O'Connor SimonSIMON O'CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thank you Mr Chair—pleased to take a call at this committee stage. I am a little bit surprised at the number of Ministers in the House effectively trying to stretch it out.Andrew Bayly: Very nice to see them all.SIMON O'CONNOR: I mean it is nice to see them all. I think it's unusual to have a Government filibustering its own bills.Andrew Bayly: How many have we got? One two three four five six—six of them Mr O'Connor. Seven—seven Mr O'Connor.SIMON O'CONNOR: The second thing I need to—OK we're up to seven. This feels like Sesame Street as we're counting things out. The second element is the Minister referred to the 800 people within Housing New Zealand houses that were moved on claiming that that was a dodgy decision. If it were a dodgy decision to move 800 people out it's equally as dodgy to be just compensating all 800 people as if they were all innocent users of meth in houses. One doesn't need much of a degree in statistics to understand that of those 800 people a number of those will have been high-level meth users and dealers and not only have they been in a sense exonerated but paid out.Look my biggest issue in Part 2 is around the meth contamination. What is problematic about this bill is we're about to pass in this primary legislation powers of regulation making to the Government to the Minister without knowing what those regulations are and when it comes to meth contamination we do not even have an indication from the Minister what those levels are going to be. Whether that was an acceptable standard—we might be a bit more comfortable here but what we do know is that there are major challenges when it comes to meth standards. The department of health the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment—in fact Standards New Zealand had previously set meth standards in this case at 1.5 micrograms per hundred square metres.We then have a report from Sir Peter Gluckman around third-hand use—I think that's an important distinction to make—that now says 15 micrograms is perfectly acceptable. We also have a report by Mark Daglish which the Minister is not allowing to be released to the public which we on this side of the House begin to wonder—there's a whole array of views of what should be the right levels. What I think demonstrates the oddity of this entire situation is that there's a lot of talk and we're going to set the new meth standards at 15—or it's assumed it's going to be at 15—micrograms per hundred square metres but strangely if someone's house is found to be over 15 the suggested regulation is that someone has to reduce the meth contamination to under 1.5. Why is that Minister? Why if 15 as a meth contamination level is acceptable if they have to decontaminate the house can they not just bring it back to say 14.9 because according to some experts that is perfectly safe. Instead what's been suggested somewhat is we're going to have to reduce that all the way back down to under 1.5.So we've got inherent contradictions coming through. We've got clashes between different respected—I would say—authorities in New Zealand including Standards New Zealand and we have not got clear answers around that. So I for one am not particularly happy with this Supplementary Order Paper—not that we're setting standards; standards must be set but what we're doing here is effectively giving a blank cheque to the Government to go and write the regulations as they see fit and that is not a prudent way to step things forward.So that's my primary contribution tonight. I really just ask the Minister perhaps to address how he is dealing with the variety of expert approaches on meth standards. How is he engaging with the industry who have opinions on this? Why is he not releasing some of the information under the Official Information Act that's been requested and will he give any surety to the House tonight of what these new standards will be before we give him a blank cheque?