King Annette: Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKing Annette: Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 06 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17514. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai): Labour will support the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill through all stages and we have also today supported the urgency motion for the passage of this bill. You cannot say that you want action in a hurry and then not support urgency for this bill but I think there needs to be a little bit of background about this bill before we get into the details of it. Last month a number of us—in fact I believe probably all the colleagues in the House—received a letter from the Hon Peter Dunne. It started off with “Dear Colleague”. The date of the letter was 15 April last month. He said he wanted to update us on the progress and the achievements of the Psychoactive Substances Act 2013. He went on to say that a blanket ban on yet-to-be-developed psychoactive substances would be very difficult to implement and to enforce particularly as it will relate to products or substances that do not yet exist etc. etc. He then went on to blame local government because the implementation had not occurred as fast as he would have liked and he went on to say he knows there are pockets of frustration but remember the Act is only 9 months old. That was on 15 April.There was no intention by the Minister in charge of this legislation Peter Dunne who put the legislation through the House to make any changes based on information and I have to say a very very detailed fact sheet—a fact sheet that tells us what has happened since the Act came into effect on 18 July what the Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority is doing and the transition to regulations. In fact under this part it said that the authority is operating a temporary system of controls called the interim regime etc. etc.What has happened here is that members on the back bench were putting pressure on Cabinet to make some changes—because maybe the backbenchers were listening to their constituents. That is something that was happening right across this Parliament. We were being told that we had got it wrong and that we needed to make changes. That went on for months and months. The pressure built. The pressure on the backbenchers built. Their constituents were telling them what the problems were and the reports were coming out in the media on a daily basis. So from 15 April—Louisa Wall: And Todd McClay.Hon ANNETTE KING: And Todd McClay?Louisa Wall: In Rotorua.Hon ANNETTE KING: Oh Todd McClay—a Minister—was probably one of the Ministers who did know what was happening. But the pressure was going on in a very very strong way to the backbenchers. So then there needed to be an action and this is where I find it rather difficult. When you read the letter there is nothing about getting this changed at all. Then you hear from the Minister of Health that we have been discussing this issue last month—and we did it more than once. We did it several times. Minister was it after 15 April when we received the letter? The question that in Committee we can ask is whether Peter Dunne was in the loop. Why was he telling us: “No need for change. Everything’s going well. We’re pretty pleased with what is happening.”?Then I read the regulatory impact statement that the Ministry of Health has put out. It is dated 4 May 2014 I think. The ministry wrote that after Cabinet was looking at this issue so it did not actually give this advice to Cabinet before it made the decision. And the regulatory impact statement is very interesting. It says that we do not have all the information we need to fully assess the impacts of this proposal we do not know the number or the proportion of people we do not know the exact date the regulations will be made we do not know the impact on other regulatory actions we cannot say how much enforcement work is needed by the police and finally we do not know what proportion of people use these products or what the effect will be and there has been no formal review of this proposal planned. So in the Committee stage Minister I would like you to answer all those questions because you have been working on it for a long time before you have brought this bill to the House and we are going to have to trust your word on this.It was very clear when the original bill was brought into this House and my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway warned that if we did not take time and care over this bill we would get it wrong. He made that very strong warning in all the speeches that he made. He also said that we had the opportunity at the Health Committee to get it right and not to rush it. He asked for it not to be rushed and there was no need to rush it Minister because it was back in October 2012 that you got the first regulatory impact statement from the Ministry of Health. It took until April the next year for the bill to be introduced—6 months later—and that original regulatory impact statement said this: “Current legislation has proved ineffective in dealing with the rapid growth in new psychoactive substances such as party pills and other legal highs which can be synthesised to be one step ahead of existing controls. Cabinet has agreed to new legislation to address this by prohibiting the sale of all”—all—“psychoactive substances unless approved by a regulator.” So back in October 2012 this is what it said Cabinet had agreed to—that it would have new legislation prohibiting the sale of all psychoactive substances unless approved by a regulator.It went on to say: “The new legislation will reduce risks to the public by removing untested and potentially harmful products from being sold …” etc. That is dated October 2012. Six months later we got the bill and it was rushed through the Health Committee I believe in about 2 months. So what we are seeing here is when the chooks do come home to roost. Sometimes even if it is said by Opposition members and the Government does not wish to take much notice of them maybe they ought to be listened to because we are back here trying to fix something that maybe we could have got right in the original bill.There was then an interjection I believe by one of the backbenchers over there of “Well what did Labour do about it? Labour did nothing about it.” Well I can tell you that Labour did do something about psychoactive substances. They had been around for about 15 years and they were legal. They were—[Bell rung] Sorry Mr Assistant Speaker I thought you were telling me my time was up but I have got—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No 2 more minutes.Hon ANNETTE KING: —2 minutes. Legal highs were legal because the Misuse of Drugs Act bans only substances that are specifically listed in the legislation. Attempts were made under a Labour Government to ban using the Misuse of Drugs Act such things as benzylpiperazine and they were replaced very quickly by a new product. So we did ask the Law Commission to undertake a comprehensive review of the Misuse of Drugs Act. It was completed and given to this Government in 2011 I believe and then the Government took till 2013 to do something about it. It recommended that we did make changes to the Misuse of Drugs Act. The Government has chosen not to do that and put in place a very narrow bill which now needs to be changed. I am pleased that it is being changed. I am particularly pleased for Trevor Mallard who with Mojo Major went out to bat strongly against animal testing and I have to give some credit to John Banks. I do not always agree with the language that he uses but there is no doubt that he does have passion for animals as does my colleague Trevor Mallard and Mojo Major—Hon Members: Mathers!Hon ANNETTE KING: —sorry Mojo—Mojo Mathers who raised this issue on a number of occasions. So we are back here now to fix this problem. I would like to see it fixed as fast as possible but there are some questions that need to be answered by the Government around the delay and around answers to the questions that have been posed in the regulatory impact statement of May which was put out just a few days ago by the Ministry of Health.