Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. It's a pleasure to take a call in this reasonably passionate debate and I certainly cannot fault Chlöe Swarbrick for her passion; but equally exactly the same speech and word for word that speech could have been given in opposition to this bill not in support of it because she criticises parties that promote some kind of tough on crime virtue signalling rhetoric and then supports a bill that does exactly that—that purports to get tough on crime. If the Minister of Justice would recall his interventions in the committee of the whole House I think it was or the second reading of my colleague Simeon Brown's member's bill that does effectively a much better job at achieving the policy goals than this bill does by taking the reality that all psychoactive substances are unlawful until they are licensed and made lawful and then increasing the penalties to—I think after it came out of committee—14 years. That's tough on crime. That's the same kind of approach as the Government is now taking. But despite that the Minister of Justice stood in this House and said that that was a fundamentally flawed approach and that it should not be wasting the House's time with it and now we have the Government doing exactly the same thing only slower. It's going to take much much longer to deploy the changes in the licensing arrangements and in the making unlawful under the Misuse of Drugs Act the sorts of new drugs that we know are going to come into the country once these derivatives become unlawful. So we will constantly chase our tails whereas Mr Brown's approach was to start from the presumption that those substances are unlawful and make the supply of them a very serious offence. Now I fear there's a pattern emerging here where the Minister of Health comes down with grand ideas but very little detail. That was certainly the case in the Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis) Amendment Bill when my colleague Dr Shane Reti came in with a vastly improved regime—the Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis) Amendment Bill (No 2) it was. Indeed that happened after the Government's bill. Now the Government is coming in after another member's bill—Simeon Brown's bill—and is doing the same thing: taking a good bill and making it poorer. We could live with that. We could live with their approach if it wasn't for the second part of this bill. This is the area where I have a considerable concern about the calls by Ms Swarbrick to have these conversations and to treat it as a health issue and to somehow decriminalise these substances in the minds of the user and yet that's exactly what we're doing here. By a de facto process we are instructing the police in law not to prosecute. Now this is a really interesting use of language because the explanatory note and the words in the bill are quite heavily mismatched. The explanatory note talks about discretion and talks about the inconsequential nature of the offence as if it were the same as section 59(4) of the Crimes Act. Indeed it's not because when we get to the actual words in clause 6 of the bill there is no discretion. The words are very clear: a prosecution should not be brought unless it is required in the public interest." and the public interest is not served if consideration "should be given to whether a health-centred or therapeutic approach would be more beneficial." It would be hard to find a particular user of illicit substances that would not in some way benefit from a therapeutic approach or a health-centred approach.There's no reference here to recidivism to the seriousness of the crime to the fact that there may be other crimes committed around the possession offence—perhaps burglaries perhaps disorderly conduct. I can't imagine the police being confined to not prosecute here but then going to much more minor offences and taking them before the courts. It seems absolutely ludicrous that they would now be forced by law to cherry-pick from a basket of offences that includes possession but not prosecute the possession. That just shows what a complete dog's breakfast this is. The Hon Paula Bennett talked about the fact that Portugal which was mentioned by both her and Ms Swarbrick took eight years to get to this point; it sounds and feels like the Minister of Health has taken eight minutes to get this point: "Let's just apply discretion. They should not prosecute."—as if that's going to be the salve for all drug possession ills. A defence counsel worth their salt will drive a bus through every single Misuse of Drugs Act possession offence from now until doomsday once this bill is passed into law. It will be simply impossible to say for any other relevant matters if consideration should have been given to whether a health approach should apply. There is no diversion here. There is no requirement for that person to actually be sent to a therapeutic community or a health-centred approach or an addiction service—no reference to that—and the Prime Minister admitted today that there were going to be no more resources put into the health system as a consequence of this bill when it's passed. So a heavily heavily under stress health sector is not going to be able to respond to drug possession referrals that don't go before the courts but go before the health service. So we simply don't prosecute. We are in a legal and policy limbo as a consequence of this very lazy piece of legislation. I still don't know now why on earth we're having a referendum next year on the possession and use of marijuana because with one fell swoop the Government is decriminalising that. We're going to go through a whole charade frankly of trying to work out words in a referendum that is functionally obsolete once this bill is passed. What a waste of time—what a big load of virtue-signalling nonsense. Let's have the conversation that Chlöe Swarbrick wants to have—that's not what's happening here. It's as if we've had it and it's all over and that is a great shame."