Ardern JacindaJACINDA ARDERN (Labour): It is my pleasure to follow on from my colleague David Clendon from the Green Party. When we left for the dinner break he was highlighting a number of issues that I really would concur with around the need for the modernisation of this legislation. We are talking about legislation around compulsory treatment that was initially drafted from memory in 1966 and as is the case with many bills and legislation in this area revision is necessary. Evidence and research tell us actually how we should be crafting in this day and age effective legislation. When we talk about compulsory assessment and treatment for substance addiction of course we are talking about a very small group of people who will ever make it to that particular threshold. It does sound like the extreme—to compulsorily force someone into treatment. That does sound like in 2016 quite an extreme act but I do want to highlight that when you read the preliminary provisions the purpose clause of this bill it is very clear that the focus is on the patient as it were who has that need. So I want to highlight the purpose clause: The purpose of this Act is to enable persons to receive compulsory treatment if they have a severe substance addiction"—that has been estimated to be roughly 200 New Zealanders a year—"and their capacity to make decisions about treatment for that addiction is severely impaired so that the compulsory treatment may—(a) protect them from harm; and (b) facilitate a comprehensive assessment of their addiction; and (c) stabilise their health through the application of medical treatment (including medically managed withdrawal); and (d) protect and enhance their mana and dignity and restore their capacity to make informed decisions about further treatment and substance use; and (e) facilitate planning for their treatment and care to be continued on a voluntary basis; and (f) give them an opportunity to engage in voluntary treatment." On first reading when you see it is 8 weeks that someone may be under an order under this bill in terms of long-term treatment programmes that might seem quite short in terms of being effective but the aim of this bill as set out in the previous clauses is ultimately to restore them to a place where they can make voluntary decisions for themselves. Equally what I want to point out is that of course this is a health-based approach to substance addiction. Ultimately that is what we should be doing—if we are setting out the proviso here where we are saying that this is not about a criminal justice response; it is about a health-based response. That is a mantra we should be expanding across our legislation. It is what the Law Commission recommended we do. There is a small nudge to it here and that purpose clause captures it brilliantly for me but we need to be doing that more and more across our drug laws in New Zealand as the Law Commission has highlighted we should. It is something that Labour has tried to encourage this House to have a debate on and still absolutely believes. But equally canvassing this bill has highlighted another gap in our legislation and that is the lack of service provision. In the submissions that issue was raised really concisely which has been canvassed in this House. There has been an estimate that the 200 New Zealanders who might receive compulsory treatment is going to cost roughly $700000—I would say probably at a minimum. Whenever we have seen times when the Government has said that the priority now is to either treat for instance those compulsory treatment clients or for instance when it highlighted that it wanted a particular number of meth beds all that has done in the past is suck resources out of other parts of an already stretched system. So resourcing these beds is incredibly important. Having sat in the back of the alcohol and other drug treatment court in recent times—and I cannot state enough how phenomenal that programme is—it was obvious the need for placement. You had people before the court who had voluntarily put their hand up to be part of the drug and alcohol treatment programme who were in prison waiting to be part of the programme but who could not start because they could not find beds for them in rehabilitation programmes. Those are people who have cost a huge amount to taxpayers through our system because of their addiction who are voluntarily saying: "I am ready to be a part of this." We need to resource this properly. So we support this bill but it must be properly resourced—as do all our addiction services need to be—and we will ultimately save taxpayers a huge amount of money and harm by doing that very thing."