Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you Madam Chair. And while the Minister is correct that the title clause is a narrow debate the presiding officers have been generous enough to allow the Minister to provide a reasonably broad basis upon which we can commence the committee of the whole House stage. I think that is a sensible start to what will be I hope a sensible debate.The Minister in his contribution both last night and right now has I think shown a slightly graceless approach to what has been a lost opportunity for some bipartisan support for an important piece of legislation across the House. Last night he congratulated and thanked and acknowledged himself his Government colleagues in the New Zealand First party and the Greens but could not bring himself to acknowledge any of the contributions that have been made by the National Party and indeed specifically Dr Shane Reti on this important issue. That is indeed a disappointment and a shame. I worry. I am a supreme optimist—CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order! Please refer to the member with his proper name.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I do apologise. The Minister—I worry that that is a marker of the attitude that could prevail in this debate where there is actually a really good opportunity to get into the detail of this bill and look objectively at some of the sensible proposals for amendment that have been provided by him by the Government and also by the National Party and Dr Shane Reti.Now the title of the bill is actually something of an indicator of the mismatch of what we're trying to do here because it is an amendment to the Misuse of Drugs Act but indeed its primary purpose is to create a licensing regime for not the criminalising of the use of substances but the decriminalising of them and in particular a framework for being able to enable those who are chronically unwell in pain and who may have the opportunity to benefit from the sorts of substances the sorts of medicines that can be created out of THC products that are not presently available. The bill does talk to that. I have to say that it says very little—in fact nearly nothing—about that. The clause that we will debate later on says 59 words about the licensing regime—59 words. So this is something that I'm sure the Minister of Police and the New Zealand Police will be very interested in. Health authorities mental health authorities and social development agencies are going to be vitally interested in what we are actually doing here and the Minister and the Government provide guidance to the degree of 59 words.The other part of the bill which is actually commensurate with the title of the bill the Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis) Amendment Bill provides something of an exemption from prosecution from the present Misuse of Drugs Act—a thing that I have described as an island of immunity in an archipelago of offending—because the bill as it was introduced provides an exemption from prosecution for those who would use illicit substances because they are dying and the National Party will support that. We support that because frankly by the definition of the bill as it came in that is hardly the most heinous breach of the Misuse of Drugs Act. We heard from Richard Chambers the Assistant Commissioner of New Zealand Police responsible for prosecutions and investigations who told us that indeed New Zealand Police aren't out there arresting and locking up terminally ill patients because they are having a joint nor should they. But Mr Chambers also agreed that there was an issue that New Zealand Police will face because while they may not be able to prosecute and don't care much to prosecute those people who are ingesting the illicit substances they may well be quite interested—[Bell rung]CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): I will call the honourable member again. However you've spent the last call largely talking broadly about the bill. I did allow the Minister in the chair to give some general statements. I will now ask you to confine yourself to clause 1 which is about the title.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Thank you Madam Chair and it is to the Supplementary Order Paper that the Minister described in his opening bat that I will address my comments because I think they're really important both to the title and to the purpose of what we are trying to do here and that is that we basically provide an exemption from prosecution for those people who are using these drugs.CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): That debate will come up later. That will come up in later clauses. Confine yourself to the title clause please.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well I will Madam Chair because actually we can call this any number of things and we can have a quite trite sort of debate about whether the title is correct. But I'd rather actually address whether or not it is correct by looking at the substance of what we're trying to do and that is provide an immunity from prosecution.Now the Minister's Supplementary Order Paper (SOP)—he has said in his opening call on clause 1 that he has introduced an SOP to change the definition of terminal" exemption away from 12 months to something else. And in my second reading speech I indicated that National would have a problem with that if indeed palliation as it was described would open the gate for people who were not dying but who were otherwise receiving palliation through their medicine to be able to ingest illicit substances. Having studied the Minister's SOP that is not indeed what he has done—what the Government has done. In fact anybody looking at this could argue that in fact this tightens not loosens that exemption but nevertheless it certainly hasn't gone to the degree that we would have significant concern with.One area we will have concern with and we will discuss when the clause comes up is the absence—CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): I ask the member one more time. This is your last warning. I ask you to come to clause 1 "Title" please. This is the debate we are debating. It's a very narrow debate.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Thank you Madam Chair. I will then therefore add my trite contributions about what the title could be because it is anything but an amendment to the Misuse of Drugs Act. What this does is decriminalise cannabis. So let's talk about how it does that. It does that because the Government has given a pass to people who smoke cannabis and therefore the title could easily be something different: the "Get out of Jail Card" the "Island of Immunity in an Archipelago of Offending" title because that's exactly what this does. The title could easily be many other things to give effect to what is actually happening here and that is immunity from prosecution.Now the purpose of the bill as it's laid out talks about a temporary exemption from prosecution until a licensing regime is in place. Only here's the problem with that: it's not temporary; there's no time limit. This could go on for ever and the Minister in his opening salvo tonight says "Ah ha ha. The National Party don't think they're going to be back in Government." That is not the problem we have with this. The problem is when we're back in Government in less than two years' time we're going to have to come back to this House and introduce primary legislation to do what this bill says it's going to do including in the title and that is provide a temporary regime.There's nothing temporary about this and that's why when we do get to debate Dr Reti's SOP providing for a time limit on this we'll be doing the Government's work. We'll be doing what they said the bill is intended to do: provide a temporary exemption from prosecution. But the meat and drink of this will be in what the licensing regime looks like and actually this is where the primary purpose of the bill and the title of the bill are a complete mismatch because there was no reference in the title to what we're really doing here and that is creating a legitimate licensing regime.The title is not only inadequate but the clause that gives effect to that is woefully inadequate: 59 words—and we decided that wasn't good enough. We tried in select committee we tried in the second reading and now we're going to try again to do that with Dr Reti's SOP which provides the bones the meat on the bones to a noble but fundamentally flawed bill.Now the Government says they're not going to support it. I'm optimistic that we can convince them through this committee stage however long that's going to take that that is the right thing to do because this is the purpose of the bill as described by the title."