Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

What you are suggesting there is that if a substance has a therapeutic indication, a therapeutic use, and is not registered with a particular scheme—as many currently imported substances are not—then it will be captured. That is what I am trying to get at. You cannot argue on one hand that any drug with a therapeutic indication will be exempt and then on the other hand argue that it needs to be registered under a particular framework like the TGA and so on. There are many, many substances that are imported and are used for therapeutic purposes that are not registered and are not listed in the list of exemptions, so they will be captured—they must be. What you are suggesting to me is that they are not the target. It does not matter whether they are the target or not. They satisfy the definition under the law, and, therefore, you are not providing any assurance that these substances will not be restricted.