Swarbrick ChlöeCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central): Te Māngai tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou o te Whare. Drug driving is a real and legitimate problem that has resulted in the unnecessary loss of lives. The question that we as lawmakers face tonight is if on balance we think that this law will prevent those deaths and that harm from occurring. The Greens on balance cannot in good conscience vote for this bill at its third reading having thoroughly and constructively engaged seeking changes at every single stage knowing that as drafted it risks baking in—forever—methods that are currently scientifically not robust and that may perversely cause further harm to our communities.Madam Speaker if I told you that I could cure cancer with this one simple cool trick would you believe me? No I believe the answer would be. You wouldn't. You would believe the experts you would believe the scientists the regulators who are responsible for ensuring that these treatments and medicines actually work before they're allowed to be tested on real people. If the regional public health authority the New Zealand Medical Association the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners and the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists told you that this medicine didn't reach scientific standards for rolling out as they did on the methodologies prescribed in oral roadside drug testing in this bill would we do it? No we wouldn't. We'd be kidding ourselves and we'd be pretending that we didn't see the evidence.But unfortunately when it comes to particularly illicit drug policy we tend to take a very different approach as a Parliament over the decades; in our mainstream media reporting; and in the typically accepted albeit slowly changing social attitudes. That approach is often grounded in best intentions and that does need to be acknowledged. We can see that drugs do and can cause harm. Some people have had profoundly harmful and sometimes deadly experiences. That ultimately makes this topic something really hard to debate and an issue that can be very easily co-opted by those who are selling overly simplified solutions. When you are trying to distinguish between two critically important but two very different things—one the reality that drugs and that includes alcohol and prescription drugs can cause harm; and secondly the question of how we actually in reality grounded in evidence reduce that harm—there is a real tendency particularly in the history of this Parliament to miss that critical second question. That second question however is fundamental to making good policy that does the things that we say that it will.We have a ton of laws and policy that don't do what they say they will. The Frankenstein Misuse of Drugs Act my mortal enemy is one of the best examples of that. Forty-seven years ago this Parliament passed a law promising to try and eradicate illicit drugs from this country by criminally penalising the people who use and supply them. In fact 47 years later we have seen more illicit drugs on the black market. We've got far stronger illicit substances and far more of them. We've seen more drug users more families and communities harmed. We've had review after review from the Law Commission in 2011 through to the mental health and addiction inquiry through to the safe and effective justice review which have told us that that law is not only not working but is in fact causing more harm because it is so profoundly anti-evidence. And what's happened as a result of all of those reviews? Well nearly 50 years on and with immense collateral damage in its wake that law remains on our statute books. There's no real political consequences it seems for acting and talking contrary to evidence when it comes to the lives of people who use drugs—which I might add if we're going to actually be honest about is about 80 percent of New Zealanders who will use cannabis by the time that they are in their 20s.I want to acknowledge the Hon Julie Anne Genter who in fact the Minister did as well as members of the Opposition for her work in introducing this bill in a very unique three-party governance arrangement. It would have looked very differently I think everybody in this House would agree had it been a law drafted solely and negotiated solely by just the Labour and New Zealand First parties. The Greens are of course yet to hold our own parliamentary majority in Parliament so we sometimes joke that perhaps our position and our role in Parliament is one of harm reduction. We do not have the numbers to outright prevent certain harm being caused. Those on the select committee and members across this House know full well that the Hon Julie Anne Genter worked tirelessly behind the scenes—even with the ACT Party I might add and the select committee report differing view—to try and improve this bill. And in constant conversation with the Minister and his officials—Minister Wood knew that we could not in good conscience support this bill at its third reading tonight without both of our Supplementary Order Papers in the Hon Julie Anne Genter's name passing.That is because while a review is important—that is of course the Supplementary Order Paper that members in this House did enable to get through—a review alone with not fix bad law. We've seen that with the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 which continues to sit on our statute books with all of its political inconvenience and accompanying harm and destruction despite review after review after review saying that it is failing to live up to its promise. Our proposed sunset clause—voted down at the committee of the whole House stage on this bill—would have forced a future Government and a future Parliament to look at what might end up being a quite inconvenient truth: that this law might not live up to its promises; that it might be causing unintentional and perverse harms. We don't know that yet because the science is not yet there. That future Parliament had our proposed sunset clause got through would have to proactively pass an amendment bill to keep a potentially otherwise ineffective piece of law alive instead of conveniently ignoring it as the current majority in our Parliament currently does with the likes of the Misuse of Drugs Act. If the law was in fact as it may miraculously turn out working it would have offered a great opportunity to tighten things up with I'm sure not all too much political contention. If we want to talk about sizeably and meaningfully reducing drug harm on our roads then we need to talk about the swathes of evidence-based drug policy and reviews which are proven to reduce drug demand: educate people on the dangers of what they're taking or—God forbid—regulate what on earth they are getting access to in the first place. All of those reviews and all of that evidence is currently being ignored for the sake of political convenience. We need to talk—particularly—about roadside alcohol testing resourcing. That's because alcohol still remains in fact the most harmful drug in our society but also on our roads. In 2020 more drivers were involved in a crash causing death having alcohol alone in their blood than drugs alone or even both alcohol and drugs. We are currently carrying out significantly fewer roadside alcohol breath tests than we were 10 years ago. We only did 1.5 million roadside tests for alcohol in 2020 to the 2021 period despite aiming for 2 million. Ten years ago in 2013 we did 3 million tests. Roadside drug testing is also currently very limited in the number of drugs that it can detect. Synthetic cannabinoids are not likely to be covered nor is GHB which we know potentially impairs somebody's ability to drive. We also know from the Australian experience that while substances may register in somebody's system that person may not in fact be impaired. So too over 200 medications prescribed in New Zealand come with warnings about potential for impairment but nearly 65 percent of New Zealanders are unaware that it is illegal to drive under impairment by medication.As Julie Anne Genter wrote in the select committee report and I quote The Royal Australasian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists was concerned that a harm minimisation approach is not implemented by this bill as well as noting 'The presence of drugs in a person's oral fluids or blood does not directly relate to impairment. We call for greater research in understanding the link between substance misuse and a person's impairment'. The New Zealand Medical Association echoes this stating 'the science to support roadside oral fluid testing is not quite sufficiently advanced although it is rapidly evolving. Key concerns include the inability of oral fluid testing to detect impairments the absence of well-defined threshold levels and impairment limits for many drugs and the potential for the bill to exacerbate inequities for Māori in the criminal justice system…'"—from that select committee report. The Green Party will tonight reject this bill. Without the requirement to repeal what may end up being harmful legislation this law risks becoming yet another potential relic of politicians doing something which hurts the people we claim to want to help."