Page 2708 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 29 June 2010
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MR HARGREAVES: Yes, Mr Speaker. Can the Chief Minister please let us know what happened to those mysterious travelling amendments and what else the Chief Police Officer’s advice actually said?
MR STANHOPE: The Chief Police Officer had a lot more to say about this. As I said, there will not be time during this question time to go to the range of concerns and objections that the Chief Police Officer raised. The most fundamental, of course, were those that I have gone to, where the Chief Police Officer says, for and on behalf of ACT Policing, that the legislation simply will not work; that there will be an appeal—that, on the first occasion there is a prosecution, there will be an appeal. The Chief Police Officer suggests that the appeal will be successful. He then goes on to point out that the drug testing regime outlined in the legislation does not actually comply with Australian standards. He then goes on to comment on the underlying philosophical position; namely, that the bill, in referring to a prescribed concentration of drugs, raises essentially major concerns in relation to the capacity of the current screening devices to deal with the issue of concentration. In relation to that particular issue, he goes on to say:
ACT Policing has repeatedly advocated … that legislating prescribed concentrations of drugs at any stage of a drug driving program is problematic on a number of levels.
So here we go to this underlying philosophical position, namely, legislation based on a concentration of a drug, and the police say, “We’ve been saying since ever we’ve been consulted or been involved in discussions on this that we do not and will not support this essential position adopted by the Liberals and the Greens in the Hanson-Bresnan bill.” In other words, prescribing a level of illicit drug concentration of itself creates a whole range of problems.
Mr Hanson: Haven’t you seen the amendments?
MR STANHOPE: Oh, the amendments that are flying around today after you have received the advice you did not want, after I did the consultation that you refused to do? (Time expired.)
MS BRESNAN: A supplementary?
MR SPEAKER: Ms Bresnan, you have a supplementary.
MS BRESNAN: Chief Minister, what advice did the government receive from the police commissioner on the Labor Party’s bill and can you please table it in the Assembly?
MR STANHOPE: Thank you, Ms Bresnan. Yes, the ACT government has consulted across all agencies, indeed, in relation to this particular issue. There have been discussions, there have been conversations, there has been an exposure draft and there has been a discussion paper. In relation to all of those processes that we have been engaged in, there has been significant consultation and, indeed, I will take some advice from the department.
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