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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 09 Hansard (Tuesday, 17 August 2004) . . Page.. 3757 ..

is a very dangerous drug. It does dreadful things to you. It is something that you do not want to go down the path of using frequently because you will suffer very severe health consequences, mental health and physical health consequences.

Anything that brings home to people the consequences of that is important. That was the fundamental reason, as much as anything else, that I brought my bill before this Assembly. Despite the somewhat ludicrous and inaccurate comments in terms of opposition to it by both the government and the two crossbenchers I mentioned, I hope that I have at least achieved something in that a lot more people in our community will realise that even if you possess only one or two plants your are committing an offence. I hope that the government’s bill will bring that home as well simply by raising debate about dropping the number of plants from five to two. I hope that at the bottom end of the scale we will be a bit more advanced than we were, but I do not think that that has been helped by the government, the Greens and the Democrats voting down this perfectly sensible proposition by the opposition.

Question put:

That this bill be agreed to in principle.

The Assembly voted—

Question so resolved in the negative.

Heritage Bill 2004

Detail stage

Clauses 1 and 2.

Debate resumed from 5 August 2004.

MR WOOD (Minister for Disability, Housing and Community Services, Minister for Urban Services, Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Minister for Arts and Heritage, and Acting Minister for Health) (6.08): Mr Speaker, with the indulgence of the of the Assembly, I will speak to clauses 1 and 2, mainly to respond to the deferment of this legislation when it was last before us.

The Assembly debated an amendment asking me to go back and have some more consultation. I said then, and I say again, that this legislation is a result of perhaps the most exhaustive consultation process in the history of self-government, if not beyond that. It can be traced back to late 1998, when a review of heritage functions found that the legislation needed substantial review. A report on that review was released as a discussion paper by the previous government in June 2001 and legislation introduced,

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