van Velden BrookeBROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): 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."