s absolutely critical for New Zealanders to understand that testing doesn’t make pills safe. My colleague talked about the recent coroner’s report that made it very clear that MDMA can cause respiratory depression, sleepiness, cardiac arrhythmia, coma, and increase the risk of sudden death. Now, the Labour Government keeps telling us that pill testing will help users make smarter choices. The problem is, there are no smart choices around deciding to take MDMA or ecstasy. It’s just either a very dumb or a dumb choice. It’s not a smarter choice. If Labour’s aim is to reduce drug-related harm, then why are they not waiting for the evidence and going out to the people and making sure that the people know the evidence is there, that it won’t create greater consumption of drugs?

So Labour deciding to fund it. This is a difficult one when our health budget is so stretched and people are missing out on hip and knee replacements, missing out on getting timely cancer testing and treatment. In the Invercargill hospital, in our district health board area, to get a hip replacement you wait until you have 70 points, that’s 20 points more than if you were in the Canterbury region. So do we tell those people waiting that health dollars are going to have to now go into drug testing instead of trying to bring down their waiting time for hip or knee replacements? Do we have to tell all the people that have to wait for admission to hospital in Invercargill longer because we are 90 beds short and two theatres short that this Government’s priority is to spend health dollars on drug testing?

So I spent time talking to a rural GP recently. I’m going out to speak to him more. This GP is at his wits’ end. He has not had a locum there for a number of years. He is working over 60 hours a week. He is concerned that he is going to burn out. But if he burns out and leaves the rural town, they will have no medical services. So this Labour Government has not increased the intake into medical school in the entire four years they have been in Government.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’m going to ask the member to relate her comments to the bill, which she hasn’t done so far.

Thank you—thank you. I will. Because the reason, when I sent a written question to the Minister, why this Government had not increased the intake into medical school, was because it’s expensive to train medical students. So my concern, is that this Government is showing that their priority for health funding is not on reducing waiting times for serious operations, is not on ensuring that hospitals have the right number of beds or theatres, is not on training more medical students, but is instead on spending money on drug testing.

Now, we all want to see—we all want to see—reduction in harm. But, actually, we would like to see the money spent on more education so that young people are not wanting to experiment with drugs, we would like to see more money spent on services and care for those with addiction and mental health issues, we would like to see more focus on tougher sentences for dealers, because we want to see health money focused on health issues. So this side of the House sees that a priority is to do the very things we’ve talked about: getting waiting lists down, getting the right number of beds, getting ICU beds ready, training more doctors, getting better services and care for people with addictions, and educating people on not using drugs rather than testing and making them feel falsely safe. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Excuse me while I get over that pot-kettle-black feeling that I’ve just risen to. Look, the majority of submitters strongly supported this bill, and I’d like to share a submission which is characteristic of these, and perhaps sums up how I think most New Zealanders feel about this issue: “Drug and substance checking has proven to reduce harm and change behaviours. We believe this bill, and the system it will create will reduce drug related harm for young New Zealanders.” The submitter was none other than the Young Nats. If the members opposite won’t listen to the wealth of evidence from an array of experts, of which there is, despite the protestations across the floor or the quite unusual reliance on one particular piece of work which bears no real relevance, or the sentiments of the general public, perhaps they should or could listen to those they see as the future of their very own party.

The select committee process included several amendments to make improvements to the bill; most of those have been discussed. But the gestalt of that is that that will undoubtedly reduce hesitancy and increase the number of people who are willing to utilise what actually could be a life-saving service. So this bill acknowledges the reality that people actually, on occasion, will use illicit drugs, regardless of the potential health or potential legal ramifications, so it takes important steps to provide for informed decision-making and for better health outcomes. I have no hesitation to commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai. I rise to speak on behalf of my colleague Chlöe Swarbrick, who has guided this bill through the Health Committee, and also co-founded the Cross-Party Mental Health and Addictions Wellbeing Group here in Parliament. We consider this creates a very, very good framework for drug checking, and we congratulate the Government on progressing this work.

So the Greens have a long, illustrious whakapapa on improving and trying to improve the laws around drugs and substance abuse, including to legalise cannabis for medicinal and recreational use, and improving the Government’s synthetic response. This included obtaining funding for community-based treatment, including the safe after-hours space, Haven, in Auckland Central—a collaboration between Lifewise and Odyssey. We consider legalising drug checking supports a health-based, harm-reduction approach to drug use. The Greens campaigned on this in 2018, which included presenting a 6,000-strong petition to the House.

So this omnibus bill, as we’ve heard, amends the part of the Misuse of Drugs Act where it’s illegal to knowingly provide a location where people are consuming substances. So it enables drug-checking services to operate with the legal certainty to give and receive drugs from a drug-checking service. It does this by allowing the Director-General of Health to allow certain providers to be gazetted to operate these drug-checking services. They cannot be prosecuted, and it enables them to maintain the privacy of those who they check—this is quite a core part.

Importantly, not only is it events-based but it can be static, one-off events, and in vehicles. As summer nears and the people of Tai Rāwhiti are wondering whether Rhythm and Vines is going to go ahead, and we’re going to be inundated with predominantly young people from around the country, safety is a really key issue, and the use of drugs, of course, massively increases over that time. So we see that this bill will allow that legal drug-checking at these summer events and then into pride weeks, pride parties, O-Weeks, and a range of things that are happening.

We want to do a shout-out to KnowYourStuff NZ and the NZ Drug Foundation. They’ve worked with the Greens, and, I’m sure, other parties as well over the years. Their research shows us that, consistently, people will change their drug behaviours and be less risky when they know what is in the substance that they have. Green policy commits us to supporting measures that enhance people’s capacity for informed choice, which is what this drug checking does.

Since this is predominantly focused on young people, I point to Mana Taiohi, the Te Tiriti o Waitangi - based principles of youth development. One of those principles states, and I quote, “being empowered by rich and diverse mātauranga informs both young people and people who work with young people towards personal growth. Young people actively participate in making meaning of information and are supported to holistically make positive choices for them and their whānau.” This is the core of the bill, I feel—making sure that these predominately young people make good choices based on good information without getting judged or penalised.

What this bill probably doesn’t recognise is that its application to some of these summer events—largely ticketed events—could be criticised as focusing on recreational, middle-class, and predominantly Pākehā drug use, rather than the more problematic drug issues that some of the people in this House have raised, which disproportionately affects lower-income communities of colour. Dealing with drugs, we think, should be a health, education, housing, and social issue, with solutions based on evidence and with the insight of local communities.

We think this is clearly reinforced by the Government’s own commissioned reviews. He Ara Oranga recommended decriminalising users, and Turuki! Turuki!, the Safe and Effective Justice Programme Advisory Group review went even further and said legally regulating certain substances. For now, though, Māori are disproportionately targeted by law enforcement for personal drug use and they’re criminalised from a young age. We would hope to see that the compassionate, non-judgmental nature of this bill is applied wherever drugs are available, and especially to young people, regardless of where they come from and whether they can afford to buy those festival tickets. Along with the complete restructure of our health and mental health systems, we look forward to an overhaul of the Misuse of Drugs Act. In the meantime, this is good progress, and we commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in support of the second reading of the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2). I’m going to keep my speech short and fairly simple, because there are clearly two arguments, one in favour and one against this particular type of law change. On the one hand, we’ve heard from people who are saying that changing the status quo will increase risk and increase drug harm in society because there might be young people who weren’t going to take drugs who will now take drugs, knowing that they can check what the substance in them is. The other argument is that this will reduce adverse effects and reduce drug harm because people will make an informed choice, knowing what is in the drug that they’ll be taking. I think there are merits to both of those types of arguments, but the ACT Party says our starting point for this law should be asking the question of: should Parliament prohibit New Zealanders voluntarily helping each other? I don’t believe that it should. ACT says that we should never stop people voluntarily helping each other.

When we look at those two arguments weighed up against each other—whether the status quo is acceptable because it stops or reduces drug harm reduction because people don’t take those drugs, versus the risk of people having an adverse effect because they are going to take them and they don’t know what’s in it—ACT falls on the side of informed choice and that people will take drugs when they don’t know what’s in them. It can only be of a benefit that we are allowing people who are going to take those drugs to make an informed choice, because it clearly reduces risk. It’s clear that the greater risk is people taking pills when they don’t know what’s in them. ACT lives in the real world. We understand the reality that young people will go to festivals, they will want to rebel, and they will want to take drugs. We need to make sure that if that is the world that we’re living in, we are doing the best that we can to reduce the risk to our young people.

Every summer—and it happens without fail—young New Zealanders go up and down New Zealand to festivals, they go to concerts, and they’re offered pills, sometimes by friends, people that they trust, and sometimes by people that they’ve never met before. It might not be a comfortable thought to have that it could be your child going off to a festival and taking something when you’ve instilled in them since they were a child: don’t take things from strangers, or, you know, don’t take drugs. But there is the chance that it could be your child that decides, “You know what? This summer is the summer that I’m going to rebel.” To anyone, I would say that it is greater risk not to allow these types of facilities—these volunteers wanting to help our young New Zealanders, to keep them safe from harm—to go ahead. It is better for parents to know that if their child is going to a festival, these facilities exist so that people can make an informed choice and could be saved from taking an action that could harm them because they don’t know what’s in those drugs.

When we come to what’s happened during the select committee process, I acknowledge that this bill is slightly different to when it first was introduced and that there have been a few changes, because it now provides that a function of a drug-checking provider is to give information and harm reduction advice. That’s a mandatory step that the select committee recommended, and I think that’s a good thing. Not only are they checking your drugs, they’re giving you information to make you more knowledgeable for next time. That can only be good. They’ve also made it clearer that providers could only possess drugs for as long as reasonably necessary to perform their function, and increased the penalty for carrying out drug checking without a licence.

I think those are all very good changes, but, I think, this bill, if we look at what the heart of it is, is about allowing volunteers to help New Zealand keep other New Zealanders safe through informed choice. It’s about making sure that young New Zealanders can make that informed choice. If we are seeing people going to festivals, even though it’s unclear whether we’ll have any festivals going on under COVID environments during the summer, for the future going forward, it makes it clear that young New Zealanders will have more access to informed choice and reduce harm, reduce drug harm, from taking pills where they don’t know what that substance is. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you so much, Mr Speaker. I rise as a member of the Health Committee in strong support of this piece of legislation. I’d just like to reiterate that standing here, our starting point and our finish point is that the safest option is always, always not to take the substance. That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re not talking about giving people carte blanche here. But the reality is, is that people do take drugs—#notallpeople—and, clearly, nobody on the other side of the House here.

People die because they have taken a far more dangerous substance than they intended. This whole conversation is reminding me, somewhat bizarrely and unfortunately, of the arguments we heard around the Needle Exchange Programme, which has been hugely successful in New Zealand and has resulted in a massive reduction in the risk of people catching HIV or hepatitis C, with millions of dollars of health spending saved. This legislation will enable us to do the same thing. It will enable us to save money on accidentally causing hospitalisation because people are taking something they didn’t expect to take. Now, I’m not suggesting for one second that MDMA is safe to take, but there are more dangerous substances that are more dangerous to the system, especially if taken in combination.

Now, we know that the youth wing of the National Party is in support of this legislation. The young New Zealand First members are also in support of this legislation—I didn’t actually know that was a thing but I completely commend them for political engagement—they say that it’s the duty of Government to protect its people, and this is what this does. This piece of legislation will enable people to take fewer drugs, to dispose of or decide not to mix their drugs, and they will be given that opportunity, as we heard, for health advice to be given. In the UK, there was a 95 percent reduction in hospitalisation after they introduced legislation. This is a pragmatic piece of legislation. It substantially reduces harm and I commend it to the House.

This is a split call. I call Chris Penk—five minutes.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It’s a great pleasure to be back in the House of Parliament and an even greater pleasure to be able to remove my mask to speak.

I rise, as others have within the National Party, to oppose the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2) for the reasons that colleagues have set out. Of course, at this reading it’s appropriate to look at the work of the select committee. It seems as though those members examined the bill in good faith, and they’ve made a number of amendments that it seems were able to be supported across the House, or across the Health Committee in terms of different parties’ MPs. So I think there’s something positive to say at the outset in the sense that the bill is able to be improved, notwithstanding that we’ve decided, ultimately, on this side of the House—or at least our part of this side of the House—not to support it.

I think that, among various points that could be made about the good intentions that will not be matched and the possibility of counter-productive measures to attempt to provide safety and certainty which may have the opposite effect of providing false confidence, I did want to actually skip ahead to the offence provisions that the select committee has turned its collective mind to. We see that a couple of proposed new sections have offence provisions for the legislation, and the select committee discussed, it seems from their report—I was not fortunate enough to be a member of the select committee—the fact that the fines in relation to a couple of different offences were set at the same in the first reading of the bill—namely, $5,000.

The two offences were, roughly speaking—excuse the wording—something along the lines of providing services without a licence, or providing services in a way that wasn’t consistent with the terms of the licence. So the select committee was wondering if it wouldn’t provide an incentive for outfits to get a licence in the first place if they’re going to get a fine either way, whether or not they were licensed, if they were not providing the services correctly.

The first observation I would like to make is that $5,000 is not a great deal of money if a service is making some money by performing certain activities. I take at face value the report of the select committee that a number of the providers aren’t large-scale, commercial operations, and, indeed, they might be volunteers in some cases. However, there’s nothing in the legislation to say that an outfit can’t conduct these activities for profit. There’s nothing to say that they can’t be paid by the music festival operators, other operators, or other proprietors, or, indeed, by the taxpayer, as others on this side of the House have made the point. So even with the fine increased to some $20,000 in respect of unlicensed drug-checking, it seems to me as though a reasonably half-hearted attempt is being made to regulate, if that’s the intention of the legislation—to regulate and to regularise—an activity that is currently legal. It’s relatively toothless at that level, that quantum of penalty, I would suggest.

We’ve also seen the discussion about advice around harm reduction. It’s interesting that the first reading of the bill, or the bill as introduced to the House originally, didn’t make mandatory the giving of advice about harm reduction by those who were doing the checking. If this is the whole reasoning behind the bill and behind the efforts more generally of the Government to reduce harm, it seems extraordinary that it’s an afterthought having to be added by a select committee that advice about the harmful nature of these drugs and their additions must be provided by those who are conducting the checking. So I’m just surprised that the good intentions were not backed in the first place either at the first reading or, indeed, in the predecessor version of the bill—the temporary one that expires after 12 months—to actually require that information on harm reduction advice be accurate and appropriate or, indeed, provided at all.

So that at least is a positive amendment made by the select committee. There are a couple of others, but overall, still, we have a piece of legislation that reflects good intentions not backed by reality—not understanding the adverse, unintended consequences—and the reality, not only at music festivals but, potentially, all around the motu. We oppose this bill still at this, the second reading.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill will save lives. That is the fact of it. This bill enables a regulated testing regime to be introduced in this country. We know that there will be people that would have taken drugs, they got them tested, found out it’s not what they thought it was, and did not take it. That is all this will do. It doesn’t legalise drugs, it accepts a reality of life: people do what they shouldn’t do, it’s just the way it is. I don’t want people to take drugs, I hate drugs. I’ve never taken party pills in my life. I don’t want my mates to take it I don’t want my family to take it, I don’t want anyone to take it, but they do. People do what they shouldn’t do.

We warned National not to elect Judith Collins. They knew it wouldn’t work, but they did it anyway. People do what they shouldn’t do. The fact is, if we took the National Party’s view, and said that education is the key, and we told people not to take drugs, and they took drugs anyway and they died from it, what is the natural conclusion? “We told you not to do it, that’s your fault.” We don’t accept that, on this side of the House. We accept the reality that people are going to go to music festivals, they’re going to take drugs—and we’re not talking about dopeheads, we’re not talking about no-hopers; we’re actually talking about people across society. Many of them are well respected, they will go to music festivals, and they will intend to consume party pills. They will take the pragmatic approach—not this judgment view that the National Party takes—they will go and get their drugs tested. We still don’t want them to take it if it’s deemed to be what they thought it was, but if they’re going to anyway, for the love of God, let’s make sure it isn’t what they think is in there. Let’s make sure that, at the very least, we know that it’s not going to kill them. We don’t want them to take it, but if they’re going to do it anyway, for God’s sake, let’s just make sure it’s safe.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Such a pleasure to follow my colleague in support, because Mr McAnulty has given simplicity of an explanation, and a very good one at that. As a member of the Health Committee, I have to say that I joined the Health Committee at the tail end of these considerations and so, none the less, it is important that I do acknowledge the work of colleagues on that particular committee who have made some workable and sensible changes to the bill.

This bill amends existing legislation and it does many things, but I’ll just briefly touch on two. The first is, essentially, it establishes a licensing regime for drug- and substance-checking services, and within that, it includes the provision of appeal, opportunities that sit primarily within the legislation rather than in the regs, but also it identifies processes for the provision of services being free, and also, actually, the importance and significance of the storage of particular substances and drugs and that they be secure. So it is important, in my view, that they sit within the legislation rather than in regulations.

The second thing that this legislation does is it enables licensed service providers to do things legally. We’ve heard in the House this evening that it’s around checking the composition of the drug or the substance, when that happens it is possible for the service providers to, effectively, be operating short and foul of the law. So this will provide a legal opportunity to ensure that while those substances and drugs are with the service provider that they are not in breach of legislation. Those are only two examples of what this bill proposes to do. It’s sensible, it’s real, and on that basis, I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to take a call on this bill, the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2). The National Party continues to oppose this piece of legislation. We’ve heard from the members on the Government side who talk about how this bill is simply just helping people with the decisions that they’re already making and helping them to make better choices. The reality, though, is that this piece of legislation sends a very different message. This Government announced this piece of legislation saying, “We want to make sure that drug-checking services or drug-testing services are available at music festivals.” Well, this piece of legislation takes that proposition much, much further. Nothing in this bill that we have before us here tonight limits the idea, limits the proposition, that this Government put to New Zealanders that drug-testing services should be made only available at music festivals. This piece of legislation widens that service right out across all of New Zealand and opens it up to be a much wider service. This is a bill which sends a much different message than what this Government is trying to purport that it sends and one which sends a message of drug taking being something that is OK and which the Government is then going to provide services around the checking of those services.

We heard the member opposite stand up and talk about how people change their decisions based upon the information that they’re given, and the research that they like to use is a research paper put together by the Victoria University. It surveyed a number of people who used the KnowYourStuff NZ drug-checking services. They say, “Well, the majority of people changed their mind based on the information they’ve got.” When you drill down into the numbers, about 80 percent of people who responded to that survey—a self-selected survey, by the way—would take the drug even if the drug was partially, only partially, consistent with what was presumed to be in the substance.

That brings me to the next point, which is the fact that the reality is, by the evidence which has been presented to the committee and which is well available, made available online and from many researchers around the world, that, actually, it’s not just the impurities in these drugs but it’s, in fact, also the drugs themselves which cause the problem. A University of New South Wales study of 392 ecstasy deaths in Australia between 2001 and 2016 found no deaths from impurities or contaminants in drugs, and no deaths from other deadly drugs such as paramethoxyamphetamine or NBOMe cut with the MDMA in a pill. The issue here is not the impurities; the issue here is the actual substance. So what this bill is doing is it’s giving a false confidence to the young person who goes and gets that that pill tested which he thinks is MDMA and gets given a tick of approval by this drug-checking service to say, “Yep, that’s MDMA.”, and he goes ahead and takes that MDMA, and, in fact, that is the drug which is actually causing much of the misery that we are seeing and much of the harm. Instead of reducing harm, this is giving young people a false assurance about the harm that they are actually taking upon themselves.

What this bill also does is it does a number of other things. It sets up a regime for regulating these substances. It sets up a bunch of regulations and guidelines. It, effectively, says these substance-checking services can be made available anywhere in New Zealand, except, I think, in suburban areas. That’s basically the only exception. That’s pretty broad—that’s very, very broad. It’s much broader than what we’ve seen under other pieces of legislation passed by this Parliament—for example, the Psychoactive Substances Act, which limited quite heavily where those substances were able to be sold under the regulations in that system. This is a very broad service which I think many New Zealanders will be very concerned about.

It doesn’t define, as the ACT Party seems to be thinking, that this is a bunch of voluntary people going and helping their neighbours. It doesn’t stop this from being something which is funded by a music festival or funded by the Government. In fact, we’ve actually now seen the Government putting hundreds of thousands of dollars behind these services—taxpayer funds. This is no longer just a few neighbours getting together to try and help a few other people; this is the Government paying for this, and it also means that this is the taxpayer supporting the message behind what this bill is now pushing.

The reality is this bill will fail to address the issue that it is trying to achieve. The Government has not been able to provide solid evidence to prove that this is actually going to reduce harm. The baseline data is based upon a Victoria University report which was based upon self-selection of people who decided to fill out a survey. That’s something which I would’ve thought this Government would’ve used a far more evidence-based approach than a self-selected - based survey, which I think is something which will not be providing the right evidence to prove that this actually reduces harm.

The other point I’d like to make is around the way that this bill ensures that the inadmissibility of the evidence which is provided to the substance checkers—of course, someone comes along with their drugs and they ask for them to be checked, and that checking service and the information provided is, under this piece of legislation, not able to be used in a court of law. Now, that may be understandable when it comes, potentially, to issues around personal use, but there’s a big issue here in regards to the fact that there are people who not only use drugs but there are people who supply drugs, and there will be some people who supply drugs who will be looking to get their substances checked to be able to say they’ve got the Government tick of approval for the selling of their substances. That is something which not only could be falsely applied but is something which I think will be seen more and more with the people who peddle illicit substances through our community, seeking to provide some form of tick of approval by the New Zealand Government to say that the substances that they are peddling, the misery that they are causing, not only whether it’s at a festival or at an event but through our society and through our communities and to our most vulnerable—who are often the ones forgotten when we are passing legislation like this. They will be thinking that the Government has given a tick of approval to the substances that they are purchasing.

So this is a piece of legislation the National Party has a number of very serious concerns about. We did not support it to the committee, we do not see that the evidence has been provided through the select committee process by submitters to argue that this should be supported, and so we will not be supporting this through further stages. Thank you very much, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s good to be able to be back in the House, and good to be able to take a short call on this bill. I’d like to start off by thanking the Health Committee for their work on this bill. But I also wanted to take a moment to specifically talk about the harm reduction aspects in the recommendations made in this bill, because, from the previous speeches I’ve heard from the other side, it is very clear that the National Party speakers haven’t been able to get their head around what the harm reduction actually means, and how important it is. I’ve heard the “soft on crime”, I’ve heard the “lack of evidence” slogans—Mr Bridges started it, Mr Brown repeated it—but what they ignore and what they fail to acknowledge is that some countries, for over 25 years, have had research done on harm reduction—for example, in the Netherlands they’ve been testing illegal drugs for over 25 years. And people may be surprised to hear that, in the Netherlands, drugs are, in fact, still illegal. But what they have done as a country, they have decided that they would take a harm reduction approach when it came to keeping people safe—and it has saved lives.

They set up, back in 1992, what is called the Drugs Information and Monitoring System. It was the very first pill-testing organisation in all of Europe. In fact, what it is now, it is actually an integral part of the public health response in the Netherlands. So an example of how it’s saved lives: in 2008, there was a mass warning issued all over the Netherlands and over Belgium—via TV, radio, and internet messaging—about a batch of pink pills that had Superman logos on them, because, with pill testing, it was discovered that these particular pink pills had a toxic compound in them. As a result, no deaths were reported in the Netherlands.

So, Mr Brown, I may correct you here; people did change their mind and didn’t take these pills. However, in the UK, at the same time, there was no pill-testing service, and four young people died as a result from consuming these pills. So I guess we need to acknowledge that a lack of knowledge can kill people. So what this bill does is it gives people the opportunity to seek advice on the risk of taking drugs. It gives advice on how some of those risks can be reduced. So these changes and this bill are a reflection of this Government’s policy to treat drug consumption as a health issue and allow people to access advice that they can have confidence in, so that they can make their informed decisions as a result.

It’s this evidence-based harm reduction approach that will ultimately save lives. So what this Government doesn’t do, it doesn’t kick the can down the road, like Hon Nanaia Mahuta always says. I’d like to commend the Hon Andrew Little for his mahi on this bill, which will save lives. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Education and Training (Teaching Council Fees, Levies, and Costs) Amendment Bill and the Education and Training Amendment Bill.