O'Connor Greg; Rurawhe AdrianGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Thank you Mr Speaker. As I sit listening to this debate it sort of reminds me of a journey that I've been on to this place. I wasn't on the committee that considered this—it's the Health Committee; I'm on the Justice Committee—but as I sit here I think how absolutely appropriate it is to be in front of the Health Committee. Mr Speaker if you'll just indulge me. As a younger man I was an undercover police officer and I spent a lot of time living with those on the peripheral living with drug users and dealers gang members and they all had one thing in common. It was that they were all heavy drug users even the dealers. They had one thing that went through everything. Whatever crime was committed it was based on drugs. Someone asked me the other day When you stand up and say something like this in the House aren't you worried that you talk even now about some of the people who you busted?" and do you know what? I'm not because they're all dead. I'm not because those who lived that life they're well gone mostly from overdoses or just bad life choices. So that just really caused me to reflect on how appropriate it is that issues like this are dealt with by the Health Committee. Even as I was sitting waiting to speak today my mind drifted back to a woman called Sally Anne Enoka one of the first heroin addicts I ever dealt with in the 1970s. Sally Anne—I actually arrested her and chatted with her and I saw her around town. She was a prostitute. She was in and out of prison in and out for different offences but she had come to the city she had got into heroin—a little bit of a similar story to what Chlöe Swarbrick talked about—she became a hopeless heroin addict and eventually I attended her death when she died of a tragic overdose. This was one of those things that has just really struck me all my life. Through my career I've arrested many people. I've put people in prison and seen them at different stages but nothing we've ever done—when I look back on it—has really solved the issue. Nothing I have to say that I've done has really made a difference. The amount of methamphetamine has just increased in this country. The amount of methamphetamine—we saw that massive seizure up in the North of a half a tonne and it made no difference to the amount or availability and price of methamphetamine in New Zealand. We've talked about increasing sentences. I mentioned in the second reading the attempts to control heroin in New Zealand in the 1970s where it became life imprisonment. It actually made no difference by itself. So all I'd ask members opposite—it's so easy to stand up and talk tough. It's so easy to stand up and try and grab that right hand of the vote but just please before you do so think about what you're doing. We do have an opportunity now. You could stand up here and look we could get polarised over this on political grounds but it's not a thing to do. Actually it's going to be your kids your grandkids those related to you those in your electorates—they are the ones that are going to continue to suffer if we don't get this right. Now look nothing is certain in life. We don't know for certain that this is going to work and anyone that stands up here and says that it will—we can't be sure. But by heck it's time we tried something a little bit different. When I look at this bill what this does is it doesn't actually really mean that anyone's going soft on the causes. Customs are not going to stop trying to seize as much as they can. The drug squads are not going to stop tracking down drug dealers. They're not going to try and stop getting the big seizures. Nothing is going to change at that level. No one's going soft anywhere and I challenge anyone in any drug squad to think that anything's going to change. But what is going to change is that it just gives us the opportunity to maybe affect demand because while there's that massive demand out there nothing will change. And I go back to people like Sally Anne Enoka. There wasn't anything there that we could have done. She kept using heroin. There were no options to take. If we can bring in an option that someone like her can actually be put off into another system then it might just save people like that and this is an opportunity to do it. So I would ask those speakers who are going to follow me from the other side of the House to just think what you're saying. Just think: this might be one opportunity to really make a difference. There's opportunity—we've seen evidence overseas that we can make a difference. Let's at least try something because what we're doing now simply is not working. I recommend this bill to the House.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I call the Hon Paula Bennett—five minutes."