Reti ShaneDr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): Thank you Mr Speaker. I want to talk today to the recently released Government medicinal cannabis proposals and I want to add to the excellent line of questioning from the Hon Paula Bennett our spokesperson and bring some further scrutiny to these proposals. Now the bill's not completely bad. There are some good parts to it—namely the parts that they've copy-pasted from our bill actually. I want to just acknowledge that there is some good thinking in it but I really want to highlight some of the issues that are really a problem for us and a problem for New Zealanders.We've got two main issues with the Government's medicinal cannabis bill. The first is around fit and proper persons and a lack of reputational requirements and the best way to highlight this is with a series of five questions. The first would be: can murderers apply for and hold a medicinal cannabis licence under the Government's proposals? The second is: can serious offenders under the Crimes Act apply for and hold a medicinal cannabis licence under these proposals? Question three: can active gang members apply for and hold a medicinal cannabis licence under the Government's proposals? Question four: can a person apply for and hold a medicinal cannabis licence while they are currently addicted to cannabis and in full-time residential rehabilitation? And the final point would be: can business associates of El Chapo hold a medicinal cannabis licence under these proposals? The answers to all of those five points are yes yes yes yes and yes.The only two criteria the Government has in their medicinal cannabis proposals are convictions under the Misuse of Drugs Act and convictions of dishonesty. That in our view is too light. It needs to be substantially tightened up. In our bill we covered fit and proper persons" with a much more sophisticated approach. We think there are issues of your past history that matter and issues of your current history that are probably important as well. As a licence holder you're in a very powerful position. In the past history we agree that offences under the Misuse of Drugs Act and dishonesty—yes they should exclude you from a licence. We also add serious offences—these are serious offences under the Crimes Act—and we also add associations that may influence the conduct of the licence holder.Australia has much more stringent regulations than we were proposing. In fact when we discussed with industry and discussed with others we moderated these to help them fit in. Not only do we think the past history matters for a licence holder; we think the present history matters. We just think that if you're currently addicted to a controlled drug you're unlikely to be a fit and proper person to hold a medicinal cannabis licence. That doesn't seem unreasonable—that doesn't seem unreasonable. So the answers to all those previous questions are yes.The second issue we have is the location for the growing of medicinal cannabis—absolutely nothing mentioned in the proposals. Again we highlight it with three questions. Can medicinal cannabis be grown beside schools under these proposals? Yes. Can medicinal cannabis be grown beside wāhi tapu? Yes. Can medicinal cannabis be grown beside rehabilitation clinics? Yes. There is precedent: even the hemp Act says you cannot grow hemp within 5 kilometres of a residential zone.So we offer what our proposals to this are which again we've discussed with industry and found there's a moderated approach: first of all no growing of medicinal cannabis within 1 kilometre of a residential area—that's for indoor growing—secondly no growing of medicinal cannabis in outdoor environments within 5 kilometres of a residential area—again like the hemp regulations—and thirdly no growing of medicinal cannabis 1 kilometre from unsuitable areas such as schools and wāhi tapu. We think these are reasonable and we'd like the Government to consider taking them into account.One of the issues we have here—and indeed David Clark raised it in a response to the Hon Paula Bennett when he raised the question in the House: "Would the Prime Minister be surprised to learn that the proposals for consultation rule out people with criminal convictions being the licence holder for growing operations…?" That is not true. I've just told you that people can have serious offences have criminal convictions and they are allowed to hold a licence under the current proposals.The overwhelming response has been: "Don't worry you can comment on that in the consultation document." No you can't. There is nowhere in here that talks to fit and proper persons or invites you to talk to fit and proper persons. There are questions: in C3 there are questions around industry; and in C4 there are questions around location—but none of them talk to these particular issues. Can I just be very clear: in our hands active gang members will not hold a licence to grow medicinal cannabis; they are not fit and proper persons to grow medicinal cannabis. Thank you Mr Speaker."