Nash StuartHon STUART NASH (Minister of Police): Thank you very much Madam Assistant Speaker. Like the last speaker Simeon Brown I believe that the death of someone like Calum Jones and everyone who has died from using synthetic drugs is an absolute tragedy and is needless. I can't imagine to be honest—as a father of four children I cannot imagine what it would be like to lose a son or a daughter to a drug overdose. I suppose unless you've been there you just do not know what it's like.But first and foremost we are opposing this bill not because we don't think there needs to be changes but we don't think that just changing one line in a bill is the right response when this needs a much bigger response. What I would say to that last speaker is: please don't use the language around soft on crime". Please don't come out and say the only way to stop this is to lock people up because that is the language of the last generation. That is the language of a community and a society that has lost its compassion.Let me give you a couple of statistics: 62 percent of everyone in jail—who walks through a prison door—has a current mental health and/or addiction issue; 91 percent of people who are in jail will end up at some point in time having a mental health and addiction issue. But what we've got to stop doing is seeing everything as a law and order issue—saying the only solution for this is locking them up and forgetting about it.What we do know in corrections is what's happening at the moment is people are being locked up and we're throwing away the key and then when we find that key in six 12 or 24 months' time and let them out we say "Oh see you later."Simon O'Connor: What a load of rubbish.Hon STUART NASH: You know what's happening? We are seeing them later—we absolutely are. We just do not have the systems in place to deal with the mental health and addiction problem we have in our society at the moment. And if that member who was a former chair of the Health Committee rejects that then he just needs to look at the evidence—he just needs to have a look at the evidence.We are investing as a Government $8 billion over the next four years in terms of mental health and addiction. What we are also undertaking is a mental health and addiction inquiry to see where we have fallen down. I remember in Napier—I run these full-page ads in the community weekly and I said "I'm going to put something in this paper about the scourge that is mental health in our community." I was told "Don't do that. People don't want to hear about this. We don't want to know about this. That's the sort of thing that's hidden under the carpet." I said "Absolutely it is time to get it out into the open because it is a real problem in our communities." and anyone who denies that has got their head in the sand or somewhere else that's reasonably dark.Hon Phil Twyford: In the cupboard.Hon STUART NASH: Yeah in a cupboard—in the cupboard. This is not the answer to the problem we're facing at the moment. I talked to the police commissioner about this and said "How do the police view this?" What they said is they actually back higher harsher penalties for supplying synthetics. But what we need to do is have a look at a whole solution. You can't just take one line out of a bill and say that solves the problem because it doesn't solve the problem. What we need to do is a complete rethink about how we deal with this as a community and how we deal with this as a society because this is not the way—this is not the way.Synthetics are terrible. In Napier we have an area called Clive Square. It's a beautiful park-lined area. Down the northern end of Clive Square you have professional dentists and other bodies—Lawrence Yule knows it well. It's where people go with their kids to sit underneath the trees there's a fountain there there's chimes—it's a fantastic place. You know what's happened recently? A whole lot of men and women on synthetics have started hanging out there and it has become unsafe. It's become unsafe to the point where people are coming into my office and saying "My clients and my staff are unsafe let alone the people who are walking through this area." We need to do something about it but if we think the answer to this is locking people up then we're completely missing the point. To the parents of Calum Jones I know you're in the gallery tonight—I know you're in the gallery—and like I say I cannot imagine the pain that you've had to go through to have a son in this state that's hooked on these terrible terrible things. Matt King: He's up there.Hon STUART NASH: Well sir I can't see you but what I would say is you have my deepest sympathy. But what we need for people like Calum Jones—and actually thousands of other Kiwis who are not just hooked on synthetics but are hooked on P and other drugs—is the mental health and addiction services that they can access to the point where they're ready to leave and go out and become productive citizens. I remember reading about this case in the paper—I remember reading about this case in the paper—and this poor chap kept being texted by his dealer a whole lot of times saying "I've got some stuff for you. I've got some stuff for you." He sent texts back saying "No I don't want it. I don't want it." and the guy turned up on his doorstep—if I remember the right case and I apologise if I've got it wrong.But this is terrible and we need to support people like Calum Jones in a way that we're just not doing at the moment. There should be no politics around this. But what I will say is that mental health and addiction services have got to the point where they are so run down that we are just not delivering in a way that meets our community's expectations around this. It's got to change—it really does. As a Minister of Police I hear it the whole time from police. They turn up to mental health callouts—there's about 120000 a year—and you know what? They call up the mental health trauma unit and they're just not there. So our police are dealing with issues that they're just not equipped to deal with—they're just not equipped to deal with.So there are two paths we can take as a Government and as a community. We can take the punitive approach and the punitive approach is where we say "We're just going to lock these buggers up—just put them in jail and we'll ask questions later." Or we can take the compassionate approach and the compassionate approach is saying "OK what is going on here? How can we deal with this in a way that involves the community?" I'll be honest: it is an expensive approach it really is because it's a whole-of-Government approach. But I would argue that it's actually a cheaper approach than the punitive one because every time we put a man or woman in jail for a year there's $100000—there's $100000. In fact corrections' operational budget has increased by about $800000 between 2005 and 2017—sorry did I say $800000? It's $800 million. You've got to wonder: if we'd spent that $800 million on community housing on community policing on mental health and addiction services on education then perhaps we wouldn't have needed to lock so many people away.This is the thing that the justice Ministers—myself Andrew Little and Kelvin Davis—are grappling with: how do we take the compassionate approach and invest in our communities in a way that's going to make a difference and turn these people away from a life of crime? One thing I've heard and I've read—I've heard the stories—and I know about a lot of these people is they're not bad people. I'm not talking about the suppliers and the dealers; I'm talking about the people who've got hooked. They're not bad people but they've ended up in a really really bad space and often to feed that habit they're engaging in petty criminal behaviour. What the police used to do—and the police fully admit this—is they would round them up and they'd put them in the paddy wagon and put them in front of a judge and let the judge sort them out. Now what they're doing is they're rounding them up and they're giving their names to social services.Dr Shane Reti knows that in Whangarei the police and the district health board are doing a brilliant job on working together to implement this compassionate approach and what they have done in terms of P is they've got—I think it's about 36—former P addicts into jobs. They've given them an opportunity they've given them a chance to be productive citizens and this is how we've got to view the situation we find ourselves in in our country at the moment.There's something worse coming—there's something called Fentanyl. In the States last year 64000 Americans died an opiate death—died let alone using. It will come here. The Drug Enforcement Agency and Department of Homeland Security say it's not a matter of if; it's just a matter of when it comes here and we've got to be ready because if we aren't more Kiwis will die.I would like to say that the intent of the member's bill is right—we do need to deal with this. This is just not the right way to do it. No one is arguing that this isn't an issue. No one is arguing that we haven't got a problem in our communities with drugs in a way that we need to sort out. Hon Maggie Barry: Do something about it.Hon STUART NASH: We are Maggie Barry. We absolutely are doing something about it and it's more than just putting people in jail believe me. We're investing in a way that your Government didn't even come close to so don't say we're not doing anything about it. Don't say we're not doing anything about it because we have made a choice—we have made a choice—to take the compassionate route and not the punitive route. Thank you very much."