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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 2010 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

I did circulate an amendment to the bill in response to concerns raised by the scrutiny of bills committee and following discussions with members of the Law Society. I understand that the Law Society and the Council for Civil Liberties were consulted in the development of the bill. Consultation, however, does not necessarily mean absolute acceptance.

Concerns remain that 24 hours will not give all people charged, or likely to be charged, with cannabis offences sufficient time to get legal advice before applying to the Magistrates Court for an order to preserve the sample. It is clear that the government shares our view that people so charged, or who maybe charged, ought to have the right to have the sample preserved.

The issue of equal access to legal advice then becomes paramount. My advice is that 24 or even 48 hours is insufficient time to ensure that those people who may need to avail themselves of legal aid can in fact do so. In his response to the scrutiny of bills report, Mr Moore stated that the 24-hour period will begin from the time the analyst receives the cannabis, which is usually one day after it has been seized by police. The key issue, it seems, is that the cannabis starts to decompose after a day or two. I presume this is in regard to green rather than dried material.

In this bill, however, the statement given by the police to people who are charged, or who may be charged, advises them that they would have only 24 hours from that time to apply to the Magistrates Court. People who may be charged with an offence would not understand that they may have up to two or three days to apply to the Magistrates Court. Of course, the 24 hours becomes problematic in any event if the person is caught on a Friday.

Perhaps the wording should really be "one complete working day". But in that case we are probably already running over the time period from when the plant material starts to decompose. So there is this issue of a reasonable time for someone to realise that it might be in their interests to get legal advice and to then apply to the court to have the confiscated material preserved. I would have thought that two full working days would be a minimum reasonable time.

There is an inconsistency between the legislated requirement for the government analyst to preserve the material until the allotted time has expired and whatever is put on the statement given to the person. So on the basis of maybe 24 hours or maybe a working day or two, and a weekend or Easter thrown in, I would imagine that a fair bit of appropriate storage is going to have to go on nonetheless.

The other concern I have is that the onus is on the person accused of cannabis offences. Under the New South Wales system, in most instances at the first appearance, the prosecutor applies to the court to have the bulk of the seized material destroyed, and the person charged, usually with counsel, is in a position at that time to ask that it not be destroyed. This seems fair.

It was for that reason that I circulated an amendment to give seven days for people who faced charges relating to cannabis to get appropriate legal advice. Since that time, my office has enjoyed long discussions with interested parties contacted through the Law Society and with the Director of Public Prosecutions. The point was made that while my

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