Reti ShaneDr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): Thank you Mr Chair. This particular clause sort of gets to one of our two main issues that we have with this bill. We've already talked about our concerns with smoked loose-leaf and how that's going to migrate from the terminal exception and statutory defence into the full-blown medicinal cannabis scheme. We have significant concerns around that. But really our biggest fall-over issue was this blank scope—this empty vacuous void of nothing—around what a medicinal cannabis scheme will look like. And here is the Government's solution to that: setting regulations for minimum quality standards—those regulations still to be determined.NGOs industry everyone in the sector are all looking for more guidance than a blank cheque that regulations and unnamed officials will write on as Matt Doocey described—a blank cheque—to define the minimum quality standards for a medicinal cannabis scheme. All we see here that starts to talk to it that's different from its original version are a few words—cultivation" "manufacturing"—but nothing around processing; I don't know if the Minister knows that it's actually a step in the manufacturing process. It is unclear whether that's part of manufacturing where boxing and labelling comes in. I mean these are some of the details that you'd reasonably expect to be described in a medicinal cannabis scheme and which we do describe. Again this is a huge disappointment to industry. They're wanting more than just what you've asked of us—"Sign this off; we'll figure it out in a few years."We didn't need intense detail. Yes we did do the work and can produce that. We could have got by with a framework that roughly described licensing fit and proper persons location and manufacturing as a whole taking into account cultivation processing and manufacturing and then other parts that are not in this bill—something around dispensing distribution. We could have maybe got alongside with that but the Minister and the Government have refused to move off "Leave it with us—we know best." For a sensitive topic like cannabis for a really important issue which commences cannabis reform in this country nothing—"Leave it with us." That is a huge disappointment to me; it's a huge disappointment to the sector.We've offered and we've brought to this table already—we continue to offer—some detail and some thinking around how to manage this. We offer detail and thinking around fit and proper persons: what a licence holder might have to have as minimum eligibility qualifications. We don't think that's unreasonable; it's consistent with international best practice. We also have some eligibility criteria around what an employee might have and we also think that to be reasonable as well.We give much greater detail around the minimum quality standards particularly for pharmaceutical production. We're considered "near pharmaceutical" but our discussions with industry suggested that that was probably not the way to go particularly since a large part of industry is looking to export. Just by the way there's probably not enough critical mass in the medicinal cannabis environment in New Zealand for an industry to be sustainable. Most will need to export. Therefore most will need to be GMP-compliant and every day we wait for these unnamed officials to spend two years to come up with what they think is best absent from parliamentary oversight absent from significant public scrutiny although we are hearing of some advisory panels. I understand that the proposed Minister's advisory committee is so far late that it's sort of not believable so we'll see how real that becomes.But certainly those sorts of standards that we believe our export industry will require—and I would also add that every day we wait we lose market share to Australia who earlier this year said "We want to be the cannabis producers of the Southern Hemisphere." Well good luck—another two years before we get substantive descriptions around how our own producers can do anything. We bring to the table through our work and through our Supplementary Order Papers knowledge and a background and a consensus and an international review of parts of these things that we want to help the Government with. We still wanted to. We've been told no.So we challenge the Minister in a very sort of urgent way to maybe discuss when we might see some of the quality standards. Might we see something in January next year in the next quarter? Oh wait there's a time line that was put out here: in 2020 there might be some standards where we might be able to start cultivating. Well that schedule is already six months late so can the Minister describe: is he on schedule with his published time line or are we already behind and how far behind? I think it would be useful as we address the weakness and the lack of detail around the minimum quality standards if the Minister could at least address that issue."