Williamson Maurice: General Debate 
Williamson Maurice: General Debate 
[Volume:658;Page:7020] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (Minister for Building and Construction) 
: 
 I am seriously delighted to take a call today and to talk to this House on what I think is probably the big issue of the day that needs to be considered. I congratulate the Prime Minister and other Ministers of this Government on taking the steps that were announced the other day with regard to the drug P. Those of us who are constituent MPs and who know about various issues to do with offenders on P will all have our own stories to tell. 
For me I guess there are a number of stories. Antonie Dixon who members will remember was the samurai sword man did some dreadful damage. He was one of the stories. But I think that the worst of all times in my electorate was the killing in a Pakuranga pizza parlour one night of a young 23-year-old man Marcus Doig. He was shot after he had complied with everything he was asked to do. He had handed over the money when he was asked to he had walked away from the cash register he had knelt down when he was told to but he had then been shot in cold blood. Only 3 days later the animal who had done that to him went and did the same thing to a 44-year-old bank teller John Vaughan in Mangere. There can be no more compelling stories than those to say to us that we have to take control of this drug. 
In the customs portfolio we have already done a number of things that I think are quite spectacular yet there is more to do. But before we talk about that I will have a little smack at some of the editorial writers and the so-called knowledgable commentators who have had a smack at the National Government about stopping the over-the-counter sale of pseudoephedrine. Do members know what some of the commentators and editorial writers have said? They have said that this will not make any difference. Well at the end of this speech I intend to table this sheet of paper if I can get leave. The article is from the state of Oregon in the United States. It shows that until 2004 Oregon was having about 470 480 or so methamphetamine lab busts per annum. That is how many methamphetamine labs were being busted. Then the state of Oregon moved to ban the over-the-counter sales of cold and flu medicines that contained pseudoephedrine and let me repeat the numbers now: from around the mid-400s per annum it dropped in 2005 to 192. In 2006 it was down to 63. In 2007 it was down to 18. And this year until the month of June there have been seven lab busts. The number is now seven down from the mid-400s figure for busts of methamphetamine labs. So to all those so-called know-it-all writers who say that banning sales across the counter will not have any impact I say that they should look at the state of Oregon in the United States because it has made a huge difference to what was going on there. 
With regard to the New Zealand Customs Service I was pleased when I negotiated the first priority settings with our Prime Minister at the beginning of my term that the control and the stopping of methamphetamine and the precursors to it such as pseudoephedrine was one of our three key priorities. We have had a number of successes but I will report one issue which is that the amount that is coming across our border is still growing in volume. Last year 733 kilograms of pseudoephedrine in the form of Contac NT was detected. We do not get a lot of P itself because it is baked once the Contac NT gets here. This year to date I am sorry to report we have been able to intercept 796 kilograms so far. We have already intercepted more this year than in the full calendar year last year. That interception is great but boy there needs to be more. 
I can tell members that there are dedicated people within the Customs Service. Task forces specific operations and sting operations are going on regularly. One operation that went on in August had a fantastic outcome. I can report to the House that over a 2-week period in August we trialled a new approach to P. It resulted in 26 separate seizures totalling 46 kilograms of methamphetamine precursors. Just as Tony Ryall is doing stuff within the treatment side in the health portfolio and just as Judith Collins is lifting the performance of the police in this area I am happy to report that the Customs Service is taking this drug very seriously. We are doing a fantastic job of intercepting it and we are going to do even better.