Page 450 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 8 March 2006
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argument, “Oh, there might be an aspect that we do not know about.” This is always the case with legislation we bring into this place. This is an issue on which I feel quite passionate. I am disappointed not so much with the minister’s opposition but his go-slow approach. He said, “We do not know, we have not seen the evidence on half-lives.”
I can tell the minister that we have known about this evidence since the 1980s at the very least. I know that because I worked for a company that had random and mandatory drug testing. We have known that certain drugs, such as cocaine, have a half-life of 14 days. We know that other substances, such as cannabis, have a long half-life. This is all known. It is known by chemists and pharmacologists and we can live with the reality of that. But I am more concerned about innocent people who are going to end up in the morgue in this city because somebody is spaced out on an illicit substance.
Mr Pratt is to be commended for this legislative initiative. I have encouraged and supported him, as have my colleagues, because he has the people of Canberra in mind in bringing in this legislation. I understand that late last year the Chief Minister made the remark, “This is redneck law.” What a shameful comment. Is RBT for alcohol redneck law, too, because we might catch somebody? I do not really care whether this seems to be impacting on people’s civil liberties. I am concerned about the civil liberties of the families who are potential victims because a person laden with drugs is out behind the wheel of a car.
Mr Speaker, let me tell the Assembly of the study of cannabis users in Sydney and Newcastle that found that 78 per cent had driven within an hour of smoking drugs and 27 per cent admitted to driving under the influence of cannabis at least once a week. This has not come from the Liberal Party—this has come from the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research and the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre. These are well respected institutions, objective organisations, looking at the facts of the situation.
There are frequent advertising campaigns and police operations to randomly target drink-drivers. I have no issue with that. Even the minister shares my view—and it may not be one that is entirely in accord with that of Mr Pratt’s—but the fact of the matter is the vast majority of people are complying with drink-driving laws. We have changed behaviour in our society, especially amongst our young people, and we now have a much greater issue emerging that has not been tackled because we are in go-slow mode in the ACT.
This territory likes to be a pacesetter with all sorts of way-out legislation but in this one, which is a serious road safety issue potentially threatening the lives of Canberrans, we have got 100 excuses for putting things off. I would love to know, Mr Speaker, what has been done by the territory government since this bill came in last December. Everything we heard in the minister’s address was in terms of, “Well, we will get around to looking at it. We are waiting and we want to look at the study and look at this result.” Those sorts of lines can be used forever and a day. But I suspect that the sentiment from the commander-in-chief in this place is one that, “Well, we are not really comfortable in going down this road. We might upset some of our support base.”
I do not really mind if we are upsetting some people by introducing measures that are designed to save lives. I think we should be supporting this initiative and, if the
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