Mallard Trevor: Psychoactive Substances Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMallard Trevor: Psychoactive Substances Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 09 July 2013. Volume:692;Page:11799. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South):I want to first of all say that like all Labour members I am going to vote for this bill. This bill the Psychoactive Substances Bill is overall a very good bill. There have been discussions around the timing and it is wrong that it took a couple of years after the Law Commission report for the bill to come to the House and it is particularly wrong that the Government did not prioritise it such that it could have its first reading and referral to a select committee in time to have a proper select committee process and hear those people who want to be heard. I am informed that my colleague Paul Hutchison who chaired the Health Committee and went to a very good school was not quite well educated enough at that school to ask the right questions and as a result of that got a bum steer and hearings that should have been taken place did not occur. I think that is sad because if they had taken place we could have been in a position to take a different decision.I have another preliminary comment. I have bred dogs. I have had a dog in my household for the vast majority of my adult life. My kids have had and have dogs. I care lot about them. To me they are important. Countering that it is no secret to most members of the House that a close family member of mine is a research scientist and is doing the sort of research science that involves animal experimentation. The area that is being worked on has the potential to make an enormous difference as far as human lives are concerned. So I am not a person who is adamantly against animal testing where there are circumstances where through ethical processes it can be established that there are no alternatives and it is for a good cause. In my view the improvement of human life—or even actually the improvement of animals’ lives—can be a good reason for that.But what we are looking at now is a bill with a clause that without Mojo Mathers’ amendment has an out and allows animal testing for one reason and that is to make it easier for drug dealers to make bigger profits. I just make it absolutely clear. What this bill’s approach does means that it is easier and cheaper to get approvals to have these psychoactive drugs approved. That is what it is for that is what it is designed to do and I think that is wrong. Frankly if they cannot do the bench-based science—and I accept that that can be more expensive than killing puppies. I accept the view that it is cheaper and easier on occasions to use animals and that that will be the case in a number of countries that have ethical standards that differ from ours. I accept that that will occur. But why should we accept that? Why should we lower ourselves to the standards of China and India and their approach to animal life as we pass this legislation? Why should we do that especially when it is to approve a drug that most of us when we are asked about it pretty carefully—and even with that sort of approval—would think it better they were not approved anyway? A psychoactive drug is a mind-bending drug and the idea that animals are killed for that is just wrong.I want to say that although I agree with the vast majority of what the Hon John Banks says and I admire his emotion I think that those of us who have been around this House for the time that John Banks and I have been have seen him emotional about this sort of issue only on one issue before. He was emotional about an issue that we were on opposite sides of and I deplored his emotive approach at the time. But what Mr Banks has shown is that within the ACT Party at least on this issue there is something that is caring.The second to last point that I want to make—and I could come back again with a few others—is one that was often made by prominent National Cabinet Minister Ruth Richardson. She would ask the question: “What is the mischief?”. What is the mischief? I want to ask National Party members what the mischief is in the Green Party amendment. What is wrong with it? Who is going to be hurt by it? It might be I agree that slightly fewer drugs are approved to bend young people’s minds. Well what is the mischief in that? It might be that the drug dealers have to pay more to get approvals. What is the mischief in that? I am yet to hear anyone on the other side tell me what the problem is other than a bunch of self-interested professional experimenters and one other person who apparently used to be involved in the SPCA who thinks what they are doing their approach is right. I just cannot agree with it.I am going to tell you what I suspect and what I suspect in this particular case is that Associate Minister of Health McClay—and you know I am told he was a good chair of a select committee; he is not making a great start as far as this legislation is concerned—has been detailed to look after a fragile vote for confidence and supply and that is Peter Dunne. And who is surprised? All of us—well not all of us—quite a few of us have some sympathy for Peter Dunne. Although much of his problems are of his own making I think we all make mistakes and he has clearly made a set of them now which have resulted in him losing his ministerial arrangements. But at the moment he is clearly someone who has to be managed for the next year and a bit until the next election when I think we all know that he will not be a member of Parliament. He has to be managed with kid gloves. My view on the reason for the National Government taking what is such an illogical position on this—there has been no logic expounded by any National member—is that it is doing it in order to handle Peter Dunne in order to ensure that it continues to have a majority for supply in the likely event that the Māori Party splinters going forward.