O'Connor Damien: Psychoactive Substances Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Connor Damien: Psychoactive Substances Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 09 July 2013. Volume:692;Page:11794. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman):I will take the opportunity to speak on this bill the Psychoactive Substances Bill for one reason and that is to protect kids in this country. It is not the adolescents but it is the unborn children—often of young girls who will take these drugs and who will be encouraged to take these drugs. We have absolutely no idea what will be the impacts on that unborn child. To sit in this Chamber I had to restrain myself from leaping up and attacking the Hon John Banks who was going on about puppy dogs and mentioned kids once or twice I think.Iain Lees-Galloway: Once.Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Once—once he mentioned kids. Look I am here for kids first. I do not like to see any animals harmed either but I do believe that there are some priorities and the kids come first in my view.I guess if you were to take an ACT philosophy to this you would say: “Well the market will sort it out. In fact we should not have regulation.” Is that not what the ACT Party stands for? Let the market sort it out. I have to say to be fair there is a little bit of that happening around the place where communities are marching on places where these drugs are being sold and good on them. If you buy your goods at the local dairy and the dairy is continuing to sell them do not go there—do not go there. There are I accept—not because of Mr Banks—some accepted wisdoms around the market. If those shopkeepers hear the message very clearly that people are not going to buy their milk bread biscuits or their ice creams from your store because you are selling those drugs maybe they will get the message. But for the ones who do not get the message there must be legislation.For Mr Banks to say “Well if it is not perfect according to me do not vote for it.” how bizarre! How outrageous and what a dereliction of duty as a parliamentarian to protect the young kids in this country. That is what we are here for. It is not perfect. In fact very few pieces of legislation are perfect. But politics is the art of the possible and it is about numbers as well and Mr Banks likes to play the numbers at times. Funnily enough he is supporting the Skycity legislation. Do you know what that is going to do? That is going to increase the number of pokie machines and science says it will increase the harm to kids in this country and he is going to vote for it. There is a word. It is called hypocrisy. It is a word—The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! Order! I am going to red card the member—well a yellow card warning. The member has strayed into two areas. He is getting off the bill that we are on and using those words is going to bring disorder. I do not care how cleverly or obliquely the member is using them it will bring disorder.Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Thank you Mr Chairperson. I appreciate that. If we are going to be genuine in our care through legislation for New Zealanders and for animals as well then let us be consistent. But there is too much inconsistency here and I have to say to the member who says “If I do not get my way over puppy dogs”—it is in fact over rats and mice if the truth be known—“then I am not going to do anything to protect the kids and the young people of New Zealand.” what a ridiculous position to be in.So I say that we do support the bill. We need to. Indeed my colleague has been calling for this piece of legislation for some time. The Government has been delaying sitting on its hands and thinking probably in its own naive way that the market might deal with this—the market might deal with this—and people will just stop selling them because good wise people should not buy them. The reality is that these are drugs—people buy them for God knows what reasons. They are highly addictive. I have had a friend whose brother is a general practitioner say: “Please support Peter Dunne’s initiative in this area.” Although it has been slow it is progress. The most important thing we can do here is shut down the supply of these drugs as quickly as we can and protect many many young New Zealanders from firstly taking them and secondly being addicted to them.