Brown SimeonSIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you Mr Chair for the opportunity to take a call on new section 37A which is proposed to be inserted by clause 8A. I'd just like to challenge the assertion made by the member Chlöe Swarbrick who said something along the lines of Who was it who wrote all the legislation and passed all the legislation in the last Government?" Well it was the National Government. It was the Ministers. It was the members of Parliament who are responsible for the legislation. We are the ones in this House. We debate the legislation. It is Parliament's job as legislators to debate legislation and to understand its impact and to be able to have that discussion and debate because at the end of the day we are responsible for the passing of it and we can't just pass the buck on to officials and pass the buck on to other people. Yes they may assist in the process and may be able to provide advice on the process but we are ultimately the decision makers as Parliament when it comes to regulation and when it comes to legislation and that is why it is so important that as parliamentarians we pass legislation which provides clear direction as to what the intent of Parliament is in a particular bill or on a particular topic.That is why the National Party has serious questions about this clause which inserts new section 37A which has broad powers to be given to the Minister. The Governor-General may by Order in Council made on the recommendation of the Minister make regulations to prescribe the minimum quality standard that must be set by a product or class of products that contain a controlled drug that can be cultivated manufactured produced imported or supplied under a licence. The Minister got up before and said "Well we've already got section 37 so we don't need to include in this section some additional aspects of what Shane Jones"—sorry—"Shane Reti has been advocating in his SOP." Dr Shane Reti actually beat the other guy and justifiably so. He is far superior in his knowledge and his expertise in a wide array of fields including this one here.So I'd like to ask the question about whether section 37 will provide adequate ability for the Minister to recommend regulations which focus on the location of where licences can be placed and whether exclusion zones around residential zones will be able to be put in place under the regulations because what I read here is that this is about products and classes of products; it doesn't deal with issues relating to where those licences can be where the people who have a licence to cultivate manufacture produce or import can actually locate their premises. All of those issues around whether there should be an exclusion zone—can those regulations be put in place under this new section 37A that the Minister has here on the Table in his Supplementary Order Paper? And also whether the Minister will be able to put in place regulations which actually deal with fit and proper persons and what type of regulations that might include.So will the Minister be able to recommend to the Governor-General regulations which say that people who have a criminal history won't be able to be part of the cultivation manufacture production or importation of medicinal cannabis? Will the Minister be able to put in place regulations to that effect? Clearly in this bill we don't get any indication as to who should or shouldn't be able to have a licence. There is nothing in here which determines whether someone should or shouldn't be able to have a licence to produce medicinal cannabis products. So no doubt the officials who will be working on these regulations will potentially be doing something and the Minister might be interested in that.So I guess that's another question: is the Minister interested in regulations which will deal with whether someone is a fit and proper person and if so what will be the extent of that? Under what section will that be provided under the current Misuse of Drugs Act to allow him to be able to do that and what subsection of that section will give him the power to be able to do that? So those are two questions: one is about the fit and proper person and the second is around locality."