Wall LouisaLOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe Te Māngai o Te Whare. Tēnā koutou katoa. It is my pleasure to speak at this third reading of the Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis) Amendment Bill and I do so as the chair of the Health Committee. I want to acknowledge my deputy chair Dr Shane Reti and the other members of the committee. I would like to take the opportunity to congratulate Minister Clark and also our New Zealand First colleagues particularly Jenny Marcroft and our Greens colleagues particularly Chlöe Swarbrick. I think that the work the three of us in terms of our coalition Government and our support partners have undertaken given that this bill was first read on 20 December 2017 to actually bring a bill before this Parliament in less than a year is incredibly well done—should I say—well done. I'd also like to take the opportunity to thank the officials from the Ministry of Health and also the police and our Parliamentary Counsel Office. They served us incredibly well and I want to take the opportunity to acknowledge that work.The Health Committee actually worked incredibly hard on this piece of legislation and in fact all up there were seven amendments that we actually considered five of which ended up being included in the Minister's Supplementary Order Paper which we discussed at the committee stage of this bill. So I do want to acknowledge colleagues from across the House for their constructive engagement in that process. We wouldn't have actually come up with those amendments unless we had put the effort in to try to make this bill the best bill that it could be.I do need to highlight that this was part of the Government's 100-day commitment and essentially it was about improving access to medicinal cannabis. One of the things I want to put on record is that actually medicinal cannabis was available before this piece of legislation was brought to the House. The big issue was about what products were available. There is a product called Sativex but it can cost up to $1200 a month for people who need it. The issue that we were trying to address was actually one of supply and this bill was very much about fairness. So was it fair for people who needed medicinal cannabis to have to pay $1200 a month? Obviously no and so from our perspective the other part of that process was creating a quality product that was also safe and we proposed to do that through the development of a medicinal cannabis scheme.Now we've chosen to do that through the scheme not as an Act of Parliament but via regulation. What I want to highlight is that regulations are not actions of the House and so in fact the process that the Minister has outlined is incredibly important because what it will enable is the medicinal cannabis advisory committee for example which will be created under this piece of legislation which will include health professionals manufacturers suppliers medicinal cannabis users and actually from our submission and consultation process Māori who specifically wanted to be included in that group and also the disability sector. I do have to highlight that philosophically that is the big difference between the proposition from the Minister—that we are going to create a medicinal cannabis scheme via regulation—as opposed to the Opposition's.I do want to acknowledge Dr Shane Reti who has proposed what would have been a piece of legislation that would have had all the components that we believe actually the public should have the ability to comment on. I do say to Dr Reti: given all that work that you've done please make a submission and I'm being genuine to that end because I know that the work you have done has been incredibly valuable and it can actually assist us as we move forward.The other issue I wanted to highlight was that this bill was also about compassion. When we talk about compassion it was a recognition that there are many people using cannabis for medicinal purposes that actually don't have access to it because as I said before we have one product and it's $1200 a month.We did have 1786 written submissions. Of those we heard from 158 oral submitters. But I guess the most telling part in terms of the debate about who should be exempt from prosecution—and the fact that the original proposition in this bill was that it should be people who are terminally ill with less than 12 months to live—was what we found from the 584 submitters who specifically wanted to talk about this exception and statutory defence provision: 174 of those submitters came to the committee because they were suffering from debilitating and chronic pain. We had 22 submitters who either experienced cancer or had loved ones who did. We had 16 submitters who had epilepsy. There were 17 submitters who experience multiple sclerosis. And there were also 74 submitters who actually said anybody should be able to have access or be exempt from prosecution if their doctor says that using medicinal cannabis is actually going to assist. So that discussion about who should be exempt from prosecution until we have a quality safe cheap affordable product available did consume a lot of the time of the committee.I just want to highlight for people who are unsure of what we're talking about that if you've got a malignant condition it's mostly people who suffer from types of cancers. If it's non-malignant we're actually talking about people who suffer from motor neuron disease. Now 95 percent of people diagnosed will die within two to five years. We're talking about people who have motor neuron disease people who have Parkinson's disease people who have multiple sclerosis and people who have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. So the reality of this particular piece of legislation to members of our community who we found out through the process are incredibly vulnerable is something that I absolutely want to highlight because these are the people who shared their stories—either their personal stories or they were there advocating on behalf of their loved ones. So can I say from a select committee perspective thank you for your generosity. Thank you for being so vulnerable and I hope what you've seen actually is a response by the committee to your voices. I know that there were others who thought it should be a bit more broad but I actually think that the exemption that can be provided by medical practitioners doctors and nurse practitioners actually provides scope for people who do have chronic conditions to fit if it is within a palliative regime.I'd also like to highlight that the research about why medicinal cannabis is so important has started to come to the fore and particularly I want to point to a piece of research from the European journal of international medicine which was released in May this year which essentially says that medicinal cannabis for people who are suffering actually alleviates pain and the alleviation of that pain means that people have gone from a pain scale of between eight and 10—for almost half of those in the study—to after six months only five percent of those people suffering that excruciating pain. It also means people can sleep and it also means that people can eat.I think the last point that I want to make and it has been really underplayed from the beginning is actually the economic opportunities that this whole medicinal cannabis scheme is going to create. I want to acknowledge Manu Caddie and Hikurangi Cannabis Co. and the whānau in Ruatōria because actually with Minister Jones in the House I think that there are going to be economic development opportunities for the regions. The global market was valued at US$8.28 billion in 2017. The projections are that by 2024 this industry is going to be worth US$28 billion and I want to acknowledge that the reason that the industry is going to grow so much is that there has been an increased acknowledgment of the benefits of medicinal cannabis—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes I would like the member to come back to the bill please.LOUISA WALL: —and also the increased demand.DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is actually not a wide debate.LOUISA WALL: So the bill will also enable cannabis cultivation licences to be issued for research purposes and going back to my highlighting Hikurangi Cannabis Co. they've received one.So I commend the bill to the House. Can I just say that as a process this was the first bill that our committee has seen through to fruition. I just again want to thank my colleagues for the way that we conducted ourselves in the committee. At the end of the day we're here to serve the people of New Zealand. Kia ora.