Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Hughes for putting forward this motion about such a critical issue. Illegal drugs affect every single person in this chamber through the communities that we represent. Every electorate between mine, as the member for Hotham, the electorate of the member for Hughes and the electorates of the member for Herbert and the member for Holt behind me—all of us represent families and communities who have been touched by illegal drugs.

A lot of the focus of the comments from the member for Hughes today was on ice. I think that is appropriate. Certainly in the conversations that I have with law enforcement there is no doubt that there has not been a drug in this country for a long, long time that has had the vast repercussions for communities that ice has. Ice does not discriminate. In my electorate I have families from very different walks of life who have been touched by ice.

Unfortunately, it is not just about the people who are affected and their families; it is often about the criminal behaviour that results. The member for Hughes mentioned the impact on first respondents. This is something else that I hear a lot about in my discussions with people around Australia. The fact that we have people who have devoted their lives to helping the sick and protecting the community who are then subject to what is pretty serious danger from people who are addicted to this horrible drug is just not tolerable. That is why I am very supportive of having a rich discussion in this House about what it is that we need to be doing to help protect the community better, and I think that there are some things that we can do along the lines of what will be discussed today. Before I talk a little bit about the specifics of the problem, I want to acknowledge the incredible work that is being done by law enforcement, not just on ice but across the spectrum of illegal drugs.

The motion notes that in the previous two years our agencies have detected and intercepted 12.5 tonnes of narcotics entering our community. That in itself is an extraordinary achievement. And just last month we saw the Australian Federal Police and Border Force seize 540 kilograms of methylamphetamine in Sydney. This was one of the 10-largest drug hauls in Australia's history, and stopped $300 million worth of drugs from entering the Australian market. These are important notes about the impact that law enforcement is able to have on this problem, and I think a testament to the hard work that is being done behind the scenes on this.

But despite these busts, what I hear when I talk to law enforcement people around the country is that we are fighting an uphill battle—against ice, in particular. In fact, I often hear from law enforcement that they will make a huge drug bust, take millions and millions of dollars worth of drugs of the street and then they will look to the market to see a price response—for the price to go up—but they see nothing. That tells us something very important, and that is that we are probably not yet winning that war against the supply that is heading out into our streets and that addicts are able to get in touch with.

There is pretty good data that tells us that this problem is actually getting worse over time. The National Wastewater Drug Monitoring Program report found that current methylamphetamine levels are consistently increasing and that they are at historic highs. We do know, and the people involved with this problem are well aware, that the worst state for this by far is Western Australia, where we can see the highest levels of methylamphetamine use around the country.

We have some Queensland members of parliament who will be speaking on the motion today. I note that the evidence of their discussion is that the methylamphetamine price has halved in South-East Queensland in the last year. We have also heard reports that guns are increasingly being used to trade ice. So I think there is very much evidence there that this is a significant problem which is creating a lot of crime around it.

I want to say that it is important in this parliament that we do all we can to help law enforcement to tackle this problem. One of the things that I have talked about consistently since I have been shadow minister for justice is the issue around Australian Federal Police funding and cuts that have been made to this organisation. We saw in the 2017-18 budget, released just a few weeks ago, that the AFP is losing funding and staff over the forward estimates. Over the next year alone, the Australian Federal Police will lose 151 staff members. Now, we have a united front in this parliament for tackling of illegal drugs, but we do need to call out the importance of resourcing this problem. I would ask the government to take that into account when they are looking at how to tackle this terrible scourge which is affecting families right around the country.

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