Swarbrick ChlöeCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central): I seek leave of the House for an extra five minutes on this debate.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is objection.CHLÖE SWARBRICK: Well I'll be as fast as I can then. The Greens are opposing this Misuse of Drugs (Classification and Presumption of Supply) Order—Chris Bishop: Point of order. I seek leave of the House for Chlöe Swarbrick to have an extra two minutes for her speech in this debate.Hon David Parker: Point of order. A member is not able to seek leave on behalf of another member.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yeah that's not dramatically different from the previous leave sought.Brooke van Velden: Point of order. DEPUTY SPEAKER: Another point of order Brooke van Velden?Brooke van Velden: I seek leave for the Green Party to have the ACT Party's extra five minutes in this debate.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yeah that's in the same context. That would be asking me to overrule a determination of the Business Committee. [Interruption] Oh I stand corrected. Normally that would be done out—but that's fine. If you're doing that we'll do a 10-minute speech.CHLÖE SWARBRICK: Brilliant. Thank you Mr Speaker and thank you to the ACT Party. So I'm contributing to this debate today—and thank you as well to the member opposite Chris Bishop. I'm standing on behalf of the Greens today to oppose the Misuse of Drugs (Classification and Presumption of Supply) Order 2022. I think it's really important to be given this time to unpack exactly why that is and we do this because we fundamentally oppose the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 and there are so few opportunities in this House to discuss or debate this Frankenstein law of which this Order in Council only served to continue to pump with metaphorical steroids.For those who are listening and uninitiated I think it is really important to unpack this mechanism that we are grappling with today in the form of an Order in Council. This isn't quite a law that we are passing but an Order in Council which needs parliamentary approval. This is important to point out because the mechanisms that exist within the enabling legislation—that is the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975—mean that if you want to classify or reclassify a substance that is in practice effectively introducing or increasing criminal penalties associated to a substance you only need an Order in Council like this. That has a turn-around of about a month. That is a very different process to one that exists if you were seeking to declassify or to reduce the criminal penalties associated to any given substance as listed in the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975. That is a really important point to make because effectively we have baked into that law a ratcheting-up that makes it incredibly difficult to change or to reverse especially when new evidence comes forward. I'll unpack further those issues with regard to the very narrow remit that the expert advisory committee has. So if you were seeking to try and declassify or to reduce the criminal penalties associated to a substance because new evidence came out about where it sits in relation to harm for other substances you can't do this passage of an Order in Council which takes a matter of a few weeks; it's required for you to pass an amendment bill to the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975. And as the Greens in particular have experienced over the past several years and definitely in the last two decades in attempting to make those amendments to declassify or reduce criminal penalties as associated to certain substances and the massive months' worth if not years' worth of process to go through that first reading second reading committee of the whole House and third reading stage—let alone the months' worth of opportunity to scrutinise something at a select committee—it is quite frankly unfathomably unfair that we have a situation where you can see penalties increased through a process as swift as this one in Order in Council. So once again I want to thank my colleagues—particularly Brooke van Velden—for enabling me to unpack this in this debate today.This is again as I've already alluded to yet another example baked into the fundamental problem of the Misuse of Drugs Act which biases and arguably actually incentivises criminal punishment whilst making any alternative approach actually incredibly difficult to achieve. The same has to be said of the establishment of the expert advisory committee in the early 2000s by virtue of amendment. Now the expert advisory committee was established importantly to try and provide some expert basis with regard to how substances were being classified in relation to each other with regard to harm. However the remit of the expert advisory committee is such that they can only recommend where substances should be classified—that is how much of a criminal penalty they should get—as opposed to being able to recommend any alternative approach such as evidence-based approaches to actually reduce drug harm in our communities. Literally all the expert advisory committee can therefore do is make recommendations around ratcheting up or increasing or introducing new criminal penalties associated to substances as listed in the Misuse of Drugs Act. They cannot make recommendations that are evidence based such as Te Ara Oranga the fascinating and fantastic programme rolled out in collaboration between DHB and police in Northland which—interestingly it appears as though we have consensus in this House—is a phenomenal programme that is in need of expansion. Just for those who are uninitiated Te Ara Oranga is a programme that seeks to reduce methamphetamine demand by targeting those who are currently caught up in the supply chain. It has seen a 34 percent reduction in harm and criminal offending and for every dollar invested is returning between $3 and $7.I do need to note with regard to particularly this classification and presumption of supply Order in Council that we're considering today that it's quite the opposite kind of approach and again one that is disabled fundamentally by the Misuse of Drugs Act in that it basically seeks to decriminalise those who are experiencing addiction problems and in turn supports them with drug harm minimisation.While the drugs classified in this Order in Council are dangerous as I have always said and as the Greens have always maintained when you consider that a substance in and of itself can be harmful the next question has to be how do you go about reducing that harm? We know that ratcheting up criminal penalties won't reduce drug harm. In fact the only thing that criminal prohibition with regard to substances has ever achieved is in fact more drugs available on the market evidenced by the fact that we have had numbers of these Orders in Council over the past two decades which have continued to classify more and more substances in turn requiring the classification of more and more substances because it turns out that when you criminally prohibit something those who are baking up illicit substances in their kitchens or otherwise will become those home chemists and create even more substances which in turn creates more drug harm more people in the prison system more families torn apart and more lives ruined.It's also really worth I think pointing out another one of the fundamental problems with regards to the presumption of supply which of course this Order in Council goes to the heart of and others have alluded to in their contributions. This is one of the very rare areas of law where the burden of proof is reversed. To unpack that if you are somebody who was accused of a crime by the police and by the State you are put into the courts where typically the usual presumption is that of innocent until proven guilty. It is the case with the Misuse of Drugs Act that when you have a threshold above what is noted in the Misuse of Drugs Act classification—which again this Order in Council is seeking to amend for a schedule of 49 different substances—you are then in that court experiencing a reversal of that burden of proof. In layman's terms that means that instead of the State having to prove you guilty you yourself are being presumed guilty and having to prove your innocence.Dr Duncan Webb: Point of order Mr Speaker. This is a motion on a schedule to the Misuse of Drugs Act not a lecture on burden of proof in respect of the Misuse of Drugs Act. Ms Swarbrick's wandering all over the place without any real reference other than the odd gratuitous one to the schedule.DEPUTY SPEAKER: I've been listening very carefully to the member's speech and I do agree to a point what the member has raised. However I have given the member a wide scope and there have been times within her speech which have been relevant and I have to have a judgment of the overall relevance to the motion on the table. It is in my opinion not beyond the ability of the member to bring everything that she has said into order and I would ask the member in the last two minutes to do that.CHLÖE SWARBRICK: Thank you Mr Speaker. Because of course today we are debating a motion regarding the Misuse of Drugs (Classification and Presumption of Supply) Order 2022 which makes amendment to the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 particularly with regard to classification and presumption of supply. That is why I am referring to the reversal of the burden of proof as laid out in the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 when it is presumed that you are supplying a substance because you are found to have over a certain threshold. Of course this Order in Council seeks to classify or reclassify 49 substances. I therefore think for those following at home but also for sake of Hansard that it is incredibly important that we contextualise what this Order in Council actually does in practice. So summarising then this reversal of the burden of proof has been found to be inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the Supreme Court. Also former Attorneys-General have found it to be so. Therefore it is the case that the Greens must oppose this notice of motion regarding the Misuse of Drugs (Classification and Presumption of Supply) Order 2022 because what it does is simply further entrench a Frankenstein law which biases criminal prohibition and the punishment of those who simply and frankly need an evidence-based approach. Drugs it seems are winning the war on drugs and I believe that it's time that this House gave evidence a chance.