Reti ShaneDr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): Thank you Madam Chair. I thank the Minister for his recent contribution. It's not clear to me where he talks about needing experts and wide consultation and taking time that any of that happened with the terminal exception. He seems to be quite capable of writing regulations and even describing diseases in the terminal exception but has nothing no detail at all around a wider medicinal cannabis scheme. So I think one is saying one thing with one side of the face and maybe something different with another.I think there are two key parts of licensing that I'd like to speak to in these next two calls that I have. The first is around location which has been touched on by my colleague the Hon Michael Woodhouse and the last call somewhere in this debate I'd like to take would be around production standards—very very important items within the overall scheme of a medicinal cannabis scheme that are again completely blank for Government.From a location perspective—to provide some guidance that we hope is useful to this debate we took some guidance actually from the Psychoactive Substances Act that has descriptions like no production within five kilometres of a residential zone and within a kilometre of a special area such as a wāhi tapu; there are a lot of really good things that were already existing in legislation. So we looked to use what was already there and then see how it could be modified by best practice. And I'm sure those international experts that we've spoken with and consulted with will take no umbrage at what the Minister said. I don't believe he's demeaning them at all just maybe that he doesn't recognise what they've contributed. What we then came to with discussions with pretty much most of the industry players was that that initial description of no production—and I'll come to that in detail in the next call: production" meaning cultivation processing and manufacturing; "manufacturing" being the labelling and the boxing if you like that whole process—five kilometres from a residential zone was quite tough quite a challenge. Many of the industry players said "Wow find us a production area outside of five kilometres from a residential area." So we took that on board looked overseas took advice and modified what you see here in Supplementary Order Paper 178. Fundamentally what that says is that in an industrial zone we allow production on the basis that it is not visible to the public—that is that it's opaque glasshouses. Secondly—this is indoor production as well clearly—what we also say is no production within one kilometre of a residential zone unless it is indoor production; again not visible to the public—opaque glasshouses. Now most of industry said "Gosh we're not only going to have opaque glasshouses we're going to have great big fences around it."—so your concerns of normalising the process or of encouraging crime by having production in a neighbourhood and all those things you can set aside. "Not only are we going to have what you're suggesting but we're going to do better than that." So that was very reassuring. What that then left was the outdoor growers and they were happy to remain at five kilometres from a residential zone and not around a sensitive area again like a wāhi tapu. And so this would seem eminently sensible. I think these are the sorts of things—well I don't think; I know—that industry are saying: "Give us a guideline give us some sense rather than a blank page over the next two to three years whatever it's going to be because we are needing to organise investors. We're wanting to get on to this right away. You want to have medicinal cannabis products that are affordable and accessible as quickly as possible into the New Zealand market; we're ready to go. We've got investors we've got the knowledge of how to do this but we need to know what you might allow."So we put out there a structure and a framework that gave them some sense of yes you can actually be maybe looking at factories in this area. You can make a start. They were very worried: "Well we don't know what the Minister's going to do. What if this part of your bill's not taken up." That is a risk. I accept that's a risk and I believe in its blank state that's a risk that will delay the roll-out and deployment of a medicinal cannabis scheme. But I would hope the Government doesn't stray too far if they're not going to absorb in entirety the suggestions we put here from what we've suggested are good best-practice standards which industry are already saying "We can work with that." and give them some guidance so that they can keep moving so that when we're ready to deploy which now will be in a year as per the legislation we get that seed to sale as quickly as possible. The overseas experience is six to twelve months. Some industries say they can do it in six months. It will be two and three years if there's no guidance given to the industry around where they'll be able to base their production centres. You don't get that expertise quickly. You can't build facilities that quickly. I'd like to come back for another call to talk about production further on."