Barry MaggieHon MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise to talk at the second reading of the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill which as attentive members will gather the National Party does not support. On this side of the House we acknowledge that there is a need to do better but we also need to combine additional funding and revenue into drug—and alcohol for that matter as well—rehabilitation services and increase the level of treatment that we provide including in prisons which that side of the House and the Government have already diminished the funding for. We think that's a retrogressive step. And we also think that we need to take a much firmer line and give a clear message to the public about what this Parliament would like New Zealanders to do around drug and alcohol reform—I know this is about drugs but I tend to combine the two of them. Many people have said on our side of the argument that this is decriminalisation by stealth.Greg O'Connor: National ignored the alcohol recommendations.Hon MAGGIE BARRY: A couple of people are barracking already including one who was involved with the New Zealand Police Association and the New Zealand Drug Foundation who presented at our select committee and agreed that the provisions in the bill amount to de facto decriminalisation of drug use—Greg O'Connor: Ignored the alcohol recommendations.Hon MAGGIE BARRY: —the former association that that member who's bellowing from across the House Mr Greg O'Connor was a part of. So the stalling tactic by the Government while they figure out exactly what they're to do—is there a working party on this somewhere that's due to report back in a year or two? How much longer can we delay what needs to happen? That's why we're annoyed that the Simeon Brown bill wasn't picked up because 80 lives have been lost while the people on the other side of the House continue to delay. So this is a Government that could immediately move to classify those two strains of synthetics as class A drugs through for example an Order in Council. It could be done immediately. It doesn't need to traipse through the process in the House and further delay so that other New Zealanders will die—and they certainly will—while this House and that Government procrastinate instead of really moving hard and quickly on these extremely harmful substances.We've heard from former policemen including my colleague the Hon Mark Mitchell that the police have already had discretion around these sorts of things. They haven't needed to have the law changed in the way that it is apparently going to be under sections 5 and 6. So if police follow clear Crown Law guidelines to determine whether a prosecution is appropriate and whether it is in the public interest that's fine. But this bill goes that step further by explicitly stating that the police should not pursue prosecution. Judgments and compassion are qualities that police can bring to the fore when they are dealing with individual cases as Mark Mitchell outlined from his time in the force but the National Party cannot support the intention of clauses 1 to 5 and clause 8 of this bill—we do support those I should say; we believe that clauses 6 and 7 are really the ones that are problematic and the ones that other colleagues and myself want to just draw attention to at this second reading. I think that when the law shifts from a presumption of prosecution to one of non-prosecution that is a seismic shift in the message that we are sending to New Zealanders. And when we act responsibly and try to think of raising awareness of the perils of drugs I don't think that we need to look to Portugal which has not been an altogether successful model and I don't think it's one that New Zealand members of the public and society at large would want to embrace. It's been cited repeatedly as the panacea for this country. Many of us on the side do not believe that that would occur. The nephs on the couch aren't going to be getting off the couch if there is full decriminalisation. This is a fear that is shared I think by members across this House. We need to do something. This bill is not the way to do it. It's taking too long it doesn't actually deliver on what it should and in our view it is moving far too far in the wrong direction. So that is why members on this side of the House cannot commend this bill to this House. Thank you.