Brown SimeonSIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you Mr Speaker for the opportunity to take a call on this bill the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2). The National Party continues to oppose this piece of legislation. We've heard from the members on the Government side who talk about how this bill is simply just helping people with the decisions that they're already making and helping them to make better choices. The reality though is that this piece of legislation sends a very different message. This Government announced this piece of legislation saying We want to make sure that drug-checking services or drug-testing services are available at music festivals." Well this piece of legislation takes that proposition much much further. Nothing in this bill that we have before us here tonight limits the idea limits the proposition that this Government put to New Zealanders that drug-testing services should be made only available at music festivals. This piece of legislation widens that service right out across all of New Zealand and opens it up to be a much wider service. This is a bill which sends a much different message than what this Government is trying to purport that it sends and one which sends a message of drug taking being something that is OK and which the Government is then going to provide services around the checking of those services.We heard the member opposite stand up and talk about how people change their decisions based upon the information that they're given and the research that they like to use is a research paper put together by the Victoria University. It surveyed a number of people who used the KnowYourStuff NZ drug-checking services. They say "Well the majority of people changed their mind based on the information they've got." When you drill down into the numbers about 80 percent of people who responded to that survey—a self-selected survey by the way—would take the drug even if the drug was partially only partially consistent with what was presumed to be in the substance.That brings me to the next point which is the fact that the reality is by the evidence which has been presented to the committee and which is well available made available online and from many researchers around the world that actually it's not just the impurities in these drugs but it's in fact also the drugs themselves which cause the problem. A University of New South Wales study of 392 ecstasy deaths in Australia between 2001 and 2016 found no deaths from impurities or contaminants in drugs and no deaths from other deadly drugs such as paramethoxyamphetamine or NBOMe cut with the MDMA in a pill. The issue here is not the impurities; the issue here is the actual substance. So what this bill is doing is it's giving a false confidence to the young person who goes and gets that that pill tested which he thinks is MDMA and gets given a tick of approval by this drug-checking service to say "Yep that's MDMA." and he goes ahead and takes that MDMA and in fact that is the drug which is actually causing much of the misery that we are seeing and much of the harm. Instead of reducing harm this is giving young people a false assurance about the harm that they are actually taking upon themselves.What this bill also does is it does a number of other things. It sets up a regime for regulating these substances. It sets up a bunch of regulations and guidelines. It effectively says these substance-checking services can be made available anywhere in New Zealand except I think in suburban areas. That's basically the only exception. That's pretty broad—that's very very broad. It's much broader than what we've seen under other pieces of legislation passed by this Parliament—for example the Psychoactive Substances Act which limited quite heavily where those substances were able to be sold under the regulations in that system. This is a very broad service which I think many New Zealanders will be very concerned about.It doesn't define as the ACT Party seems to be thinking that this is a bunch of voluntary people going and helping their neighbours. It doesn't stop this from being something which is funded by a music festival or funded by the Government. In fact we've actually now seen the Government putting hundreds of thousands of dollars behind these services—taxpayer funds. This is no longer just a few neighbours getting together to try and help a few other people; this is the Government paying for this and it also means that this is the taxpayer supporting the message behind what this bill is now pushing.The reality is this bill will fail to address the issue that it is trying to achieve. The Government has not been able to provide solid evidence to prove that this is actually going to reduce harm. The baseline data is based upon a Victoria University report which was based upon self-selection of people who decided to fill out a survey. That's something which I would've thought this Government would've used a far more evidence-based approach than a self-selected - based survey which I think is something which will not be providing the right evidence to prove that this actually reduces harm.The other point I'd like to make is around the way that this bill ensures that the inadmissibility of the evidence which is provided to the substance checkers—of course someone comes along with their drugs and they ask for them to be checked and that checking service and the information provided is under this piece of legislation not able to be used in a court of law. Now that may be understandable when it comes potentially to issues around personal use but there's a big issue here in regards to the fact that there are people who not only use drugs but there are people who supply drugs and there will be some people who supply drugs who will be looking to get their substances checked to be able to say they've got the Government tick of approval for the selling of their substances. That is something which not only could be falsely applied but is something which I think will be seen more and more with the people who peddle illicit substances through our community seeking to provide some form of tick of approval by the New Zealand Government to say that the substances that they are peddling the misery that they are causing not only whether it's at a festival or at an event but through our society and through our communities and to our most vulnerable—who are often the ones forgotten when we are passing legislation like this. They will be thinking that the Government has given a tick of approval to the substances that they are purchasing.So this is a piece of legislation the National Party has a number of very serious concerns about. We did not support it to the committee we do not see that the evidence has been provided through the select committee process by submitters to argue that this should be supported and so we will not be supporting this through further stages. Thank you very much Madam Speaker."