Page 465 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 20 February 2019
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population continues to grow. We want those justice resources focused where they are needed: on disrupting serious and organised crime; protecting our community from individuals or groups who might wish to do us harm; and helping women and children dealing with domestic and family violence. Legalisation means our police and courts can better focus their efforts where they are needed.
Then there are public safety effects. When drugs are illegal, accessing them generally means doing business with people happy to operate outside the law. That brings otherwise law-abiding people into contact with criminals in a way that puts them at risk and may also increase the risk of further offending in our community. Anything we can do to take away the market for illegal drugs, particularly a market that can provide revenue to produce and distribute harder drugs, will help reduce the potential harm arising from regular Canberrans interacting with serious criminals or organised crime groups.
Because harm minimisation is a smarter, a better and a more progressive approach than prohibition, the government intends to support this bill with a range of amendments that we will bring forward and work through with members of the Assembly in the months to come.
To be very clear, Madam Assistant Speaker, the government does not condone or encourage the recreational use of cannabis or other drugs. No level of drug use should be considered safe, and we will continue to share that message with the broader community. Possessing and growing cannabis following its legalisation in the ACT will also retain a degree of risk that Canberrans should be aware of. We believe the ACT is able and entitled to make our own laws on this matter, as we have done in the past, such as in 1992, but the interaction with commonwealth law does remain untested.
There will be some uncertainty as to how a future commonwealth parliament may react to the ACT passing this bill. In considering this, we call on our federal parliamentary counterparts to respect the will of this Assembly and the Canberra community, and to not seek, through the parliamentary means available to them, to intervene to prevent progressive reform as we have seen happen in the past in the ACT—although I note that as a result of important reforms passed by the Gillard government it is now no longer possible for the commonwealth to intervene simply at the whim of a commonwealth minister; it must be the entire commonwealth parliament. That is, legislation would need to pass both the House of Representatives and the Senate to overturn any legislation passed in the ACT.
Drug law reform is a complex issue that requires proper consideration. There are a range of issues and interactions with the ACT’s existing legal frameworks that will need to be worked through. In broad terms, the government intends to bring forward amendments that will: retain a limit of two plants per person, in line with the current regime, and introduce a further total household limit; provide more effective and implementable restrictions to ensure that children are not exposed to cannabis smoke; ensure that cannabis is securely stored in a way that is not accidentally accessible to children or other vulnerable people; restrict cannabis growing to enclosed, private residences where a clear nexus of ownership can be established; and distinguish
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