Craig LizDr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker. It doesn't seem so long ago that we were here in this House debating the previous time-limited Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Act and it's really wonderful to be here debating a more permanent solution. Because when I first talked about the previous bill I talked about the number of young people that were turning up in emergency departments because the substance that they'd taken wasn't what they thought it was. I talked about the challenges for health professionals as they were working alongside young people trying to figure out what it was that they'd ingested and often young people having quite severe symptoms so just trying to work out how to resolve those symptoms when you weren't sure what they'd ingested. So when we passed the temporary Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Act in 2020 what it meant is that last summer a number of those substance-checking services could operate with legal certainty over summer and were available to provide that testing and identify some of those substances that indeed weren't what people thought they were. But what this bill does is it makes a more permanent approach.I want to talk a little bit about why drug checking is important and recap on that because it's not just the drug checking itself—and when I'm talking about drug checking I mean people surrendering a portion of what they're intending to take so that they can ascertain what's in it—but it's also the conversations that go alongside that. I think it's important that advice about staying hydrated about not mixing substances about not taking the drugs with alcohol or other illegal drugs those are the conversations that are all so important. Also when the results of that testing come back talking about what's in it and if it isn't what people thought it was then providing that advice so that the person can make an informed choice.I think the research has been already talked about from Victoria University of Wellington. What they did find is that 68 percent of those who had used the KnowYourStuff drug-checking service had changed their behaviour. Either they'd decided not to take the substance after it had been checked or they listened to some of that harm reduction advice. And 87 percent of those who used KnowYourStuff said that their knowledge of harm reduction had improved. But also for those festival organisers who had KnowYourStuff at their events they noticed fewer serious incidents related to illicit drug use. But also the medical personnel that were working at those events because you know they noted that often it was difficult to tell what substance someone had ingested—so if you were having drug-testing services there then you had a better knowledge about what was circulating at the event for future treatment.So just thinking through: what does this bill do? I think basically what it does is it follows on from the previous Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Act which is due to expire 12 months from when it came into force and it's similar in many of the respects. But there's one main difference and that is rather than the Director-General of Health appointing service providers under the previous Act in this bill the director-general is able to issue licences for substance-checking services so they can carry out specified functions and it's reasonably prescriptive what those functions are. So the first one is providing that information so that you can actually do harm minimisation and talk to those people that are potentially seeking the advice through decisions about the usage. Then the second part of it obviously is testing the substances and ascertaining what's in them. And then once you've done that having that conversation with the person that handed over the substance to say this is what's in it and then having that responsibility to dispose of that if that person decides to surrender their drug and also for the samples that they've tested.So there are some very clearly described functions there. But just why this permanent change is necessary is because prior to the temporary legislation coming into place if you were an event organiser and you allowed a drug-checking service to operate on your premises you could be prosecuted under section 12 of the Misuse of Drugs Act because the sense was that you were knowingly allowing someone on premises and it actually identified that you had knowledge that drug use may be happening on your premises. So what this permanent solution does is it means that it's no longer an offence under that Act if you've got a licensed drug-checking service operating on your premises. It also allows those drug-checking services to operate with legal certainty.So this is an incredibly important bill because what it means is we're going to have more drug-checking services available at more events and that means we've got more harm minimisation for those attending those events. So I commend this bill to the House.