Worth Richard: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill (No 3) — Referral of S.O.P. 298 to Health Committee 
Worth Richard: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill (No 3) — Referral of S.O.P. 298 to Health Committee 
[Volume:621;Page:16828] 
RICHARD WORTH (National—Epsom) 
: 
 I do not want to take up the time of the House for the full 10 minutes allocated but I do wish to raise two matters. It is probably our good fortune that the Deputy Leader of the House is present because at the outset I wish to raise a procedural matter. A clear and unequivocal undertaking has been given by the Hon Jim Anderton that it will be the case that the Health Committee will call for public submissions on the merit of this Supplementary Order Paper. But I do not think he can stipulate that requirement and have it enforced on the committee in the absence of a direction from the House. So I raise that issue because it seems to me that such a direction would have to be given to make it clear that those submissions will be called for. I am assuming that the committee has the numbers on the Government side to produce that outcome. So that was the first issue. 
The second issue is to follow on from the comments made by Dr Lynda Scott—who was talking about certain health aspects relating to the Supplementary Order Paper—and talk about certain legal aspects. For those who might be listening to these issues on the radio somewhat perplexedly the point at issue here is a very simple one: we are proposing to create a class of substances called restricted substances which are of harm to people and to have an expeditious classification process so that those harmful substances will be added as restricted substances to the Misuse of Drugs Act. The legal issue relates to the process—and members of the Health Committee will be very much aware of this—known as the affirmative resolution procedure which is the parliamentary procedure that is proposed to do that process of adding to the schedules in the legislation. It turns out that it was the Misuse of Drugs Act that provided the starting point for this novel—and it is novel—affirmative procedure process to arise. It was implemented first by an amendment in 2000 to the Misuse of Drugs Act. 
The executive has made a number of attempts to proliferate the use of the procedure and the Regulations Review Committee has in very general terms set its heart against that course. So in the result when it was proposed that the process be available for increasing the number of judges in the District Courts and High Courts and the Regulations Review Committee said that it thought that that was a bad idea the relevant committee was good enough to accept that position. When there was a proposal to extend provisions relating to cervical screening programmes under the health screening legislation it was similarly the case that the affirmative resolution procedure was not in the result finally pursued. It is said that the justification for the process is to do with expeditious scheduling but I draw to the attention of members of the House that the classification of pseudoephedrine by the affirmative resolution procedure was incredibly slow. When people assert in a lofty way that scheduling can occur quickly they just need to look at that example. 
Finally the affirmative resolution procedure has been the subject of an interim report by the Regulations Review Committee which has produced a Government response that the procedure should not proliferate. I express the hope when the Health Committee comes to look critically at the merit of this Supplementary Order Paper that consideration be paid to that issue. I also note that the Regulations Review Committee and I believe the Government think that the relevant provisions of the Standing Orders relating to the affirmative resolution procedure need amendment. It may very well be that when the bill is reported back with this Supplementary Order Paper there will be an amendment to reflect a better process that can later be picked up in a revision of the Standing Orders.