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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 13 Hansard (7 December) . . Page.. 3800 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

The third point raised in the committee's report is this very difficult issue of the relationship of the police with the operation of a drug injecting place. Once again, there are some practical issues there. I have no doubt that enforcement of our drug laws for the term of the trial will be dealt with in a mature, constructive and cooperative way by the members of the Australian Federal Police. Our police force, one of the best police forces in the world, will join with this community in ensuring that this trial will be allowed to proceed on its merits. It will succeed or fall on the basis of its merits. Once again, that is an issue that can be dealt with quite competently.

The fourth issue that is raised in the committee's report is the nature of the direction that the Attorney-General will be required to give to the DPP. As far as I am concerned, this is just a matter of getting the drafting right. The scrutiny of Bills committee has not raised some damning threshold issue here in relation to the nature of the direction the DPP will be given. It is not a fundamental flaw that is being raised by the scrutiny of Bills committee. This is an issue which I am hoping the Government, through its officials, will be able to deal with quite simply and plainly. There is a drafting issue there to be attended to. There is some tidying up to be done. I simply cannot see any fundamental difficulty in the issues raised by the scrutiny of Bills committee in relation to the powers of the DPP.

The fifth issue raised goes once again to the nature of the direction the Attorney-General would give to the DPP. I simply cannot accept that any of those five issues - they are not even necessarily criticisms - raised by the scrutiny of Bills committee in relation to dispensing with the law raises fundamental problems. It is within our wit and our power to deal with each of them in a quite straightforward way. I have no doubt that the Parliamentary Counsel, when asked to do so, will be able to address each of those issues in a way that will satisfy the scrutiny of Bills committee.

I now wish to refer to the last two issues raised by the scrutiny of Bills committee, namely, civil liberties and treaty obligations. The scrutiny of Bills committee simply says:

That is simply a statement. We all know that. There is no threat in that. Issues of civil liberties are raised in just about every piece of legislation that this place deals with every time it sits and, as a parliament, we deal with those. We are constantly, as a parliament, seeking to balance the rights of citizens, one against the other and as individuals. There is nothing new in that and, once again, it is an issue that we can deal with here. People suffering from drug addiction have a right to be dealt with in a certain way. This community has to show some concern for keeping them alive and some concern for their health status. The scrutiny of Bills committee says this in relation to treaty obligations:

this is the regulation of drugs -

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