Bridges Simon; Dean JacquiDRUG AND SUBSTANCE CHECKING LEGISLATION BILL (NO 2)In CommitteePart 1 Amendments to Misuse of Drugs Act 1975Hon SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga): Madam Chair thank you very much. I don't want to take a long time on this. The Government has the numbers. They're going to pass this bill. National opposes it and that sort of is that. We've put out our reasons why that is the case. It is like so many bad laws that this Government passes. Kris Faafoi seems to be chief among Ministers at passing bad laws at the moment but we'll get to three strikes I hope later today.But on this pill-testing one my questions for the Minister really relate to this: I could be wrong so I ask the Minister—he can point out the error in what I'm saying; I'm all ears but I feel like the Government went to the election with a ban on pill testing at music festivals right? That's what they were going to do. That's how this started. That's the bill we got. But then what happened is: somewhere along the line they just decided we'd have pill testing everywhere right? It is now under this law that we're going through the committee of the whole House on the case that pill testing can be done anywhere. I didn't see any official change come; it just came through the law fundamentally—although once they'd been elected.So given that I want to understand the underlying rationale of that. Why have we gone from music festivals—I don't like it personally I think it will encourage use. There's no safe use of the likes of MDMA but in any event I do understand the rationale of it for music festivals—the Rhythms and Vines" and so on that these guys on the other side are giving a lot of money to because they love a big music festival. We know that about Angie Warren-Clark we've discussed this in the House before. So why the change? When the change? I think in all seriousness I'm probably being a bit flippant but I do think actually it's an important issue the move from testing simply at music festival to technically under this law anywhere. What is going to go on here?I presume we're talking K Road as it was called. Now it's Karangahape Road—it was K Road when I was a kid and we used to get our thrills driving up and down it to see the night life; as a 15-year-old it was very exciting. I remember actually one time—no we won't go there actually no we won't go there. Anyway OK K Road outside the night clubs—those clubs Shanan Halbert probably went to until the day he became a member of Parliament and he decided you shouldn't be out past midnight. Nothing good comes after midnight Shanan Halbert OK? So is it going to be outside those?But more than that actually is there going to be—and I'm not being facetious; I just want to understand—rule-making regulatory powers here? Will it be outside the local playground? There's no legal impediment to that that I can see in the bill. Will it be outside schools? Under the guise of public harm reduction education we'll let the 15- and 16-year-olds know that they can test their pills here because that's cool and that's the way the Ministry of Health and those public health officials roll these days right? It's all harm reduction and we're cool with this outside of schools and outside of playgrounds. I just want to get a sense of the parameters and the legal restrictions. Will there be rule-making powers? I think there should be. I think that's really important.And because I'm not playing cat and mouse here and I don't want to take six calls and string this out and ask the Minister lots of other things I also want to underline another thing that we never heard about in the election campaign—I don't think we saw anything about it until the Minister's office stuck a press release out and a friendly journalist at stuff.co.nz asked me for some comment on it—and that is the fact that now not only have we gone from pill testing just at festivals being legalised to everywhere but that taxpayers are going to pay for it. So my question simply again on that is: when did they make that decision? Is it a new thing? Why have they decided that the taxpayer should pay for it?I just say on that on the "Why?" I'm very curious about that. Call me old-fashioned. Call me a stick in the mud. I just work on this basis—and I know they're a bunch of woke-sters now in ACT these days so they don't go along with this; they've given blatant disregard for taxpayers' money these days and they're happy for taxpayers to pick up on this down-with-it cool hip thing called "pill testing" everywhere. Why isn't it user–pays? Why aren't users paying to test their own illicit illegal drugs? Why do I have to pay? I don't want to pay for Kris Faafoi to get down with it at Rhythm and Vines. I just don't want to pay for that.The final question because I think I can do this in five minutes: will it stay at 850 grand—I presume per annum—or am I right to say that actually every year this is going to go up as there's bracket creep and we see millions spent on subsidising other people to have pills that are so-called safe even though they're not? How much is this going to cost?CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Sorry; just with apologies before I take the member—just to tell the committee that we are on Part 1. This is the debate on clauses 3 to 12A and Schedules 1 and 2. The question is that Part 1 stand part."