Luxon ChristopherCHRISTOPHER LUXON (National—Botany): Look it's a pleasure to take a short call on this third reading of the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2). I want to rise and say that we continue to oppose the bill for the reasons that have been outlined by my colleagues over previous debates. And I have to say upfront that I agree with my colleagues that Andrew Little is in fact a very well-intentioned person and Minister. I personally respect him a lot. I think he's a good person. I also appreciate the work of the select committee. I haven't been a member of that committee but obviously there's been work that's gone on to make a bad bill slightly better and that's probably a good thing as a parliamentarian. But ultimately as we've talked about we are opposing it really for several reasons. I think my colleagues have spoken very well about that. I think it's been very unfair the way the other side have picked on Mark Mitchell in particular. He is actually quite cool. He's actually down with the kids and I just thought that was a bit mean if I'm really honest with you. But anyway we'll get into that. Chris Bishop: You're not allowed to mislead the House! That's against the Standing Orders. CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Ha ha! Sorry I withdraw and apologise. I have misled the House! And I'll get back as you said.The first real reason I'd like to say is that it's actually a little bit too broad. I mean the thought going into this process was that it was going to be limited to summer music festivals; that was all the go that was what we were being led to believe. But in some ways we've sort of been a bit misled it feels because we're now legalising pills everywhere and anywhere and with very few limitations fundamentally. And you've got mobile checking services roaming around going to playgrounds and small rural towns and bars near you anywhere across the country. We need to probably specify what exactly the purpose was for festivals and maybe some other locations in this legislation but that actually hasn't happened here. So what started off as a very narrow scope has ended up being I think just way too broad.The second thing and a lot of colleagues have spoken about this before from our side of the House talking about just the inconclusive evidence that exists. The evidence that it contributes to harm reduction is inconclusive. I mean the one study using the self-selected sample is a real problem. And I guess the question for me is: why wouldn't the Government take the time to get the evidence that it needs to make the case to the New Zealand people that there is in fact going to be reassurance that it won't in fact drive consumption? I think that's been really important. And it's a good thing to be able to do to be able to find the evidence make the case take people with you and get them on board with what they're doing.Meanwhile Government says it's about people making smart—we'll get to that in a minute because Government says it's about people making much smarter choices but let's be really clear: there's no smart choices when you're deciding to partake of MDMA; that's a really dumb decision and it leads to actually this false confidence to take MDMA and it kills people. And that's the bottom line of this. It's not the additives it's actually the drug itself that's the problem and it causes some serious issues. And the medical folk on the other side will understand it: it causes respiratory depression it causes cardiac arrhythmia it causes coma and it increases the risk of sudden death. I think there were some comments made by my colleagues Mark Mitchell firstly and Simeon Brown which I thought they made two good points in their recent discussions. Mr Mitchell's point was really about not making sure that we don't give the drugs back. If they've been tested and they've got bad stuff in them why do we hand them back? If we're really serious about avoiding those deaths that we just talked about then why do we actually give them back? And in many ways the risk that KnowYourStuff actually becomes a marketing endorsement for criminal activity and then those results cannot be used or are inadmissible in court I think is a big big problem. I used to work at a place called Unilever in Pētone and we used to go get endorsements for Persil laundry detergent from Fisher & Paykel washing machines and said These things will be really good for you." In many ways that's the same kind of process here: it's a marketing endorsement. I'm sure that good people like Greg O'Connor a very well respected police officer must know that this isn't a good part of the process—not a good part of the bill.The other piece I'd say is that what became very obvious to us is that now the taxpayer's paying for all of this testing. It's not user-pays it's actually the taxpayers paying for it. It's publicly funded. And we said that it would be about $800000—I think the Minister said. You know that's going to go up when it's being tested anywhere and everywhere all across the country. So if you want it tested you pay for it but don't make others who don't want to pay for it pay for it. There are lots of alternatives for those taxpayers' funds. At the end of the day it's not the Government's money; it's the taxpayers' money and why do they have to fund something that they don't want tested?So I think in closing it's way too broad. It's now everywhere and anywhere; testing pills can't be guaranteed as safe it's going to build false confidence and MDMA is what's the killer. The taxpayers frankly shouldn't be paying for it—make it user-pays—and that's why National opposes this bill."