Page 3415 - Week 10 - Thursday, 20 October 2022
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AFP commissioner has said but ignores what the current AFP commissioner says. Dr Paterson is true to form with her cherry-picking of the evidence. Again we see in this place that she will campaign against some forms of gambling and raise petitions, but when it comes to the pokies that the ALP run there is radio silence. She will tell the community that she wants a review into sentencing reform but will vote against it in this place.
It is consistent with what we see from those opposite, which is to cherry-pick the evidence put before them. You have the top cop—the Police Commissioner—saying that this is dangerous for his members and will create a more dangerous community but there is radio silence from those opposite. We will not be supporting the amendments before us, but I foreshadow that I will move an amendment shortly myself.
Proposed new part 1 heading agreed to.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clause 2.
MR HANSON (Murrumbidgee) (11.39): I seek leave to move amendments to this bill that have not be circulated in accordance with standing order 178A, and, pursuant to standing order 182A(b), I seek leave to move an amendment to this clause that is minor and technical in nature.
Leave granted.
MR HANSON (Murrumbidgee) (11.40): I move amendment No 1 circulated in my name [see schedule 2 at page 3507].
Given that the government sprang this debate on us without taking it to a committee, as we just discussed, it would have been pretty rank if you had not granted me leave. This amendment is pretty simple. The government is going to move an amendment shortly that delays the implementation of this legislation, because it is going to take time for them to sort out this mess on the ground. What my amendment does is pretty simple. It delays it until 2024.
As I have said in this place, it is only fair that members of the ACT community have these pretty radical drugs reforms—although those opposite might say that they are not radical—put before them at an election. If the Labor Party or the Barr-Rattenbury government believes that the ACT community is so keen to see meth decriminalised, it should take it to an election. We are only talking about, in this amendment, a 12-month delay from what the government is already proposing. An extra year is not long in the timeframe of what we are talking about here in terms of such a substantive reform. If the government is confident—if those members believe in what they are saying—that the evidence does stack up and that the community overwhelmingly wants to see more meth and more heroin on their streets, more carnage on their roads, and more organised crime—as we are hearing from the police—the government should take it to an election.
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