Page 3407 - Week 10 - Thursday, 20 October 2022
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I do want to also acknowledge the presence of Bill Bush, from the Family and Friends for Drug Law Reform. My heart goes out to families who have lost loved ones and friends to drug abuse. I certainly am with them on the overall goal: how can we stop these substances harming people?
The Canberra Liberals do not have a different approach; I will speak a bit more about this in a minute. We do not want to see people harmed by these substances, and that is why we have our particular position on this bill. There is no question that encouraging a culture of acceptance, in different ways of messaging that, is not conducive to reducing harm from these substances.
One thing that has not really been recognised, effectively, in my opinion is that there is this sort of false dichotomy. What policy driver do we have here? Are we just going to call people criminals or are we going to help them? The reason that possessing these horrible substances is a crime is that we do not want them to hurt people. The policy driver is to reduce harm in the current framework. So it is a false dichotomy to say that the Liberals just want to lock people up, that we do not care about them. It is a misrepresentation to assume that opposing this bill means that one is heartless or cares little about the health of users. Harm minimisation is the thing that drives me. I do not want people to be hurt by these things. We need to use every tool in our arsenal. It is disappointing to see this bill presented, quite frankly.
There are a couple of other things that I want to focus on in a little bit of detail. As has already been mentioned, the AFP Association have spoken about this. They are the ones on the ground. We are going to be asking them to manage this. As I mentioned in my dissenting report, there are real constitutional and legal issues with this. I have heard from a senior judicial officer in this city that if there were prosecution brought under commonwealth law if this bill passes, it would be problematic for the courts. There are real constitutional issues if there is a commonwealth offence in existence and, if this bill passes, not an ACT criminal offence. That creates real legal issues.
One thing that perhaps did not come out strongly during the inquiry—it is something that I have reflected on—is that one of the arguments to decriminalise the possession of ice, heroin, cocaine and other things that are listed is that it discourages people from seeking help because they might be worried about being called a criminal. In the anecdotal stories of families—and, again, my sympathy goes out to them—there is actually no evidence to say that someone who is addicted to one of these is discouraged from receiving help because it is a criminal offence. There is no evidence to support that. How would you actually know, quite frankly, what prevents someone from seeking help?
Members interjecting—
MADAM SPEAKER: Members!
MR CAIN: There would be a range of things that affect a person, let alone the addiction itself. But the fact that someone might get a notice to appear in court—where is the evidence that that discourages them from seeking help? It is a hard
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