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

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I support the Narcotic Drugs Amendment (Medicinal Cannabis) Bill 2021 because it implements a large number of the recommendations of the McMillan report. That's why we will be supporting this bill. Implementation of medicinal cannabis in Australia was reviewed by Professor McMillan of the Australian National University in 2018. The report was presented to the government in July of 2019—almost two years ago. One Nation has been attempting to get this legislation before the parliament since November 2019. Finally, after almost two years, here it is—and what a moribund display. Professor McMillan's report looked at the supply side of medicinal cannabis, not the medical decision-making. That was a shame, as the pathway system is heavily flawed. Medicinal cannabis will remain out of reach for everyday Australians who are unable to navigate the obstacle course that was put in place by the government and that was seemingly designed to prevent large-scale access. They want to stop this.

My constituents in rural and regional Queensland find it especially hard to access a doctor approved to prescribe medicinal cannabis. It would appear that prising the pharmaceutical industry's hands off prescription pads is a task for which this government lacks the will. In fact, we've seen an orgy of spending on pharmaceutical industry products in recent months without the slightest attempt at safety testing, products that the Chief Medical Officer, the Therapeutic Drugs Administration and the Secretary of the Department of Health refused to endorse as 100 per cent safe. Compare that sloppiness and lackadaisical approach to the rules applied to medicinal cannabis, where thousands of years of experience and 30 years of research establishing the safety of medicinal cannabis is far in excess of the experimental, provisionally approved vaccines that this government rushed to purchase and is now forcing on an unwilling population.

This bill, though, is long overdue. The changes to licensing will have a significant impact. Previously, anyone wanting to invest in medicinal cannabis production needed to apply for separate licences for growing, processing and production, each lasting 12 months and issued at different times. Each licence had fees and endless rules which created a huge compliance cost and introduced a substantial risk. Any cannabis business was in danger of losing their licence at any time through no fault of their own. It takes a year to build out a production facility. With no guarantee that the licence would be renewed, what incentive was there for small players to invest in medicinal cannabis? As a result, the industry has become dominated by a small number of publicly listed companies. As with any industry, competition is king. A heavily regulated industry occupied by a small number of corporates is not in Australia's best interests, and I'm pleased that Professor McMillan saw that. This legislation combines the three licences into one and extends the term to five years, with an automatic renewal for companies with a good record of governance. This will encourage new and. smaller entrants to the market and, in turn, prices will fall, and that's what we need.

The new licence for research is also a good measure. Research is currently funded by powerful interests associated with maintaining the status quo—no medicinal cannabis—rather than those seeking to expand human knowledge of the wonderful new world of the human endocannabinoid system. I look forward to new findings on the effects of the 460 compounds in cannabis that interact with the human endocannabinoid system to help our bodies heal themselves.

'Heal themselves'—that's what's beautiful about medicinal cannabis. The benefits of medicinal cannabis, documented in pharmacopoeias dating back 200 years, are now proven by medical research around the world. So very little of that research, though, is Australian. This new research licence should create a new avenue for Australian academics to do something useful for a change. There's still much to be done when cannabis comes under the pathway system in Australia. It costs 100 times what the same item costs in the United States, and Australians deserve far better.

A One Nation initiative last year saw a relaxation of the licensing system for the production of cannabis for export. I do believe that the cannabis community missed the huge benefit in the Export Control Act 2020 amendment. Australia is now seeing the benefit of that legislation, with new facilities under construction, increasing supply and lower retail prices for domestic sales. That's not to mention bringing jobs and wealth into local communities, legally. A new $400 million facility has been announced near Toowoomba Wellcamp Airport, set to open the year after next. This facility will export $1 billion worth of cannabis to the world market. With those export volumes will come further reductions in the prices charged to Australian patients.

With the sensible changes now to licensing and the Narcotic Drugs Amendment (Medicinal Cannabis) Bill 2021, price reductions should flow through quite quickly, and we're pleased to see that. One Nation is proud of the work we've been doing these last two years to bring Australian whole-plant, natural medicinal cannabis to anyone with a medical need, by a doctor's prescription and supplied by a chemist. We also note that the government is looking to reschedule low-THC cannabis into schedule 3 as an over-the-counter chemist-only medication. One Nation supports that rescheduling enthusiastically, and we'd ask the government to get on with it. We're happy to work with the government in improving, in any way, medicinal cannabis access by the people of our country.