Doocey Matt; Rurawhe AdrianMATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): Thank you very much Mr Assistant Speaker. Happy New Year. It's great to be back. It's great to see you back in the seat this year. My intention is not to take up too much of the House's time. It's clear that there is a lot of support for this bill. I just want to point out a few key points for me that as a member of the Health Committee—if it does go to that select committee which I'm assuming it will—I would like to explore a bit further.I would like to acknowledge the Minister the Hon Dr David Clark. I wish him well this term for his endeavours in the health portfolio. It is something that's dear to a lot of people's hearts quite rightly in New Zealand. When I used to work in the UK they used to say that the Brits didn't really have much of an affinity to religion other than soccer and the National Health Service (NHS). I'm not sure we are as fanatical about our district health boards as they are of the NHS but it sure elicits a lot of emotion and quite rightly because we are talking about people's health and their well-being.This debate is about severing a somewhat highly charged debate around recreational use as against medicinal use. What I'd like to explore in the select committee is around this term medicinal cannabis". There's a lot of thought out there about whether cannabis can go through the process that other medicines do. Can it truly be measured around efficacy and effect or is it just a cannabis product? I'm looking forward to exploring that.What we do in the broader cannabis debate—we've got one side that says you know "It's all bad."; we've got one side that says "It never hurt me; I've been smoking all my life." The answer is probably in the middle really—and it's understanding that in fact it's quite a circular argument but we can learn.My feeling is we should proceed very cautiously around any liberalisation of cannabis even in the medical realm. We should proceed cautiously because there is still very little evidence. But in saying that we don't need to be doing things in isolation. We don't need to reinvent the wheel. Nowadays there is a lot of international policy that we can be learning from and there is an accruing field of international evidence. I really do hope in the select committee that we will have time to start to understand other jurisdictions and where they've moved and what we can learn from that.I'm not too sure when it says in the bill that "measures are intended to approve access to medicinal cannabis and are guided by the principles of fairness quality … safety and compassion." I think the pure fact that they have to reference the Government's 100-day plan multiple times in the start of the bill—I think this is more about a bill that's trying to fit into the box of the 100-day plan. In fact it's probably quite hurried it's quite rushed and in fact I think the Government could have actually said "We don't have it right here. We could've waited a bit longer." But of course they've got the 100-day plan and they want to comply to that and—you know perception's reality and it's all looking good but I think it's going to have to be knocked round a lot more in select committee.I want to drill down a bit more around this issue around chronic pain. There seems to be a bit conflicting advice—you know it's not going to operate in the chronic pain area—around the lack of a definition but when you look at Ministry of Health guidelines there is terminology around severe or debilitating conditions that could be used rather than the terminal 12-month mark at the moment. So I'd really like to explore the chronic pain bit a bit more. Of course the diagnosis of 12-months' terminal illness is going to be problematic in itself. How do you accurately reflect when someone is in the last year of their life?I'd also like to hear from the police in the select committee. It sounds like they have said that it's essential the provisions are workable—I did read that somewhere—and quite rightly. I think we are going to set up a situation where potentially it might take more resource of police time to fully investigate whether someone has a valid defence of why they are using cannabis at this time.As you can hear there are a lot more questions. It feels like the bill will be passed tonight and I'm looking forward through the select committee process to really knock this bill into shape which potentially it should have come to the House in in the first place.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I call Dr Liz Craig—five minute call."