Dyson Ruth: Substance Addiction (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDyson Ruth: Substance Addiction (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 15 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:9715. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Can I begin my contribution to the Substance Addiction (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Bill by paying a tribute to all those people who in the past under different regimes have died as patients or residents—or inmates as they were previously called; can you believe—in our psychiatric institutions around the country. I have no criticism of the health providers or the decision makers of the time because I think everyone did what they genuinely thought was for the best in the best interests of the person and their treatment. We have clearly come a long way since then and thank goodness for that.I also want to pay a tribute to two women who in my view changed the way that Parliament considered and acted in relation to mental health learning disabilities and drug and alcohol treatment and they are the Rt Hon Jenny Shipley and the Rt Hon Helen Clark. Both of those women as leaders of Labour and National at the time made a conscious decision to stop using people particularly people with mental illness as pawns in this institution that we are privileged to serve in. And I think that was good not just for Parliament but it was also good for our consideration of mental health and therefore the treatment that people got. So I just want to put on record my appreciation of that change.I hope that other changes are driven in Parliament as well. Too often we make—I have only been viewing second or third-hand actually through Twitter. Is it The Bachelor New Zealand? Whatever that programme is I think we make that look quite sophisticated from some of our behaviour. I will just stop there but I hope that we can get some other change driven.I also want to acknowledge the Law Commission. It started this process. It saw an area where work needed to be done. It does mostly really robust thoughtful work and it gives Parliament something very strong to build on and that is evident I think from the contributions that have been made from a range of different parties already tonight.So this bill will throw out the old system—and so it should; it is outdated—and move to a new system that has an entirely different frame. We are no longer talking about penalty and punishment and the justice system in our area of drug and alcohol addiction. Let us wait for other recognition of that move of a frame as well—but at least it is starting in the treatment area—through to a harm reduction. So that health approach I think is a very bold step and it is one that clearly Parliament is up to supporting.My concern is not for any of the specifics or the principles of this legislation. I think the Hon Peter Dunne has done a jolly fine job actually in picking up the Law Commission’s work and then fine-tuning it through the various processes of Cabinet into a bill that we all support. My concern is that in the end the services that we rely on so greatly in our communities have to be resourced well enough to do the job that we expect of them. So we are setting in place here a legislative framework where the provision of services will be different and additional to what we have now.I just want to put on the record that these organisations that do this amazing work around our country need the money to pay for it. They cannot employ cheap monkeys. They have got a high-quality professional job to do and they should pay them properly. So this needs to be resourced. If the $1.7 billion out of the health budget is an indication of how seriously the Government takes this then we should be concerned.I have enjoyed the debate so far tonight and I am sure I will enjoy the remaining few speakers. It is not very often that we have an issue that is so important to so many people—so many individuals and their families—and yet it has such support across the various parties in Parliament. It is I think a long-overdue measure but it is one that has taken the proper time to come to fruition and a proper process. The Law Commission is a very good place to start this work and I think that the process that has been undertaken since then and the discussion papers widely debated throughout the provider and support advocacy group community has ended up with a jolly fine bill as a result.