Page 3815 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 25 September 2019
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But, at the end of the day, we do not support this legislation because it is going to do more harm than good. I do not know whether there is a noble intent behind this. I am not sure quite what the intent is; there seem to be a range of views from those opposite. But be very clear that, regardless of what the intent is, what is going to happen today will create more harm than good. For those reasons, the Canberra Liberals will not be supporting this legislation.
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (10.26), by leave: I would like to talk about some of the issues with this bill. I was a member of the HACS committee, and certainly that was a very interesting occasion. As members may remember, I am an ageing hippy and, of course, I am totally in favour of the legalisation of cannabis. My ideal legislation would be to just take it out of that list of dangerous drugs and treat cannabis like other plant matter. That does not necessarily mean it is good for you, of course, Mr Hanson. Tobacco is not one of the better pieces of plant matter. I do not think this current treating of cannabis as a dangerous drug is useful for anybody.
In my innocence, when this bill first came to the Assembly I thought the Pettersson bill would in fact legalise the possession and cultivation of small quantities of cannabis. However, as a member of the health, ageing and community services committee I was part of the inquiry and it quickly became apparent that this was not, in fact, the case. It quickly became apparent that the commonwealth laws on the subject made it challenging for the ACT to do more than what the ACT has already done.
The ACT has, as Mr Hanson and many people have pointed out, successfully decriminalised possession of small quantities of cannabis with a system called SCONs or simple cannabis offence notices. The bill would remove SCONs for people over 18, and thus if it is not effective legislation then the situation for over-18s in the ACT could be that, in the worst case scenario, they are more likely to receive criminal charges than currently, as, under the commonwealth legislation, all possession of any amount of cannabis is a criminal offence.
The Australian Federal Police told the committee:
Inconsistencies between the bill and the code create ambiguity and uncertainty as to the legal framework within which community police officers of ACT Policing must operate. This situation currently does not exist as the ACT and the commonwealth both make it an offence to possess cannabis. Simple cannabis offences in the ACT allow for flexibility in determining what is the most appropriate offence to be considered, and how that offence should most appropriately be cleared.
The removal of the ACT offences would remove access to the existing diversion framework for simple cannabis offences and result in commonwealth criminal offences becoming the pre-eminent offence by default for simple cannabis offences.
Clearly, if that is the result of the Pettersson bill, I do not wish to support that. However, with the proposed government amendments to the bill it is possible—and, I sincerely hope, likely—that the bill can reduce the likelihood of legal consequences for anyone over 18 in the ACT who is caught with small quantities of cannabis.
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