Page 2186 - Week 06 - Thursday, 6 June 2019
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The report makes an initial recommendation which supports the legalisation of cannabis for personal use. The report also makes a number of comments and subsequent recommendations which apply directly to amendments proposed in the bill, as well as recommendations that consider the overall impacts relating to the legalisation of cannabis for personal use in the ACT. In total the report makes 16 recommendations.
On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank all of those who have contributed to this inquiry by making submissions or appearing before the committee to give evidence. I would like to thank the committee secretary, Josephine Moa, for all of her hard and tireless work in helping us to present this report and for collating the additional comments in the dissenting report.
I would like to take this time to thank the other members of the committee, Mrs Dunne and Ms Le Couteur. Working with them has meant this report was able to be tabled on time. I commend the report to the Assembly.
I would also like to make some additional personal comments today. Prohibition of recreational drugs has not worked. It has been a disaster. It has increased harm for drug users. It creates a perverse incentive for police that has repeatedly ended in corruption scandals around the world. It funds organised crime. We do not have all of the answers. The ACT alone cannot fix all of these problems. There are layers of international and federal law that prevent us from addressing the big picture, but that should not stop us from doing what we can. This report gives us a good guide as to what we can do.
Mr Pettersson has put a proposal on the table saying that we can, and we should, do more. He could not be more correct. Admitting that the war on drugs is an absolute failure should not be controversial in 2019, but in many circles it is. Mr Pettersson should be congratulated on his common-sense approach. He has pointed out to all of us that we can and should do more to end the ridiculous policy of prohibition.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (10.24): Madam Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to put on the record my dissent from the major recommendations of this report. I formally dissented—and it is recorded in the minutes—from recommendations 1 to 6, 10 to 12 and recommendation 16. I also formally dissented from some of the committee comments, which is also outlined in the report.
The reasons for doing this are manifold. But before I comment on those, I would like to comment on the collegial way in which this inquiry was conducted. It was quite clear from the outset that there was a diversity of views in the committee about the process. But the process was conducted collegially and respectfully, and I commend the other members of the committee for doing that, and also for tolerating, in the nicest sense of the word, the fact that I had quite divergent views—quite different views from the other members of the committee. I thank the members for the respectful way in which this matter has been dealt with.
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