Ghahraman GolrizGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you. It is always delightful when a bill actually comes to us in the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee and it's generally also pretty exciting because we get to connect this Parliament and New Zealand to some exciting developments in international law as we are doing in this bill. We're bringing New Zealand's law into line with a couple of UN conventions that we're signed up to. We will be after this bill is passed compliant with article 108 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and article 17 of the UN Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances. So it's nice to know that we're doing our fair share internationally and in particular in the Pacific to monitor and to bring the international rule of law to life. Obviously the trafficking of illicit drugs is a problem that this Government is concerned with and this is just one part of a plethora of mechanisms that we'll be using to keep our communities safe.This is a technical bill. It amends a couple of different Acts: the Customs and Excise Act and the Misuse of Drugs Act. While we were hearing from those three submitters and also from the officials—and I think we pushed those learned and talented officials a little bit because there were a few of us unfortunately for them who were lawyers and so we really engaged with this very technical bill—for me one of the things that was important was to know whether or not we were actually extending customs' powers to search or whether we were in fact doing what we intended to do which was just to extend the geographic area that comes under their jurisdiction now. I was happy to find that actually the search and seizure powers of customs were still going to be regulated stringently. So the power remains as it ordinarily is which is the power to board and search a vessel if the customs officials have the reasonable belief that a crime that already comes under their jurisdiction has been committed on that vessel.The reasonableness standard makes it objective; so they would be able to be tested—were their power to search challenged in a court—and they would have to show an objective basis for suspecting that the vessel was involved in committing one of these crimes. That's important because we don't actually want to extend the power to search beyond that reasonableness standard and the word belief" actually places it at quite a high standard as well—so it goes beyond just a mere suspicion. That was important to me because of course we still have to uphold the rule of law in those terms as we are extending our application of the rule of law geographically. So I was pleased to know that we're still maintaining those high standards.As others have said this work will be really important for our Pacific neighbours. We know that a number of our small Island nation neighbours in the Pacific are currently being used as between points for drug traffickers and we know that drug trafficking brings with it a range of other drugs. So it is dangerous for the Pacific and this is part of New Zealand doing our fair share of that monitoring work. For my sins I also hold the defence portfolio—which I actually love—and as part of that work I'm well aware of the massive amount that our defence forces already contribute to monitoring in the Pacific whether that's for environmental reasons or whether that's monitoring of this kind. It's nice to know that we're going to be contributing even more in this way and I think it will be appreciated.To put this into perspective in terms of the problem that we're helping to solve at the close of the last year that the measurements were taken for—so 2017—New Zealand interdicted among its close neighbours which are New Caledonia Australia and French Polynesia and we stopped around 501 kilograms of methamphetamine. Now we know again from the last annual reports on justice that came through this House that methamphetamine is a drug that's about to overtake even cannabis in its prevalence in our courts and our criminal justice system and that's not just to say you know mere possession charges. That actually is the most serious of charges: the supply the manufacture and the importation of methamphetamine a class A drug. Basically our High Court has no more capacity to deal with other types of serious crime; certainly in Auckland much of what they do is serious methamphetamine-based crimes. We've tried upping the sentences to life imprisonment and in fact the proliferation of that type of offending has only been done faster and at a much higher scale as we've upped sentences. Now regularly people are being sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment. That's not working. But part of the package of keeping our communities safe will be stopping drugs being imported into New Zealand at least.The other side of that of course is important to keep in mind because this isn't the only way that we're going to stop drug crimes and in fact if our focus is on stopping harm that might be caused by drugs our focus has to be on that demand end. It has to be on the types of social issues that cause addiction and on actually treating that addiction. We know that's going to involve a lot of investment in things like mental health services. We know drug addiction is often underpinned by mental health issues like serious anxiety PTSD—these are the kinds of people we're locking up. We're spending billions of dollars on that and it has failed. So we will be stopping drugs entering New Zealand and at the same time we'll be investing in social services and addiction treatment in mental health care in jobs in actual healthcare and in housing to keep that kind of social security that will keep our communities healthy and drug-free—if they want to be! But at the same time not only is it really important that we do our fair share to keep our broader Pacific community safe and ourselves safe against the importation of drugs it's also important that with the passing of this bill New Zealand will contribute to upholding the international rule of law. So I commend the bill to the House."