Page 1724 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 5 May 2010
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Australia, Australasian Institute of Drug and Alcohol Testing Incorporated, Families and Friends for Drug Law Reform, Guardian Interlock, UnionsACT, DIRECTIONS ACT, Social Research and Evaluation Pty Ltd, NRMA Motoring and Services, ACT Democrats and so on. To suggest there has been no consultation on random roadside drug testing in this community would be somewhat misleading.
However, I do want to make sure that this legislation is as good as can be. I would like to have seen this debated and agreed to in February so that we could have had this legislation out there in the community and giving police the power to get drug users off our roads. But I accept that we are working in the environment of the Assembly and that the Greens want to wait until they have seen the results of the latest round of consultation. When that comes forward, I look forward to working collaboratively with the other parties.
The time has passed, Mr Stanhope, for nitpicking. I think you need to look at the concerns that you have raised about my legislation and realise that they are not correct. You need to understand the way the legislation is written is entirely appropriate. I welcome any government submissions that are put forward or amendments to my bill. I welcome them from the Greens and I welcome them from the government.
Obviously, what we want to do is make sure that any legislation that is passed in this place relating to random roadside drug testing is the most effective legislation that we can have. I welcome that. That is something that we should have done in February. Having tabled the legislation in December, we had ample opportunity, after all the consultation over years in this community, to look at that legislation in that period. We could have come back in February to debate that legislation and say: “These are some amendments, some from the Greens, some from the government. Let’s have this legislation enacted into law.” The Greens asked at that stage that I delay until March so they had further time to look at it, and I agreed. In March we could have done that, but we find ourselves again—although we have agreement in principle here today, and I certainly welcome that—with extra delay, and we are waiting now until maybe June before we can get to that point.
I implore the government and I implore the Greens, but particularly the government in this case, to sit down and read the bill, make sure that you understand it, try and work with the bill rather than simply looking at it from a point of view of criticising and opposing it, and come to me with constructive amendments. I will welcome them. We will work together and make sure that we get a bill in this place that gives our police the powers to act. We will fully support you when you want to then move out into the community and introduce random roadside drug testing. There will be resource implications that we will need to look at, but we will give you our in-principle support for what it is that you want to do. We know that there will be education programs that you will need to run, and there may be other procedural changes that flow. We look forward to working with you on that.
What we do not want to see, and what the community does not want to see, is the opposition and the government squabbling over “my legislation’s better than yours”. We have reached a point now where that decision has been made. It will be the opposition’s legislation that will be tabled in this place that will be agreed to in
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