Hague Kevin: Psychoactive Substances Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHague Kevin: Psychoactive Substances Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 09 July 2013. Volume:692;Page:11797. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KEVIN HAGUE (Green):The issues of animal testing addressed by Mojo Mathers’ Supplementary Order Paper 260 are primarily related to Part 2 of the Psychoactive Substances Bill so I will return to that theme later on. In the meantime I wanted to address several issues in Part 1 and to respond to several of the other contributions that have been made. Firstly Brendan Horan’s Supplementary Order Paper 271 requiring the Psychoactive Substances Expert Advisory Committee to report annually is a Supplementary Order Paper that the Green Party will support but I acknowledge and support the queries made by the Hon Annette King in relation to that point which is around whom exactly that expert advisory committee ought to be reporting to. Like the Hon Annette King I invite Brendan Horan to take another call to explain his reasoning and to consider making the adjustment that she suggested.I want to address as some others have the defence mounted by Shane Ardern of Paul Hutchison’s decision to rule out of order hundreds of submissions that touched on the issue of animal welfare—in particular Shane Ardern’s outrageous allegation that those people and other members of the select committee were in effect colluding to stall the progress of this bill. As Iain Lees-Galloway has been saying this is a bill that members of the Opposition have been calling for for years and years and actually the stop-start nature of the Government’s treatment of this issue and of this bill is the cause of the problem. That is the problem. It is not actually those submitters or the members of the Opposition. In fact I think it would be fair to say that I have seldom seen more sincere and genuine submissions to a select committee than those that were ruled out of order. And as for the claim that those submissions all related to matters that were outside the scope of this bill I give this thought experiment. A submitter to the committee might have advocated precisely the wording that is covered in clause 11A of this bill. They might have done that and that submission would have been ruled out of order by Paul Hutchison. That gives the lie to the reasoning that has been advanced to support that decision.One of the Minister’s now many Supplementary Order Papers to the bill expands clause 11A to define what a suitable alternative test would be. I believe—and I invite the Minister to take a call to explain his reasoning about this—that that introduces a new problem which is that it essentially says that a suitable alternative test will be one that the expert advisory committee has publicly notified as being a suitable alternative test. And that is a problem because—Hon Trevor Mallard: It’s a bit circular.KEVIN HAGUE: There is absolutely a circular reasoning but also as the select committee has heard and as Paul Hutchison has previously advised the Committee the interim expert advisory committee already has a predetermined view that animal testing will always be necessary. In other words we have an interim expert advisory committee at least—it may become the Psychoactive Substances Expert Advisory Committee—that believes animal testing is always necessary. In other words it is introducing a de facto requirement for animal testing and certainly on the basis of what we have already seen we are never going to see an alternative test publicly notified by that group.I also want to address the absolute nonsense that we have heard from a number of speakers so far today that there is in some sense a choice to be made between animal testing and testing on our kids. That is a false dichotomy. Nobody is arguing that psychoactive substances that pose more than a low risk ought to make it through this process to get on to the shelves. No one is arguing that. What is at issue is the process by which a substance is found to be low risk and what Mojo Mathers’ Supplementary Order Paper 260 sets out is a narrower range of testing that will be acceptable to establish that. It will most likely result in a smaller range of substances actually making it to the shelves because ruling out animal testing means that only those substances that actually survive a non-animal testing regime—which as I am going to set out in the debate on Part 2 are more expensive; that is why they tend not to be used at present—will make to the shelves. It will rule out substances that rely on animal tests. So we are presented in the House today with the delicious irony that the National Government and those other parties that are not supporting Mojo Mathers’ Supplementary Order Paper are in fact advocating for a more liberal regime of establishing the safety and low risk of psychoactive substances. That strikes me as kind of an interesting irony.The other matter that I want to address is a matter that the Hon John Banks raised in his contribution to this debate on Part 1 and in particular a challenge that he made to the Green Party towards the end of his contribution. He said that the Green Party ought to do as he is doing if Mojo Mathers’ Supplementary Order Paper does not become part of this bill—that is we ought to oppose the bill. We do not do that. We believe that this is a very important bill. It is one that we have been calling for for a long time. It is on balance a good bill but it is not a great bill. It is a bill that could have been great. Actually I appeal to the Minister in the chair the Associate Minister of Health the Hon Todd McClay because this bill still could become great by just a few adjustments made by the Government to make it a more logical bill and one that actually meets those highest standards. We hope that he will take the opportunity to do that. But it is a bill that is necessary. It is a bill that is necessary if we are to achieve the purpose that is set out in Part 1 of the bill—minimising harm and protecting the users of psychoactive substances.What I say finally in response to the Hon John Banks is that I acknowledge the challenge he has made to us and I politely decline that challenge and say that the Green Party will be voting in favour of this bill regardless of whether we can improve it or not. But I point out to him that his is a vote that the Government relies on for confidence and supply. So if we are indeed to look at who actually has leverage to achieve a great bill he might look to his own house. Thank you.