Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment and Water (Senate)) Share this | Hansard source

I'm happy for you to interject, Senator Hanson, but the critical matter is this: when, in May, this Senate voted to disallow the government's restrictions on access to medicinal cannabis, under category A of the Special Access Scheme, in recognition that access to category A has always been tightly restricted to people with a terminal illness, and only if it's clinically appropriate, Senator Hanson and her colleagues voted with the government against the disallowance. So Senator Hanson voted that medicinal cannabis should only be made available and tightly restricted to people with a terminal illness. Those are not the circumstances which you've brought to the parliament today. I'm very glad to hear you've had a change of heart. But I need to call you out on it because it was disappointing to advocates and families, at the time, when you voted against easier access to medicinal cannabis for those who needed it. So today's attempt, I think, from Senator Hanson, is an attempt to hide those failures.

Even though the Senate did successfully disallow the government's regulations—the government and One Nation voted together; the Greens, the Labor Party and others voted to disallow the regulations—the government has not responded appropriately, and I would call on Senator Hanson to use her close relationships with the government to put some real pressure on them. Terminally ill patients should, at that time, have been given easier access to a prescribed therapy to ease their suffering. But what we've seen instead from the government in the months since is an attempt to block the parliament's will and to continue to deny relief to dying Australians. Labor supports today's urgency motion and, indeed, the principle of urgency on this topic, because the government deserves to be sent a clear message that more needs to be done, and we want to send a message of support to all of those people who are suffering from their failure to act. We think the status quo is simply not good enough.

We know that there are people for whom access to medicinal cannabis is clinically desirable for their conditions. I spoke to a young woman with epilepsy in Western Australia. She buys her medicinal cannabis on the black market, because it's the only thing that gives her any respite from regular epileptic fits, but she has no clear pathway to purchase it in a legal manner.

It's important to note that, even if today's vote is successful, it won't actually change anything for people seeking improved access to medicinal cannabis. Senator Hanson's urgency motion fails to recognise some significant things about the way our system works currently, and things that simply have to be fixed properly for people to get access to medicinal cannabis. One thing I'd like to highlight to the chamber is Australia's international obligations under the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961. What patients seek, as to access to medicinal cannabis, is a considered policy—that's what we need: to provide access, through a GP, to a regulated, quality supply of medicinal cannabis. And that is not what this motion before us puts forward today.