Warren-Clark AngieANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. I thought that I would commence my contribution today by reading—as the member Chlöe Swarbrick did—the part of the bill that has caused so many problems. This is perhaps for the benefit of the Opposition who do not appear to have read the bill. So I'm going to refer to clause 6 Section 7 amended (Possession and use of controlled drugs)": "(5) To avoid doubt it is affirmed that there is a discretion to prosecute for an offence against subsection (1)(a) and a prosecution should not be brought unless it is required in the public interest. (6) When considering whether a prosecution is required in the public interest in addition to any other relevant matters consideration should be given to whether a health-centred or therapeutic approach would be more beneficial."I have read that out for the benefit of the Opposition and now I will turn to the decision-making tool that occurs when a police member is looking whether to prosecute. So "Is it in the public interest to prosecute? The relevant public interest considerations which can be properly taken into account"—and the police offered this to us—"by decision-makers will vary from case to case. As per the Solicitor-General's Prosecution Guidelines examples of considerations of matters that may be relevant include"—so this is in favour of prosecution. I am making this very clear: in favour of prosecution—"The offending was of a serious nature taking into account the gravity of the maximum sentence. There are grounds for believing that the offence is likely to be continued or repeated. The defendant has relevant previous convictions diversions or cautions"—i.e. they haven't taken the message of a health-based approach—"The offence was an incident of organised crime"—so that speaks to all of the issues that the Opposition have spoken to in concern about this matter and—"The offender has created a serious risk of harm." So those are the matters that are in opposition to what has been said across the Chamber. So for the "Public interest considerations against prosecution": "Proper alternatives to prosecution are available—for example a health-based or therapeutic approach would be more beneficial than prosecution. The defendant has no previous convictions. The offence is not on any test of a serious nature and is unlikely to be repeated. The harm can be described as minor and was the result of a single incident. The defendant is a youth."So I would like to just look across the Chamber and talk to the members and say that we really considered this. We looked at this discretion that the police currently use and I have read out the current guidelines. The reality is that this is what the police do. They are currently doing this to fix and solve problems that they see. My colleague here Greg O'Connor was very clear: the 40-plus years that he spent in the business of policing and the war on drugs has failed. When we came to discuss this bill we were very clear that actually we needed to look clearly and consistently at what needed to change. The effect of that has been quite simply three things. First of all we have—and I'm not going to say the names of these two synthetics because they have quite long names and long letters—Chlöe Swarbrick: AMB-FUBINACA.ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: No I'm not going to do it. These drugs have been moved from class C into class A so that means they're a serious drug. But the important second part of this bill which the Opposition also agreed to and which I feel we haven't really sort of talked about at this point very much is the new temporary classification for new and emerging drugs. We heard from the Opposition—quite clearly they talked about us not moving with urgency and then we were moving too slow; all sorts of things—but actually this is the piece of legislation that enables the Minister of Health to quickly gazette and record these drugs while they're still under testing to identify where there is risk and harm and to get these drugs put into a special category. That gives better search and seizure opportunities for the police and that actually is about being very clear that we want to fix the harm.The third part is about what I have just spoken about: very simply the opportunity to offer a therapeutic response to people's drug addictions. Very simply that's all it does. It's a discretion that is applied and it is applied constantly by the police on an everyday basis. If we look at the 95 submissions that occurred and the 59 submitters who came and spoke with us in person it was in fact really clear that the thing that a lot of the submitters were concerned about was more about that there wouldn't be bias applied as opposed to the fact that a discretion was being applied. And so we had a good conversation about it. There are guidelines and further work the police are doing. Also make no mistake: the police who were advising us in the select committee were very clear that this would not affect anything in their day-to-day operations nor would it do anything that was going to cause them undue difficulty harm problems or operational issues. This was business as usual and they appreciated it being codified for them. Now I have another quote. We were quite concerned about whether in fact we were getting it right so we got an opinion from Crown Law. Crown Law very clearly identified for us this prosecution standard. This is what they have said to us: "While there is probably little real difference between a direction to prosecute and a discretion not to prosecute the guidelines refer to the discretion to prosecute in order to make it clear that there is no presumption either in favour of or against a prosecution in any particular case."So therefore quite clearly the concerns of the Opposition have been at the advice of the Solicitor-General quite clearly refuted. I have moved off the Health Committee and I have enjoyed my time with the Health Committee and it is a real shame to me that the Opposition are being so bull-headed around this particular clause. I believe that they are taking a decision which is not founded in the law. It's not founded in the opinions that we've been given. It's not founded in the discussions we had and I'm really sorry that I am leaving the select committee because we've worked very collegially generally and it has been very interesting. We've had some very interesting debates and conversations and generally work very closely together but in this instance I'm quite saddened that this is probably the last time I'll speak on a piece of health legislation and I'm having to stand up and explain what the Opposition so very very clearly knows we discussed. They have refused to accept the way that this bill has been written and the fact that a therapeutic response to drug taking is important and is useful yet we will still be hard on these people who are dealing in this misery. It is very important and that is in the legislation too. I commend this bill to the House."