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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 09 Hansard (Tuesday, 17 August 2004) . . Page.. 3751 ..

arm, but no offence of selling hydroponic equipment for the purposes of growing marijuana.

We’ve introduced into this legislation an offence of procuring a child to traffic in drugs. How can you possibly be opposed to that offence? How can you possibly object? How can you possibly stand up here today and vote against a piece of legislation that puts into law for the first time an offence of procuring a child to traffic in drugs?

We’ve had reports in the last month or so of children as young as 10 or 12 being used for the sale and trafficking of drugs—children as young as 10 and 12 are now engaged by some criminal cartels for the purpose of selling drugs. They are forced to take them into schools and sell them to their schoolmates, forced to stand on streets and flog them in places around Sydney. And we have people standing up in this place saying, “No, we don’t want laws like that; we don’t need laws like that.” We’ve introduced an offence of supplying drugs to a child for the child to sell. That’s a gap in our law that we’re now closing as a result of the introduction of this legislation.

We’re introducing new offences in relation to dealing with those who manufacture, those who sell, possess or control the precursors to manufacturing controlled drugs—other gaps that we’ve identified in the suite of laws that we have available for dealing with major criminal gangs that deal in the supply of illicit substances around Australia.

This particular piece of legislation we’re debating today is all about criminal gangs—as I said before, I think the most odious of the criminal element that any community spurns. This is not about walking away or derogating or winding back or minimising our commitment to harm minimisation. Any suggestion that that’s what we’re doing is an insult to the government in the first place and just denies and misunderstands completely the range of discretions that are utilised every day in the ACT by our police force and are utilised every week in the ACT by the DPP.

Those issue have been expressed as major concerns, namely, that we should ensure that we can deal with major criminal elements that deal in illicit substances—and we’re talking here about extremely bad, evil people; people who do not hesitate to murder; people who do not hesitate to maim or shoot off legs; people who try assiduously to corrupt every official that they can identify as corruptible for part and purpose of their illicit drug trading. We’re talking about extremely ugly people. And that’s what this legislation is designed to attack—our capacity to deal with some of the ugliest people which we as communities nurture.

To suggest that in doing that we’re walking away from harm minimisation or our determination to develop humane responses to people who have a substance addiction problem is, to put it frankly, insulting and completely misunderstands the nature of any legislative response to any offence. It completely misunderstands the nature of a legislative response, and I reject it. I reject it absolutely.

In relation to those issues around a user on a night out passing on an amphetamine or an ecstasy tablet: they will be dealt with in the future as they are now through the discretions available to the police, to the DPP and to the courts.

MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member’s time has expired.

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