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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 09 Hansard (Tuesday, 17 August 2004) . . Page.. 3689 ..

Amendment Bill moves this territory away from a harm minimisation approach, and the impact of it will be to make the drug situation worse, not better.

I turn briefly to Mr Stefaniak’s bill. I point out that the opposition bill also heads down the same tired old path that higher penalties will somehow solve our drug problem. It appears that Mr Stefaniak has only one idea in this Assembly and this bill is just one more in a long line of private member’s bills that do nothing other than to increase penalties. It appears that there is a fantasy world where there are two types of people, evil criminals and law-abiding citizens. If only we could lock up all the criminals for the rest of their natural lives, society would enter a new state of peace and harmony.

This is ridiculous rhetoric that the opposition continues to pedal in this place and it deserves the contempt of the Assembly. The opposition should know full well that the simplistic and insulting policies it pushes in the vain hope of electoral popularity do not work. They do not make the situation better for the community in the ACT. The determinants of crime include poverty, drug addiction and self-esteem inclusiveness issues. These people are incredibly disadvantaged in our society. We need to address these issues if we are to truly tackle the crime problem, not just continually ramp up penalties in the hope that it will act as a deterrent. Throughout history we have seen that it does not act as a deterrent. We need to address the underlying causes of criminal behaviour in our community and work with the community to deal with these problems.

I find it ironic that in its current form the opposition’s bill would wind back some of the government’s proposals, including the proposal to reduce from five to two the number of cannabis plants that could be dealt with. I note that the opposition has now circulated amendments because this probably was not Mr Stefaniak’s intention, but it clearly demonstrates how aggressive the Labor Party has become when it presents us with a bill that is more virulent than the Liberal Party’s original proposal.

The law and order option is truly upon us and it will disadvantage the people of the ACT more than the government and the opposition realise. It takes us one step away from a harm minimisation approach and heads us one step further down that simple lock them away approach that has failed us in the past and will continue to fail us in the future. If we do not turn around the way we approach criminal justice issues, we will just repeat the mistakes of the past.

MS TUCKER (11.48): Whilst having uniform laws under the criminal code is a useful goal, it is dangerous to hand over our responsibility totally without considering carefully whether the approach proposed nationally meets the policy goals we have here. The aspects of the bill dealing exclusively with high-level trafficking and organised crime are one thing but, as Family and Friends for Drug Law Reform has pointed out, the problem is that the bill is not careful enough to avoid drawing in users and low-level trade associated with using.

I will concentrate in my speech on the dangerous aspects of this bill. Mr Stanhope has claimed that this is basically scaremongering, but I think that we would be kidding ourselves if we believed that, once set in law, the definitions and penalties will always be interpreted in the way the people here today might imagine. The government has misrepresented the scope of this legislation. They have described it as a bill concerning

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