Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you Madam Chair and I appreciate the Minister in the chair's clarification. I did not hear that original explanation but it probably wasn't only the submitters that were confused about whether or not the test of a therapeutic benefit was a personal test rather than a public interest test. That has not been brought up in my recollection by either the officials or anybody else in relation to this and that is a significant change to the intent of clause 6. I have now the regulatory impact statement and the departmental disclosure statement and indeed the Cabinet paper and I'm going to test whether that was the original intent. But nevertheless I appreciate the Minister's clarification.I want to touch on the matters raised by Mr Ball in his intervention—in particular a rather selective section of the Police Association's written submission specifically paragraph 18 in the sense that he believes that as a consequence the association actually supports this change. Actually the Police Association are very nuanced in their submission. They neither support nor oppose it. I think they're probably more forward-leaning than in opposition to it. But I draw the member's attention—he wasn't on the Health Committee—to paragraph 15 of that written submission which says in respect of the expectations around not prosecuting This reinforces the association's concern that this bill is effectively decriminalising all drugs for personal use and tasking front line Police officers with enacting that." In the oral submission Chris Cahill in his submission described this as compulsory discretion. There is no doubt in the Police Association's mind that this constitutes effectively decriminalising drug possession.He wasn't alone. Drug Foundation head Mr Bell also in supporting that approach actually said in his written submission that this was a move away from a presumption of prosecution to a presumption of non-prosecution which as I say is constitutionally conflated. When I asked him—and this is in relation actually to the personal versus the public interest question on therapeutic benefit—whether there was a single situation that the New Zealand Drug Foundation could think of where a user would not benefit from a therapeutic approach the answer was no.I think the third significant submission which reinforced our concern about de facto decriminalising was that from the New Zealand Law Society. I asked the submitter whether as a good defence lawyer that he was he would use the new section to defend anyone charged with drug possession on the basis that the prosecution should not have taken place because his client or her client would have benefited from a therapeutic approach and would he or she be able to drive a bus through that prosecution. The answer was yep absolutely.As a consequence of the thousand or so drug possession only charges—and remember drug possession is often part of a suite of charges that are laid including perhaps property offences assault charges and dealing potentially if its possession for supply. There are still nearly a thousand prosecutions a year for possession alone and in the beliefs of the submitters—and those three in particular—there would be almost none of them once this bill has passed.So we need to be very clear about what we're doing here. I lean towards Chlöe Swarbrick's view that this is the biggest change to the Misuse of Drugs Act in 40 years. But if it's not and if this merely codifies police discretion and does what they've always done which is what the Government—or at least some members of the Government—say then that's fine. We don't need clause 6. So Paula Bennett's amendment in her name deletes clause 6. It does just that. It simply restores the very police discretion that the Government and the Minister says that the police have. That clause is redundant. If we take it out the National Party can support the bill."