Page 1692 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 3 May 2011
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Islander Affairs and Minister for the Arts and Heritage) (12.05): Pursuant to standing order 182A(a), I seek leave to move two amendments together which are urgent.
Leave granted.
MR STANHOPE: I move amendments Nos 1 and 2 circulated in my name together [see schedule 2 at page 1734].
I table a supplementary explanatory statement to the government amendments.
These amendments seek to insert new clauses 22A and 22B into the bill. Amendment No 1 replaces section 13G(3) with an amended provision. The replacement provision makes it clear that an analyst at the approved laboratory to which the Chief Police Officer has arranged for the oral sample to be delivered must, as soon as practicable, arrange for the analysis of the sample either at the laboratory or at another approved laboratory. The amendment provides a clear legislative basis with interim arrangements.
Amendment No 2 for a new clause 22B amends section 13G(4). The provision contains requirements for protecting and preserving a portion of the sample in case the person from whom the sample is taken wishes to have the portion independently analysed.
MR HANSON (Molonglo) (12.06): As I have previously outlined, the opposition will be supporting these amendments. But, given the opportunity to speak, I think it is appropriate that I just respond to a couple of points which were made in the earlier speech by Mr Stanhope that suggested that somehow the Canberra Liberals and the Greens had wasted the department’s time.
I think it is worth reflecting on the reality that occurred and who actually did waste whose time. From about 2006 through to this Assembly, Mr Stanhope had described random roadside drug testing as “redneck legislation” and had opposed it vehemently. He was completely opposed to it. When I introduced the legislation in December 2009 he remained opposed to it. It was only in February of last year when the legislation was due to be debated in the Assembly, on the very day it was due to be debated in the Assembly, that Mr Stanhope came forward with his own plan on random roadside drug testing and gave his department a body of work to do. That was after attacking that legislation and refusing to implement it himself. But on the very day that it was due to be debated here in the Assembly he brought out his grand vision for random roadside drug testing. So I think that any even cursory analysis shows who was playing politics and who then created for his own department a monumental amount of work which he then failed to bring forward to the Assembly.
Mr Speaker, he mentioned your press release and where you stood with that. I remember the discussions that I had with the Greens, which the government refused to speak about, and I think that in this matter you were upfront and genuine in what you wanted to do and it came to a point where you said, “Well, we will look at both bits of legislation and we will take them on their merits.”
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