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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 09 Hansard (Tuesday, 17 August 2004) . . Page.. 3750 ..

It is a good piece of legislation and is based on a report that came out of a good process. It’s a position that has now been adopted by every head of government and every government in Australia through the COAG process. I discussed this at COAG with the Prime Minister, with the premiers of every state and with the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory. We agreed, as the Prime Minister, the six premiers and the two chief ministers, that we would support and sign up to a national response to organised crime. We acknowledged that organised crime flourishes through the trade in illicit substances. An agreement was struck by those heads of government that we would seek to work cooperatively and consistently to achieve a uniform national approach to a response to organised crime involvement within the illicit drug trade.

The issue was then referred by COAG, by heads of government, to the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General. I, as well as head of government, happen to be Attorney-General and attended the meeting of the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General where the Attorneys-General agreed that this was the appropriate approach and, yes, we could develop consistent national legislation and a national regime and that we would introduce new offences designed explicitly to deal with the behaviour of organised criminal gangs and organised criminals in relation to the supply of illicit drugs in Australia.

New offences have been created to fill some of the gaps that have been identified by law enforcement agencies and through courts in relation to the drug cartels, the mafias, the criminal bikie gangs that travel Australia, that infiltrate, that seek out people, that do do the murdering, the maiming, the kidnapping and the corrupting, so that we could better deal with them. And we’ve introduced new offences in this legislation of receiving money or property derived from a drug offence. These are new offences. These have got nothing to do with those at the bottom end of the supply chain that are the users.

We’ve introduced a new offence of concealing, transferring, converting or removing money or property from the ACT that has been derived from a drug offence because we’ve discovered that those involved in these major criminal enterprises cover up and deal with their ill-gotten criminal gains through a whole range of fancy financial and property schemes and we didn’t have the capacity to deal with that. So we’ve introduced a new offence of concealing, transferring, converting or removing money or property from the ACT that’s been derived from drug offences. How can you object to that?

We’ve introduced a new offence of possessing equipment, substances and instructions with the intention of manufacturing or cultivating controlled drugs or plants because of gaps that were identified in the suite of responses we had available for dealing with those people who do just those things—possess equipment which is designed for no other purpose than to grow drugs, to grow cannabis essentially, or to make amphetamines. There was no offence known for appropriately prosecuting for supplying others with such equipment and instructions.

There was no offence for selling the hydroponic set-up design to allow the growing in a warehouse of 100 marijuana plants. No, he didn’t know what he was going to do with it; he thought he was going to grow tomatoes—somebody with a history of drug abuse, use and criminal activity and engagement in relation to the drug trade as long as your

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