Smith NickHon Dr NICK SMITH (National): We are at the second reading of this very first bill of this Parliament and our Standing Orders tell us this is where we talk about the evidence that we heard at the select committee. This is the debate where we look at and consider every one of the clauses and members will be thinking well what did happen in the select committee? What evidence did we hear from officials and experts? The answer is absolutely diddlysquat because the very first bill that this Parliament is passing under urgency hasn't gone anywhere near a select committee and it's impossible for any member to have a thoughtful contribution.Now the job of this Parliament is to scrutinise legislation. I know we've got many new members in the House. It's a 34-clause bill. Here's my question: how many members in the House have read the 34 clauses?Chlöe Swarbrick: Me.Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Chlöe has. I've got three. So here we are a Parliament of 120; I can see at least 15 new members who are voting for a bill and they haven't even bothered to read it. Are they taking their responsibilities as members of this House appropriately when they are prepared to just nod and agree and slam a piece of legislation through all three stages when the bill has only been introduced to the House today?Now I've been once bitten twice shy on the sorts of arguments that have been put forward by those of the likes of Chlöe Swarbrick. This Parliament eight years ago passed legislation for psychoactive substances. We were told that it was better to regulate those party pills that it was better if we had a proper regulatory regime that we would make it safer. Within eight months every member of this House was confronted with situations in their communities where actually that psychoactive substance had made our communities a lot less safe our accident and emergency departments were full of people who had used substances that had been approved by this Parliament and actually over 200 New Zealanders died.So I say to this Parliament this is a life and death issue and deserves far more scrutiny than being introduced and rammed through on a single day. I would love to have the sort of evidential challenge that the Green Party's Chlöe Swarbrick wishes to have and so I say to the Green Party and I say to the ACT Party: why won't you support this bill going to a select committee? If they want to have a detailed evidential debate let's hear the evidence. Why do we bypass the very processes of this Parliament and not give a single opportunity for that expert evidence?Now we come to the issue of making drugs safe. They say that if we pass this bill we'll make them safe. Well here's the evidence—Hon Member: You're not interested in the evidence.Hon Dr NICK SMITH: —let's have some evidence—392 Australians died as a consequence of using party pills and the research by the University of New South Wales found that not one of those deaths were due to impurities. Yet every member says this is all about making sure that our people going to concerts are only going to have access to safe drugs. Actually it's not the impurities that killed 390 young people in Australia; it was the drug itself. So when members opposite say that we must pass this law to make party pills like ecstasy safe on the basis that it is the impurities that are leading to people dying that is not backed up by the evidence. The evidence is that the use of the drug the ecstasy itself is causing those deaths.The last point is that when the Government as with the psychoactive substances says something's safe there will be an increase in use and with that increased use will go increased harm. That's the sort of evidence that I want to test and I want to scrutinise at a select committee and members opposite are denying that sort of robust process on this bill.