Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National): OK. Madam Speaker thank you very much. The interesting thing about the last two years—fair to say a pretty vexed issue before the Parliament of the last two years—of medicinal cannabis and personal use of cannabis and possible legalisation is this Government has trumpeted their own scheme and one of the reasons why we're told that we can't vote for this bill in the Parliament that Dr Reti went away and worked on is that the Labour Government has their own scheme. We just heard it from the previous speaker Anahila Kanongata'a-Suisuiki that The regime's in place. We've passed the regulations." Well here's a question for the House and for the Labour Government: where are the products? Where are they? Because four years in to this tawdry administration there are no medicinal cannabis products available. So where are they?There was a great hullabaloo in the last Parliament about this progressive step forward. David Clark in his ill-fated time as Minister of Health talked about how we were going to get medicinal cannabis and people in pain who had arthritis were going to get access to it and it was going to be fantastic—widespread availability. And we said "Well that sounds good but you produced a shoddy piece of legislation that just leaves all the work to the officials—all the work subcontracted out to the Ministry of Health officials to do the detail to do the actual grunt work that's required when you're passing legislation." We said it would be a failure and Dr Reti under instruction from Mr Bridges went away and in four weeks did more work and more substantive policy to advance the cause of medicinal cannabis in New Zealand than the Government has done in four years and the result is this bill that we're debating. He went to the United States. He went and consulted with the experts and by himself he drew up a more substantive and comprehensive piece of policy that met with more approval from medical experts and medicinal cannabis lobbyists and people who know what they're talking about in this field than David Clark was able to produce in three hopeless years as the Minister of Health. And now we find six months into this useless Government's regime that the regulations have been passed they've set up the administration but where are the products? They're not there. So a Government that trumpeted and sang from the rooftops about how we were going to get wider access to medicinal cannabis and easier access and went up and down the country and talked to all the stakeholders and talked to all the people who are desperate for access—the Government has failed them. They're in Government till the next election; they've got another 2½ years. But I'll make a prediction now: the roll-out of medicinal cannabis in New Zealand will be slow and it will be bad. What the Government should do if they knew what they were doing and they actually had some expertise on the subject is they should vote for this bill. This bill fills in the gaps of the legislative lacuna that the Government has put in place. We heard from the speaker before all these trivial objections. She clearly hadn't read the bill—basically reading out some poor Labour Party research unit's attempt at rebutting the bill—and said "Oh I don't know who's a gang member so we don't know how to vote for it." Well the reason that's in the bill is because Dr Reti says if you hold a medicinal cannabis licence you shouldn't be a gang member. That wasn't in the Government's legislative regime. And the previous speaker says "Oh well how do I know?" Well here's a clue: it's the gang lists that Poto Williams the Minister of Police administers. It's the gang lists that Simeon Brown's been banging on about in the House for the last six weeks. There is a gang list; that's how you find it out.So the purpose of this bill is to increase access to medicinal cannabis and accelerate it and if we'd passed it two years ago when it was lodged by Dr Reti we would have medicinal cannabis on the shelves right now. It is to the Labour Government's eternal shame that this tawdry Government did not adopt it at the time. We advanced it in good faith. We said to the Parliament "There's actually a widespread consensus around access to medicinal cannabis; let's get it over and done with. Let's pass it and let's increase access." Instead four years into this hopeless Government's regime we've got no products on the shelf. Shame on you."