Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): The National caucus is quite sad that we can't be supporting this bill at its third reading because it does much good. It certainly makes unlawful and classifies as a class A drug with the consequent punishments that go along with supply of that—in fact it's ironic that the Minister of Justice should be moving this motion on behalf of the Minister of Health because it was the Minister of Justice who railed so strongly against my colleague Simeon Brown's attempts to do so through a member's bill to increase the punishments to I think eight years and then perhaps in committee it went to 14. We now have punishments of up to 20 years in jail for offences for supply of these synthetic drugs that have caused a scourge particularly in vulnerable communities and death on I think about 80 occasions in the last couple of years. So we support that; we think that is a very good initiative.The temporary drug orders also we will support and as is well understood now it is clause 6 that has become the high hurdle over which we could not jump and then go into supporting this bill—for very good reasons and I think they've been traversed. But I just want to touch on them again because just about everybody but the Minister of Health believes this constitutes the de facto decriminalisation of all drugs. The Police Association certainly did. The New Zealand Drug Foundation certainly did. The New Zealand Law Society certainly did. Chlöe Swarbrick certainly did; she said it was the biggest reform in 40 years. And yet the Minister still maintains that this is nothing more than the codification of existing police discretion. We don't agree and we don't agree for very good reasons because the words in clause 6 are very clear.For the first time this legislature is about to in my view breach a very strong constitutional convention of the separation of powers between the legislature and the executive as represented through New Zealand Police. That is that this legislature is going to say that despite something being an offence under the Misuse of Drugs Act police should not prosecute. It doesn't matter what goes on after that. It now says there is discretion to prosecute—as if the fact that it was in the law wasn't an obvious enough indicator of that! And in other parts of law we have codified this discretion by saying it's the police's discretion not to prosecute which of course is very consistent with the prosecution guidelines laid down by the Solicitor-General. So I have a significant concern that we are actually breaching a fairly strong convention over a long period of time about the non-interference of this place in the manner in which police do their job.Then it got really confusing last night when a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) was brought in the Minister's name to insert the words to the public interest" into clause 6 and that's now been put into the bill for consideration at third reading. That was completely new to anybody who had been involved in this bill. In every other document up until that point—the departmental disclosure statement the regulatory impact statement the Cabinet paper and indeed New Zealand Police's own submission to the select committee—this was about a therapeutic or health benefit to an individual. As late as the deliberation the select committee's deliberation the police came back to us to tell us how police instructions would be issued. I want to quote from that document. It said "The instructions will direct police to consider if offering a health or therapeutic approach to an individual would be more beneficial."—not to the public interest but to an individual. Now I think that actually materially changes the purpose of the bill. I'm not quite sure how because it still constitutes de facto decriminalisation. But the fact that the Minister was bringing that sort of change at such a late stage is actually very concerning in my view. Darroch Ball: What does it change it to?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well it changes the whole test Mr Ball.Darroch Ball: To what?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: It changes the test to: it doesn't matter whether the individual would benefit; it matters whether the public would benefit.Darroch Ball: The public's benefit to what—for what?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Oh read the bill.Darroch Ball: You can't explain it can you?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well that's right. I can't explain it. That's the very point. That is actually the point. This is the most confusing change at the eleventh hour to a bill that I have certainly been involved in and the justification for it in at least the explanatory notes was: "The SOP adds some clarifying words." Well the Minister tried to explain why those clarifying words were necessary. I don't believe that explanation was satisfactory. So if this is all we're doing if we're only codifying existing police discretion to prosecute why do we need clause 6? Of course the Hon Paula Bennett brought a Supplementary Order Paper which was unsuccessful and now we are here where we are. Let there be no doubt for those listening and watching developments that the thousand prosecutions for possession only that were taken in the last year before this bill was passed will not be taken. They just will not be taken. There were a lot of submissions about whether or not the unconscious bias that police have acknowledged exists manifests in drug possession charges. I have no such concern because actually nobody's going to get prosecuted—nobody. And I wager that we'll be back here next year and people can remind me of this speech and say there were this many prosecutions and I'm quite sure I'll be able to count them on one hand because we are here to take the possession of illicit substances out of prosecution. That's not just cannabis; it's not just synthetics. It's P it's cocaine it's Ecstasy it's heroin—all of which will not be prosecuted because we are here telling the police they should not. I don't believe that is what the public understand we're doing. I don't believe it's what we should be doing. If the Government wanted to do it it should have had a much more open conversation with the New Zealand public and it's for that reason and that reason alone that we oppose this bill. We cannot be here in substance decriminalising all drug possessions. We oppose this bill."