Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice) Share this | Hansard source

Can I thank the member for Corangamite for that question. I acknowledge that she is one of the many members on this side of the House who have raised the issue of ice with me in recent times and has taken a keen interest in what the government is going to do about this problem.

Between 2009 and 2013, the weight of methamphetamine that has been seized globally has increased from 32 tonnes to 88 tonnes, and the vast majority of those seizures have been within our region of South-East Asia. But the growth in the Australian market has far outstripped the growth in the global market, and proportionately we know that Australia uses more methamphetamine than almost any other country in the world, and the number of users, sadly, continues to grow. At $50 per dose in some parts of Australia, it can be cheaper than a night out on the alcohol.

The growth in usage of ice is quite staggering. In 2007, 100,000 Australians reported using crystal methamphetamine, which is commonly known as ice. Six years later, this figure had doubled to 200,000. But these figures would still be outdated and would be very conservative, because evidence suggests we now have well over 200,000 ice users in Australia. This is evidenced by the seizures that we have made at our border, which between 2010 and 2014 have increased 60 times—60 times in the space of four years. It is remarkable that the more than four tonnes of amphetamine type stimulants that we have seized in the past year has not led to an increase in the street price for ice.

Recently I have had the opportunity to speak with Andrew Hastie and the people of Canning about the impact of ice in their local community, and Andrew is committed to doing all he can to tackle this issue and to address the mounting harm and havoc that is inflicted by this insidious drug. The people of Canning know that we need a holistic approach to fighting crime and to addressing the impacts of ice. We need to explain, if you are going to take this drug, what it is going to do to you, what it is going to do to your family and what it is going to do to your community.

We know that the most important response to this is a law enforcement response, but we need to use every other tool at our disposal to stop the epidemic of ice. Since coming to office, we have introduced new laws that strike at the heart of this lucrative and deadly trade by targeting the criminals who peddle ice on our streets, and we are seeing results from this. Last week a joint operation between the Western Australian police force and the Australian Crime Commission—

See this speech in context