Page 3416 - Week 10 - Thursday, 20 October 2022

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It begs the question: why didn’t the Labor Party and the Greens take this to the election? Why didn’t they, at the last election, say, “We are going to decriminalise heroin.” No; they said, “We’re going to do a review.” That was in a motion that Mr Pettersson put forward in this place. He had already worked out the results of that review, so he did not bother to do it. He said that he was going to do a review; that was no true. He did not do a review. He already knew exactly what he was going to do. He was going to come into this place, straight after the election, and whack down on this table a bill that decriminalises heroin and meth. Did he tell that to the electorate during the election? No, he did not.

This is a pretty simple amendment. Let’s take this to the election and see what the people of the ACT really believe. We have seen a lot of polls. There are a lot of myths about who supports this and who supports that, and a lot of different questions are being put. Now people can see the detail—that the government is going to decriminalise what, in my view, are pretty substantial amounts of heroin and meth. There is going to be an amendment from the Labor Party shortly that will allow you to have heroin and meth together. The Greens amendment will give you 60 days’ worth of possession. Depending on which one of those amendments gets up, it should be taken to the community. The community should be told, “Hey, we want people to be able to get around with 15 or 20 hits of drugs on them. We think that that’s okay.” If those on the other side of the chamber are confident, they should take it to the electorate. And if they do not take it to the electorate they should not think that it will go away; we will take it to the next election, and we will see what the community actually thinks about the radical proposal to decriminalise heroin and meth without first asking the community if that is what they want.

MS STEPHEN-SMITH (Kurrajong—Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Minister for Families and Community Services and Minister for Health) (11.43): It will be no surprise that the government will be opposing Mr Hanson’s amendment, but I thought it was important to have the opportunity to debate it. This is a very cynical amendment from Mr Hanson, but it is also an interesting one politically. Just to go to his point—and Mr Pettersson has already touched on this—this place did pass the motion in August 2020 that Mr Pettersson has talked about, and ACT Labor’s health policy position statement committed to investigating a simple drug offence notice for some drugs of dependence.

There are multiple ways of investigating policy. One such way is for a private member to develop a bill, to send that out as an exposure draft, to have a consultation with the community, and to then introduce the bill into the Assembly and for the Legislative Assembly to have a whole committee inquiry into the bill and into the broader aspects of it. I would say that most people would think that that was investigating the issue pretty thoroughly. We then had a government response to the committee inquiry, and we are now having a debate in this place. So I think we have done what we said what we were going to do at the election. We have investigated it through a Legislative Assembly process that has been very, very thorough.

Mr Cain, of course, did put forward a dissenting report through that inquiry, as is absolutely his right as a member of this place. The government has very closely considered the Legislative Assembly report and the evidence that was put before that


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