Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I'm delighted to say that this bill, the Export Control Legislation Amendment (Certification of Narcotic Exports) Bill 2020, holds enormous promise. For far too long, cannabis and hemp have been suppressed for reasons that have everything to do with established interests and nothing to do with the merits of the plant. That has hurt people for years and is hurting hundreds of thousands of people now. This bill addresses one area that has been holding back the Australian cannabis and hemp industry.

Currently, there is no formal system for providing approvals for the export of medical cannabis and hemp. The producer must apply to the minister for an ad hoc approval. While approvals have been granted, the volumes are a fraction of the potential that this crop offers. The Export Control Act 2020 came in this year and allows the minister to make rules that govern the issue of export certificates. If a substance is on the list, rules are issued to regulate the export of that substance. Cannabis and hemp were not included in that act. This amendment corrects that. Cannabis and hemp growers and manufacturers can now have certainty about the rules for export. Every grower is on the same footing. All who meet the rules can get an export licence and sell product into the world market, and what a market that is. The cannabis and hemp market in Australia is expected to grow to a billion dollars in just four years and double that to $2 billion by 2028. At that time the Asian market, our near neighbours in Asia, will exceed $10 billion. This is the start of a wonderful opportunity.

Australia's reputation as a high-quality, safe supplier of food and medicine will help our producers take a significant share of that huge market. I must compliment the government on its decision to require all cannabis producers to follow the international safety and quality standard known as the GMP—good manufacturing practice. Quality processing has been instrumental in growing our reputation for trusted product, and that means a lot to people overseas and in Australia. Internationally, the world market for cannabis and hemp is expected to reach $50 billion by 2030. Some of this growth is from the trend to legalise recreational cannabis, which, I need to make clear, One Nation does not support. We do support natural Australian whole-plant medical cannabis by way of doctors prescription to any person with a medical need supplied by pharmacist and subsidised on the PBS. I note that the government is also looking to reschedule low-THC cannabis into schedule 3 as an over-the-counter chemist-only medication. One Nation supports that rescheduling. We have long pushed for this.

The Liberal government talks about market efficiency, but in the cannabis market we have nothing but overregulation and disincentives to enter the market. This bill will help, but there is much, much more to be done. I draw the government's attention to the review of the Narcotic Drugs Act conducted by Professor McMillan, which reported almost 12 months ago, in July 2019. Professor McMillan made 26 recommendations to improve the commercial efficiency of the cannabis market in Australia. None of those recommendations have been implemented. Many of those recommendations dovetail nicely with the intent of the export control legislation amendment to develop an Australian export industry for cannabis and hemp. The report calls for a reduction in the onerous conditions being applied to the industry and to people who work in it. These restrictions are an unnecessary and costly barrier to efficient, quality production. They're holding our farmers back. They're holding everyone in the supply chain back. They're holding customers back. Professor McMillan has recommended that a single licence be issued for all or some of cultivation, production, manufacture and research, instead of the individual licences currently being required at each step.

The report also suggested licences be valid for five years rather than 12 months. Most exported cannabis and hemp is value-added. Allowing one producer to now grow, process, manufacture and research new products on a five-year licence guarantees the security of their investment, which improves the return on their investment. By encouraging vertical integration, our producers can benefit from multiple profit centres and insulate against fluctuations in one area of this emerging market. Export opportunities will be enhanced by a wider range of products offered for sale.

Volume and diversity resulting from export markets will benefit domestic patients as well. Let me explain. Currently, medical cannabis is prohibitively expensive. This is in part due to the high administrative, regulatory and security costs imposed on each stage of the process, from cultivating or importing through to selling the product to a patient. This high cost is spread across low volumes because of restricted access, making each prescription too expensive for patients to afford. That creates an ongoing cycle of high prices and low affordability, leading to low volume, which leads to high prices. It's a vicious cycle. This bill represents a way out of that self-defeating cycle by allowing for the current small domestic demand to be met through high-volume, low-cost export production.

The best medical cannabis is produced from plants that have been processed as little as possible. It is a wonderful, natural product. Conversion into vaping solutions, patches, topicals and capsules does not disturb the compound profile of the plant. It is a wonderful product. As medical cannabis has been legal for many years in most nations on the planet, we are seeing an explosion of new varieties of medical strains of cannabis. I have seen some of them myself. These have been developed to provide the optimum profile for a specific medical condition. This wonderful plant, in its many varieties, can be tailored to the specific needs of patients, and there are many patients in desperate need of this. Hundreds of different varieties are now available to the world market—hundreds. The more of these varieties that can be grown in Australia to support export demand, the greater the variety available to supply domestic patients will be. People can have this marvellous natural plant tailored to suit their specific medical needs. With a professional, efficient and profitable export industry, Australian patients will be able to access the exact cannabis profile for their particular health condition at much reduced prices and for much greater value.

As a senator from Queensland, I'm excited that we have a growing centre for cannabis excellence in Southport. Our beautiful climate is perfectly suited to growing hemp for food, textiles, cosmetics, oil, building products and so much more. Queensland will be on the forefront of this multibillion-dollar export industry for both hemp and cannabis. One Nation's policy of restoring property rights to farmers and building more dams will deliver to our farmers the capacity to grow Australia's agricultural capacity through hemp and cannabis.

Before closing, I want to reiterate what our party leader, Senator Hanson, said and express my thanks to Senator Cormann from the Liberal Party and Senator Kitching from the Labor Party. It was them who made it possible. Senator Hanson and some of our staff have been pushing for this for years, vigorously, and it is wonderful to see this step. Tiny though it is, it is a wonderful step, so thank you.

In closing, may I suggest that the success of this bill will depend upon what the export rules for cannabis are. To date, rules on medical cannabis and hemp have been so damn onerous that people have been left wondering if the government is fair dinkum about a plant that has so many proven applications and also so many successful runs on the board overseas. We look forward to the government proving, through fair and effective regulation, that they are indeed genuine about implementing this bill's intention.