SpeechHon MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): Thank you Madam Chair. I rise to speak to the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill at the committee of the whole House. I have been listening to this debate and following it through its progress in the House. I wasn't on the Health Committee at the time it was going through but I have followed it with great interest and I certainly supported the bill of my colleague Simeon Brown which sought to put greater penalties across the people who were peddling the harm and increasing the misery.It does seem to me that there's an ideological divide here between our side of the House and yours and that has been alluded to by other speakers as well but I think that one of the things that we need to make clear is that here in National on our side we have always supported greater rehabilitation. That's why we put a lot of money into the way that drug rehabilitation was conducted in prisons. We don't understand why the Labour Government removed that and did not support that ongoing rehabilitation. It is very important that addicts get the help that they need but I've heard rather a lot tonight and in other calls in this debate about the web of addiction and the health-based approach for addicts and while that's all very well people make choices and they do peddle harm and have to face those consequences.So there are aspects of this bill that we agree with and there are aspects that we do not. Some of the fundamentals we do agree on are around the therapeutic interest but being beneficial to the public interest is something that a lot of speakers have touched on. What does it really mean? And how does a policeperson when they're out there on the beat—with a domestic situation for example or a volatile situation—make that call in the heat of the moment? How much responsibility are we putting on police to make a call not just about the two types of synthetic drugs that have been specifically named here but about all the other range of drugs that the police will be required on the spot to make decisions about and whether it is in the public interest or not is a very hard thing. They don't have like the cricket and rugby referees some kind of replay so that they can look back on it and immediately decide whether they've done the wrong thing; it's too late and that's at the heart of what we don't like about aspects of this bill. It is too late in what it's trying to do and it ignored one of the measures that Simeon Brown had put up that would have perhaps resulted in fewer than the 80 deaths that have occurred in the last 18 months.Accessing help therapeutic advice and drug harm reduction we're on side with. But the idea that clause 6—and the Hon Paula Bennett has put up an amendment to that Supplementary Order Paper 291 which we support on this side of the House which deletes clause 6 which legislates police discretion not to prosecute for the possession and use of controlled drugs. We believe it goes too far. We believe that many aspects of this bill are commendable but that is not one of them. So if there was any openness from the other side to look at that—if the Minister wanted to perhaps explore with us again what other nuances could be really brought into play here.I heard the Hon Mark Mitchell talk about this bill the other night and he outlined a personal difficult situation with a family member. We are all of us as with many debates in this House worried about what we've heard ourselves what's happened to members of our own family. Of course that informs our positions but to hear a former policeman describe a family tragedy and to understand what led to that and how difficult this particular law would have been to the prevention of some of the worst excesses of the people who are under the influence of drugs for the wider public interest" and "the wider public good" need to be removed from the equation.So that was why we supported the notion of more than doubling the police sentence as Simeon Brown had suggested bringing it up at least to other drugs so that the message would be loud and clear and would be received by all of those who seek to peddle this misery: that this is something that will not be without consequences. Let the police have discretion as they have had in the past and continue to use but to the level that this particular piece of legislation allows it is I think unfair and unworkable which is why we support the Supplementary Order Paper by Paula Bennett to delete the police discretion not to prosecute for the possession and use of controlled drugs. If that was removed there might be an altogether different attitude from this side of the House."