Patterson MarkClause 4 Section 70 amendedMARK PATTERSON (NZ First): Thank you Madam Chair. I rise to speak on behalf of New Zealand First on this bill and also would like to start by commending the member Simeon Brown on bringing this bill forward and seeing an anomaly within our current laws and looking to amend them. I also would like to speak more broadly on Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 23 brought forward by my colleague Darroch Ball and I will get to that shortly.The issue here is that these are hideous substances. These are doing great harm. They are causing death and mayhem on our streets and we need to act and act swiftly. I hear both sides of this debate and on this side of the Chamber the argument is that it's a health issue. Many of those arguments hold true; they are absolutely correct. This is not an either/or; this is a both". This is how New Zealand First sees this. This is a "both".The work that this Government is doing around the health side of things dealing with addiction services—50000 people last year accessed addiction services. It's a massive issue for us as a country but we also have to deal with the supply and it's absolutely ridiculous that two years is the maximum penalty for people who are peddling substances that are causing deaths at this scale. New Zealand First will not stand by and allow this to happen. We are going to bring the full force of the law towards those people who are peddling these substances.Let's be clear: in my colleague Darroch Ball's SOP he talks about our wanting this to go to 14 years maximum to bring it into line with class B substances—and that is a maximum sentence. So the argument that somehow people who have got caught up in using this and are peddling a little bit to fund their habit—those people aren't going to get locked up for 14 years. Hopefully they will be brought into our health services. They'll be treated with some leniency in the first instance but when we get these purveyors of poison who are peddling this stuff that is killing our citizens we need to come down on them and we need to come down on them hard. New Zealand First is calling for tougher penalties and we are calling in this SOP under my colleague Darroch Ball's name for the maximum sentence to be 14 years in line with what it is for class B drugs.We will not stand and see this mayhem on our streets but we will also engage constructively with our colleagues on this side of the House because we know they are looking to address exactly the same issues from another angle—the health side of it—and getting alongside the people who have been caught up with these insidious substances. We know through the debate that we've had so far that the substances get changed around by the chemists so that they evade detection. Those are the issues that we will be looking at on this side of the House with the health stuff that Dr Clark is leading and we will support that.New Zealand First absolutely supports that intent and we will listen to good argument—the arguments that the likes of Chlöe Swarbrick bring up and she leads some very important thinking in this House for a new generation coming through. It's absolutely valid the points that she is raising but they're dealing with only one side. We also need to deal with supply and New Zealand First firmly believe that we can only deal with supply if we come down tough. Two years is a ridiculously short time and that's why I commend Simeon Brown. Even though we have not totally landed on the same length of maximum sentence we absolutely respect and support the intent because two years is ridiculous. This is a substance that can kill people and two years is just unacceptable.So we contend under Darroch Ball's SOP that it should be a 14-year maximum sentence in line with other similar class B - type drugs and that is how we'll be voting on this bill and our support will be conditional on that SOP being voted by majority. Thank you Madam Chair."