Page 4478 - Week 14 - Thursday, 1 December 1994
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right off the top - the world as we know it is finished - and make comments about doctors being able to prescribe cannabis for anybody. Wrong! The Bill says quite categorically, as this legal advice says, that cannabis can be prescribed only for patients who are under a medical practitioner involved in medical research.
The issue here is that the Minister determined, for whatever reason, to make statements inside this house that were simply misleading. I accept that there is nothing we can do about what he says outside this house. Today we heard comments about the AIDS Action Council. Mr Connolly clearly attempted to tell people in this house that do not have regular contact with the AIDS Action Council that the AIDS Action Council had real problems with the intention of this amendment. That was the point he was trying to make. He gave anybody who was listening the impression that the AIDS Action Council have a problem with this approach. The fact is, categorically, that the AIDS Action Council have absolutely no problems with the intention of this amendment. They are saying that it is not up to them to talk about or to comment on pieces of legislation in front of this house - it is very difficult for them at this particular moment to do so - but they are categorical; they support the intention of this amendment. End of deal! Mr Connolly attempted to give the impression that that was not the case.
I think he quoted Brendan Nelson as saying that this is absolutely dreadful and that there is a real chance that doctors will be prescribing cannabis in a willy-nilly fashion. The next comment Brendan Nelson made, this morning, if anyone had been listening, was, "And if they do so they will be deregistered". That is what Brendan Nelson said. I must admit that I get cross with a Minister who is willing to half quote. That sounds like we are going to see medical practitioners out there willy-nilly prescribing cannabis. Brendan Nelson says, "If that happens they will be deregistered".
I have said, and I know that everybody else in this house has said, that if there are any problems, either legally or in practice, with this legislation we will move to amend it. We will be looking at this legal opinion to see how it gels with our opinion, and if there are any problems we will be amending it. That is the sensible way to go. This Minister has taken a silly approach and is going right off the top, giving very much the wrong impression not just to this Assembly but to people outside this Assembly as well. Most people in this house would expect, when a Minister gets up and says, "This is the case", that that is the case; not half the case, a quarter of the case, or a tiny bit of it; it is the whole situation as the Minister knows it.
The Minister knows that the comments he has made in this house over the last two days on this amendment are simply not the whole case. He knows that the legal opinion he sought overlooks - whether the author was told to overlook or not is another issue - a number of clauses in the current Bill. Mr Connolly read out the legal opinion. It makes some comments about medical research not being defined in the legislation. Certainly, it is not defined; but it is very much part of the legislation. In paragraph 32(c)(ii) it says that in the case of a program of research a clinical trial protocol will be required. As we know, if a word is not defined in the legislation we go to theOxford Dictionary for a definition of that word. "Clinical", Madam Speaker, means medical; of hospital origin. That is what the word means. If that is so, in the case of a program of research, a medical trial protocol, read "medical or hospital trial protocol". That is the way the legal system works in this country.
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