Swarbrick ChlöeCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central): E te Māngai tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. Drugs are winning the war on drugs. We know if you look at the evidence—as this Government has promised us that we would—that at both ends of extremes that being in criminal prohibition or in a complete legal free market you have the maximisation of harms when it comes to substances. That's because whether you're talking about a scenario where you have those who operate in criminal organisations who control the supply chains or those who operate in commercial entities controlling the supply chains you have the maximisation of harm because profit is the key motive. The way that you go about pulling back from those extremes of harms is through sensible regulation. I am proud to stand here as a member of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand who is the only party who have been consistent—whether it's alcohol tobacco cannabis pseudoephedrine or otherwise—on substances. All of the arguments that we heard from the Minister just now with regard to cost-benefit analysis with regard to people's freedoms or otherwise apply to the logic that we need to overhaul this Frankenstein law.So let's unpack precisely why this law is so Frankenstein and actually in fact some of the self-perpetrating perverse mechanisms that exist within the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975. The first is the expert advisory committee which was established in the early 2000s with the intention to advise where substances should be classified within the Misuse of Drugs Act and the penalties that should be associated to them. The only recommendations that the expert advisory committee can make about where substances should be classified is where they should be classified in reference to other substances that are currently already classified and therefore we bind this expert advisory committee to effectively only make recommendation about what penalties these substances should carry—not about more meaningful harm intervention approaches.Here I just offer to members of the Government who are interested or who may be interested in their decisions being based on data and evidence as their coalition agreements say they will be—I'd refer them to the 2014 Ministerial Forum on Alcohol Advertising and Sponsorship which said that we need to do away with alcohol advertising and sponsorship. I'd refer them to He Ara Oranga the mental health and addiction inquiry which said that we need to move to decriminalise substances so that we can enable a harm reduction approach. I point them to Turuki! Turuki! the safe and effective justice review which actually said that we need to go a step further and look to legalise the supply chain of certain substances so to remove them from the hands of criminal organisations.I would also just refer to something which is implicit within this legislation that we are debating at the first reading today and that is when it comes to the process and the way that the Misuse of Drugs Act operates with regard to classification in order to introduce a substance for classification and therefore for associated penalties within the Misuse of Drugs Act all you need to do is pass an Order in Council. For those who are following along at home that process is incredibly quick. It can pass through in the blink of an eye in this place—although the Greens do force a debate on it every second time and ironically the last time that this went through we actually got some time from the ACT Party to prosecute our case. But in order to down-classify or to declassify a substance you need an entire amendment bill and therefore the select committee process that comes with it and that can take anywhere from a few months to a year-plus and obviously all of the potential for fearmongering and moral panic that come with that.So the point of unpacking this is to point out the ways that this law—this dog of a law—perpetuates injustices and anti-evidence outcomes for our community much to the detriment actually of the public purse. For members of the National Party in particular let alone members of the ACT Party who profess to be libertarians despite showcasing that it is relatively—Hon David Seymour: Point of order Mr Speaker. Mr Speaker I really hesitate to interrupt the member in the middle of a speech—CHLÖE SWARBRICK: No you don't.Hon Member: You do it all the time. Hon David Seymour: —but with the greatest of respect—and points of order have to be heard in silence for those still learning the rules—many members including me have been pulled up by many Speakers many times for effectively giving a general debate speech that has nothing to do with the bill. Trying to tangentially link to the bill every few minutes while making a speech that in substance is about totally different policy questions that aren't actually a question before the House has been pulled up by every other Speaker every time that it's been tried. I hope that you'll think about that in this instance.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): I take the Minister's point but I do recognise that many of us including myself are not experts in pseudoephedrine or drugs at all. So I will give the member her remaining minutes.Hon David Seymour: Fresh point of order. Mr Speaker do you intend to make a new ruling that if the Speaker or the member have no expertise on a question they can speak about anything else they like? That would be an extraordinary ruling for a Speaker to make.CHLÖE SWARBRICK: Speaking to the point of order Mr Speaker. What this bill seeks to do is to down-classify a substance. What I am doing in my speech is speaking to precisely that mechanism and the inconsistencies with the way that one might introduce a new substance for classification. It is specifically pertinent to the operation of the legislation.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): That's right.CHLÖE SWARBRICK: Thank you Mr Speaker. So referring back to exactly what it is that I was unpacking here which is data and evidence and many of the points that the Minister put forward in his very precious speech it is the fact that there are inconsistencies in the way that we go about introducing substances for classification which require us just to pass an Order in Council through this House which can occur in the blink of an eye. But in order for us to down-classify or to declassify a substance we need an entire amendment bill. That fundamentally entrenches an anti-evidence approach to substances in this country. That leaves us actually with the conclusion as raised by the Minister himself in his introductory remarks that we are miles away from the jurisdictions which he himself compared us to—to Australia to the United States to Canada and to otherwise where they are moving light years ahead of us with a far more evidence-based approach to substances and that's something the Greens will continue to push for.