Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. It's a great pleasure to be back in the House of Parliament and an even greater pleasure to be able to remove my mask to speak.I rise as others have within the National Party to oppose the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2) for the reasons that colleagues have set out. Of course at this reading it's appropriate to look at the work of the select committee. It seems as though those members examined the bill in good faith and they've made a number of amendments that it seems were able to be supported across the House or across the Health Committee in terms of different parties' MPs. So I think there's something positive to say at the outset in the sense that the bill is able to be improved notwithstanding that we've decided ultimately on this side of the House—or at least our part of this side of the House—not to support it.I think that among various points that could be made about the good intentions that will not be matched and the possibility of counter-productive measures to attempt to provide safety and certainty which may have the opposite effect of providing false confidence I did want to actually skip ahead to the offence provisions that the select committee has turned its collective mind to. We see that a couple of proposed new sections have offence provisions for the legislation and the select committee discussed it seems from their report—I was not fortunate enough to be a member of the select committee—the fact that the fines in relation to a couple of different offences were set at the same in the first reading of the bill—namely $5000.The two offences were roughly speaking—excuse the wording—something along the lines of providing services without a licence or providing services in a way that wasn't consistent with the terms of the licence. So the select committee was wondering if it wouldn't provide an incentive for outfits to get a licence in the first place if they're going to get a fine either way whether or not they were licensed if they were not providing the services correctly.The first observation I would like to make is that $5000 is not a great deal of money if a service is making some money by performing certain activities. I take at face value the report of the select committee that a number of the providers aren't large-scale commercial operations and indeed they might be volunteers in some cases. However there's nothing in the legislation to say that an outfit can't conduct these activities for profit. There's nothing to say that they can't be paid by the music festival operators other operators or other proprietors or indeed by the taxpayer as others on this side of the House have made the point. So even with the fine increased to some $20000 in respect of unlicensed drug-checking it seems to me as though a reasonably half-hearted attempt is being made to regulate if that's the intention of the legislation—to regulate and to regularise—an activity that is currently legal. It's relatively toothless at that level that quantum of penalty I would suggest.We've also seen the discussion about advice around harm reduction. It's interesting that the first reading of the bill or the bill as introduced to the House originally didn't make mandatory the giving of advice about harm reduction by those who were doing the checking. If this is the whole reasoning behind the bill and behind the efforts more generally of the Government to reduce harm it seems extraordinary that it's an afterthought having to be added by a select committee that advice about the harmful nature of these drugs and their additions must be provided by those who are conducting the checking. So I'm just surprised that the good intentions were not backed in the first place either at the first reading or indeed in the predecessor version of the bill—the temporary one that expires after 12 months—to actually require that information on harm reduction advice be accurate and appropriate or indeed provided at all.So that at least is a positive amendment made by the select committee. There are a couple of others but overall still we have a piece of legislation that reflects good intentions not backed by reality—not understanding the adverse unintended consequences—and the reality not only at music festivals but potentially all around the motu. We oppose this bill still at this the second reading.