Craig LizDr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker and I'd just like to thank Matt Doocey for the opportunity to spend the evening talking about workplace health and safety which is a really important issue. Before I go into the specifics of the bill what I want to do though is just talk about the broader context in terms of workplace drug-testing and what it actually aims to achieve and then think about whether this bill actually takes us further in that direction. If you go to Employment New Zealand's website and you type in drug testing" you come up with their "Drugs alcohol and work" page and one of the key points it emphasises there is that under law both employers and employees have a duty to ensure that their workplace is safe. Then they go on to talk about using drugs and alcohol can lead to employee impairment at work and they talk about some of the effects of impairment: poor concentration carelessness risk-taking behaviour and errors in judgment. Then they also talk about how alcohol and drug use not only affects work performance and productivity but you end up with higher rates of injury fatalities and absenteeism. So the key function of testing for drugs at work is to make sure that we've got a safe workplace but it comes down to the impairment factor on that and basically the fact that that impairment then can go on and compromise the safety of the employee themselves their fellow workers and members of the general public. So just thinking though: who can test? Is it just something that any employer can request of the employee—and the situation there is no. Generally an employer can only really ask an employee to have alcohol or drug testing if it's a condition of their appointment and if it's in the employment agreement or if it's a workplace policy. So basically Employment New Zealand recommends that employers thinking about drug testing their employees seek legal advice because basically what you've got to weigh up are the risks and benefits versus the privacy and invasion of privacy for individual employees. Basically if they're thinking about it why they might be doing it is to protect the safety of employees or the general public—for example if the employee works in a safety-sensitive area or if their work directly impacts the safety of others other colleagues or members of the public—and you've also got to balance that requirement about safety versus not creating unreasonable intrusion into the privacy of employees. But then you've got other issues that you've got to consider if you are going to be looking at workplace drug-testing and that is when you test. So the options there are you can look at pre-employment tests random drug-testing testing on suspicion of use or after you've had a near miss or an accident. I think looking at safety-sensitive workplaces pre-employment testing often can give a signal from the employer to the employee that they're serious about managing the impacts of alcohol and drug risk within the workplace and so putting something in the job vacancy gives that signal to that potential employee that the employer is very concerned about managing those risks. But then once you actually are employed then you've got to go down the route of considering whether you're looking at random testing or whether you're actually looking at very specific testing in certain situations. Again Employment New Zealand talks about you know—their sense is that doing it for specific purposes is probably better than just doing random suspicion-less testing on everybody. So thinking about that specific purposes if you find somebody that looks like they're impaired at work that might be a situation where you might want to test or if you've actually had a near miss or been involved in a workplace accident. Then there's a range of options for testing and so urine testing—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! Can I just draw member's attention to the purpose of this bill which is to restrict and regulate the sale supply and importation of synthetic urine and invite the member to come back in her first reading speech to the purpose of the bill.Dr LIZ CRAIG: Sure OK. Thank you Madam Speaker. So what I'm sort of laying out is the framework around the testing but then we come back down to what the effectiveness of the bill is and where this bill would sit within that because what this bill does is it aims to create a framework whereby the Director-General of Health can place restrictions around the importation supply and acquisition of synthetic urine and allowing them to authorise those people that can bring that into the country import and make it available for specific purposes. So that's about research testing etc. But the issue we've got is that urine is only one of those elements that can be tested for in workplace drug-testing. You've also got the options of saliva you've got the options of blood and you've got the options of hair. The other issue we've got is if we go down this route and we do take that time to ban the availability of synthetic urine in the marketplace the question there is we haven't got a real sense at the moment of what the underlying prevalence of people faking their drug test with synthetic urine is versus just going in and saying to a mate or to a family member "OK can you please provide some urine for the purpose?" versus there's a whole lot of detox products that are available on the same websites as those that are offering synthetic urine for sale. So basically the question is: what proportion of behaviour is going to be displaced if you end up with taking people away from using synthetic urine and moving on to detox products? The other issue is basically that active drug-testing also can create situations where there is the question around trust between the employer and the employee.If we're getting rid of just the synthetic urine then the question comes back to: what are we doing about impairment? Often with these drug tests—for example if you're looking at say cannabis within a drug test with urine that can be tested and positive in the system for up to four weeks when tested by urine. So the question is: if we're then again banning synthetic urine products what does that do about that whole focus in the employment situation around impairment and the culture of the workplace where the workers are identifying impairment among themselves or among others? Because I think it's really important that we create that culture in the workplace that doesn't focus just on a single drug test but it focuses on having that shared employer-employee relationship focusing on impairment and identifying the reasons for impairment in the workplace that can lead to injury or accident. In that situation there's a lot of other factors that may not be picked up by particular urine testing or other drug testing. For example fatigue stress—you're looking at alcohol use and looking at other drugs that are not picked up by that testing. So I think the issue we've got with this bill is that the Director-General of Health could go to a lot of trouble in terms of banning the importation and having a very narrow regime about who can import it for particular purposes. Then we think that what we've done is we've actually eliminated the risk of drug use in the workplace when all we may have done is potentially displaced that from basically the use of synthetic urine to other detox products to then using friends or other colleagues to provide a sample. Yet we've then not then gone back and focused on that relationship between the employer and the employee and creating a positive environment where we can actually really focus on the particular sources of impairment that we get in the workplace. So basically I think what we need to be doing is stepping back and saying "What is our broader approach to safety in the workplace?" and then focusing on those factors in addition to drug impairment alcohol fatigue and working out how we work together to identify where those systems are.So basically in summary I think that this bill and the proposal that it's doing would put in place a complex regulatory regime in terms of who can import and who can make the products available. But what it wouldn't do potentially is address the underlying issues around impairment and it wouldn't make it any safer in terms of thinking through how that works because I think again coming back to just looking at the various options for testing if you look at urine testing cannabis can be in the system for up to four weeks—which means that you may be getting a positive test there but you're actually not identifying impairment—methamphetamines three to five days; other opiate-based four to five days. So again it's that focus on where we are going to put our effort in terms of ensuring we've got health and safety in the workplace. So I think where we do need to go though is making sure we have that focus on how we come together and look at impairment and how we can reduce the impacts of alcohol and drugs in the workplace. So I'm unable to support this bill. Thank you. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is that the motion be agreed to."