Page 3417 - Week 10 - Thursday, 20 October 2022
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committee, and has undertaken significant policy work, again engaging with stakeholders, engaging with that broad lived experience and engaging with our service providers, and really understanding the evidence.
I want to just touch on Mr Cain’s contribution earlier in that regard. I can assure Mr Cain that he can review all of my comments on this—and I think I speak for most, if not all, of my colleagues—and I think that he will find that I have never described the opposition as uncaring or heartless, or claimed that they do not care about this issue. We have all, on this side of the chamber, recognised that people come to this debate with different views but wanting to achieve what they believe is the right outcome. Failure to understand the evidence—yes, absolutely. I stand accused of claiming that Liberals failed to understand the evidence that is before us. Political opportunism—yes, absolutely. I think Mr Hanson’s amendment speaks to the political opportunism. Dr Paterson talked about how many times Mr Hanson can yell “meth” and “heroin” and “ice”, as part of his approach.
So, yes, I stand accused of accusing the Liberals of those things, but I do not make personal comments about the Liberals’ individual motivations or their level of caring or heartlessness, unlike the way that they talk about us every single day in this place. I can give one example. You could go back and look at Mrs Kikkert’s contribution to the Community Services Directorate budget debate, where she makes those claims about me and about other members of this place on a regular basis. I do not reflect on members of the opposition in that way, and Mr Cain is just completely creating a straw-person argument there.
In relation to Mr Hanson’s amendment, clearly this is simply a mechanism to enable him to claim that the sky will fall in if this change is made. The challenge for Mr Hanson is the amendment that I will be moving—to implement this in 12 months. The amendment will give 12 months for a transition phase to ensure that ACT Policing is well aware, and that the community fully understands the implication of these changes. We have learned from the experiences of overseas jurisdictions—including the experience in Portugal—that a transition period is required.
So, we are proposing a 12 month transition to ensure that all of that work can be done. The challenge for Mr Hanson is that the community will then have 12 months to understand that the sky has not fallen in—that in fact, this incremental change in decriminalisation has not resulted in all of the things that Mr Hanson is wanting to scare the community about. So in some ways I am tempted to support Mr Hanson’s amendment because that will enable the reactionary Canberra Liberals to come to the fore. Ms Lee is not here for this debate today, unfortunately, and I know that is not intentional on her part. She has been trying for two years to present the Canberra Liberals as a more progressive party and to move away from the Alistair Coe conservative reactionary party, and Mr Hanson would be going out every day and undermining that message to the Canberra community.
I am pleased to hear that he has said he will continue to do that, assuming that this bill passes and these changes some into effect in October 2023, and they have a positive impact for the small number of people who are affected. A small number of people will see a very positive impact from this bill; for the wider community, my prediction is that nothing will change. Their lives will go on as usual, exactly as happened
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