Lees-Galloway Iain: Psychoactive Substances Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Psychoactive Substances Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 09 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9149. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Can I say that I appreciate the comments made by the Associate Minister of Health the Hon Peter Dunne in opening up this debate regarding the period of time that the Health Committee will have to consider this Psychoactive Substances Bill. Labour will support that period. There was a suggestion last week that it might have been considerably shorter than that. That might have been an error and we appreciate that. But having said that 2 months is considerably shorter than the standard period of time a select committee is given. For people who do not read the Standing Orders closely and who might be watching this athome the normal period of time is between 4 and 6 months and 2 months is considerably shorter than that. Of course the reason given by the Minister is absolutely correct. We need to have this legislation completed before August this year so that those temporary bans issued under the amendments made to the Misuse of Drugs Act some 18 months ago are not allowed to lapse and we do not see products like Kronic Spice Dream and those sorts of things coming back on to the market. However it is important to point out that completing the legislation before August did not require a shortened select committee period; it simply required the Government to get on with the job an awful lot sooner than it has done.Let us look back at the process that has been taken to get to here. This bill was introduced back in February this year. Some people say that it took an awfully long time for the bill to get to the House but the bill was introduced in February this year. If this had been a priority for the National-led Government if this Government was organised and if it thought that it was a priority to protect children and youngsters from the substances that are on the shelves that we think are not safe it could have got itself sorted and got the bill through its first reading a lot sooner than today. If Gerry Brownlee as Leader of the House was worth his salt and was actually able to organise his House and organise his Government then this bill would have been passed through its first reading a lot sooner than today. If the National whips over there could get their team organised then this bill would have been passed a lot sooner than today.This is an important piece of legislation and I actually reject the statement made by the Minister that the issues that people will want to consider at the select committee will be narrow. In this debate alone we have canvassed a range of subjects that we believe the select committee is going to need to consider: plain packaging display bans in-store—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! [Interruption] No no. When I am on my feet there is silence. In this debate any special powers or provisions are restricted to only the reasons why there is a truncated report-back period from the select committee. You cannot get into the substantive matter of the debate like objects and provisions. You cannot do that so I will come back—and there is a Standing Order on this. So just refer to the truncated period of the report-back period.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: I accept the Speaker’s ruling but I wished only to list the very large number of issues that were raised in the first reading debate alone that members want to consider at the select committee. That requires a reasonable length of time to give those issues full consideration. I know that at the Health Committee we will do our very best to give this bill the full consideration that it needs in the very short period of time that we have been given.The fact is that this is an important piece of legislation that marks a significant change and we need to get this right. We do not want to come back in 12 months’ time and say that we got this wrong. It is extremely unfortunate that this Government has not placed the priority required on this piece of legislation to get it through the first reading in a timely fashion so that the select committee could give it a more fulsome consideration than what we will be allowed to do.Let us be absolutely honest about this. The Government has left this until the last possible minute. In fact it has gone past the last possible minute. It did not have to quite go around the Standing Orders but it has had to use the full width of the Standing Orders in order to allow the select committee to consider this bill. I think that is a very very poor reflection on this Government’s priorities and it is a very poor reflection on this Government’s ability to organise its own business. It has been said several times in the last few weeks that this Government is looking a bit shambolic and this is just another example of the shambles that this Government has become. Let us lay the blamesquarely where it belongs. This belongs to Gerry Brownlee. As the Leader of the House he should have been more organised. He should have prioritised this bill. It was introduced in February. We could have debated it back then we could have got it to the select committee and we could have given the bill the time that it deserves. This is not an appropriate use of process.People are getting sick and tired of this Government led by John Key riding roughshod over the democratic process. We have a process set out in the Standing Orders for a reason and that is to make sure that one we get legislation right so that we do not have to come back to it in the future; and two we give people an opportunity to have their say. I know that this is an issue that is a real hot-button issue in our communities. I think that people will want to come and have their say but because they know that the select committee is not really going to have time to look at this properly they are probably going to shy away from coming forward. I think it is sad that this Government is sending a message to New Zealanders not to bother submitting on a piece of legislation not to bother coming to Parliament not to bother speaking to MPs face to face about what the impact of a piece of legislation might have on them or their communities and not to bother coming to us and giving us some good ideas. We do not know everything. Some of us might like to think we do but we do not know everything. We should take advice from the public and we should give the public the opportunity to come and speak to us about bills like this one.We do not want to be an obstructive Opposition. We do want this legislation passed by August because it has to be passed by August so we are not going to get in the way. But I think it is important to point out why we have got into this situation. The reason is that this Government has not prioritised getting these substances out of our stores and the other reason is that this Government is a shambles and it cannot get itself organised.