Ghahraman GolrizGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. It's a pleasure to get bills come through the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee and connect this Parliament to international law in that way so I do look forward to hearing submissions on this bill. As others have said this is a law that proposes to bring our domestic law and the powers that we have for monitoring this area in line with two UN conventions: article 108 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and article 17 of the UN Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.It is a technical bill and it will amend the Customs and Excise Act and the Misuse of Drugs Act in a way that just extends the jurisdictional area of those two Acts. One of the things that was important for me to look into was that we weren't in fact substantively extending the powers to search. So I was pleased to see that the bill only proposes to extend the powers in terms of the geographic area and customs are still required to show a reasonable belief that one of the offences under their ordinary powers has been committed.So in terms of search and seizure law when that reasonableness standard is applied it means that there is an objective standard where customs just like New Zealand Police would have to meet an objective evidential standard if they were tested and the belief" rather than "suspect"—all these words very technical but they do mean a lot in terms of the power to search. So I was concerned that we weren't allowing a broad power to just board vessels and search them based on sort of a hunch. But we are still upholding the rule of law in terms of search and seizure law at sea; we're just extending the geographic area which is something that we have agreed to do in terms of doing our fair share to monitor an area of the sea in our neighbourhood—essentially in our Pacific neighbourhood—based on our agreement in assenting to those UN conventions.As others have said this is something that will protect our Pacific neighbours who are being used at the moment as sort of transiting points for the dealing of drugs at sea and importation of some seriously expensive narcotic drugs as we've heard over and over again. So this is something that we know: if drug trafficking is happening in a country it will give rise to other types of criminal activity as well and our Pacific neighbours are vulnerable to that.Working on the defence portfolio I learn every day that a lot of the work of the New Zealand Defence Force is done in monitoring in the Pacific for things like fishing and environmental offences. So that's something that New Zealand is really active in and this is extending that role for customs which is important because we have those resources here and we're going to be cooperating more with our Pacific neighbours and also with our Australian counterparts to keep the area safe.So we have heard over and over again that drugs cost New Zealand an estimated $1.8 billion in social harm annually. So it is important that we make sure that drugs aren't imported regularly into New Zealand and into the Pacific. It is something that we do need to invest in but it is only part of a more nuanced approach as we know this Government has to all criminal offending but especially to drug offending.We know from recent reports that came out in the annual reviews that the class A controlled drug methamphetamine is about to this year overtake its prevalence in our criminal justice system—it's about to overtake cannabis. We're not just talking about possession of small amounts; the kind of methamphetamine offending that's coming up as being so prevalent as to take over cannabis is the supply manufacture and importation offending. This is a type of offending that has life imprisonment as its maximum penalty and regularly we are sentencing people to imprisonment of up to 20 years 18 years—and that is enormously costly. Drugs once they're imported into New Zealand of course then draw in all sorts of other counterparts to the offending that kind of disseminates drugs throughout the community and our criminal justice system bears the brunt of that.It's costly in terms of policing. It's costly in terms of the court system which affects access to justice for victims of other types of offending. It is in fact one of the only criminal offences outside of homicide that our High Court hears any more. Everything else has been relegated down to the very busy District Courts because class A drug offending is now so prevalent. And it is costly in human terms. It's costly to our communities. It's costly to victims of addiction. It's one of those types of offences that have as their victims the actual user as well. So we know that this is happening and this monitoring of our seas is part of the way that we're going to keep our communities safe but also our Pacific neighbourhood.But beyond that I do want to highlight that this isn't the only kind of remedy that this Government will be looking to. We're not only going to be policing the seas and we're not only going to be policing even within New Zealand. What we are going to focus on is addressing the causes of drug offending which actually is the demand point. So we are going to invest in drug and alcohol addiction services and mental health services. We know drug addiction is often caused by more serious mental health concerns—anywhere from anxiety to behavioural disorders to mental illness to brain injury that cause people to become addicted—and we're going to invest in addressing those causes of this type of offending as well as creating jobs and housing and all of those things that keep our communities connected enough that they don't fall prey to drug offending.As we do all of that we are also committing to passing this rather technical bill that does that little bit which is actually incredibly important in terms of monitoring and controlling the transport and the dealing of drugs internationally. It is part of what we've signed up to do. It is doing our fair share so I am very pleased to commend this bill to the House."