Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to be able to stand and make a brief contribution to the Therapeutic Goods (Poisons Standard—February 2023) Instrument 2023. This particular bill seeks to reschedule medicinal cannabis to schedule 4, allowing prescription by any medical practitioner. Adopting a definition of cannabis that allows higher levels of THC—up from 0.1 per cent to one per cent, which is below the recognised level for any hallucinogenic response and harmonises common law with state law—allows whole-plant cannabis product with a limit of one per cent THC and 10 per cent cannabinoid to be sold over the counter at a chemist or by a veterinarian to persons over the age of 18 and retains soliciting for hemp as a product with existing limits unchanged.

As I said, this bill provides for medical practitioners to be allowed to prescribe medicinal cannabis for human and animal applications, with supply made through any chemist for humans and through veterinarians for animals. The bill offers three categories. If the product is hempseed and hempseed oil containing 75 milligrams per kilogram or less of cannabinoid oil and 10 milligrams per kilogram or less of THC, it is a food product and excluded from the schedule. If the product is above the allowable levels for food and below one per cent THC and 10 per cent CBD, it is a chemist- and vet-only product. If the product is above one per cent THC or 10 per cent CBD, the product is a prescription product only.

In government, the coalition delivered the biggest reforms to medicinal cannabis, which have changed the lives of so many Australians, through the Narcotic Drugs Amendment (Medicinal Cannabis) Bill in 2021. The bill amended the Narcotic Drugs Act to support an innovative Australian medicinal cannabis industry for the benefit of Australian patients. It did so by reducing the burden of regulation in the licence assessment process by providing for a single medicinal cannabis licence to replace the previous suite of licences required for cultivation, production, manufacture and research. It also provided greater certainty to businesses and reduced duplicative processes by providing for the majority of licences to be permanent. It also reaffirmed our commitment to patient availability for safe, legal and sustainable supply of cannabis-derivative medicines.

The coalition's medicinal cannabis bill replaced the obligation for separate licences for any cultivation, production, manufacture and research activity with a single licence. Significantly, the majority of these single licences are perpetual, thus reducing the regulatory burden. The coalition's bill maintained the current specific supply pathways for medicinal cannabis, including for clinical trials under the Therapeutic Goods Act and approvals or authorities under the act. They were supplemented by additional powers for medical and scientific research and additional clinical trials, provided that they did not involve administration to humans, and the development of a reference standard.

The coalition also introduced a separate regulation-making power to prescribe additional supply pathways anticipated to ensure compliance with the goods manufacturing requirements under the Therapeutic Goods Act. Reminding us all of the reasons for the medicinal cannabis regulatory scheme, our bill also included a clear statement of its purpose and an assurance that medical cannabis products would be available to patients for therapeutic purposes. These changes maintained the careful balance that the act strikes between facilitating cultivation, production and manufacture of a cannabis drug and implementing Australia's obligations under the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs to safeguard against illegal practices to provide for safe and sustainable pathways for patient access to medicinal cannabis therapies.

Whilst the coalition appreciates the work that One Nation has done with this bill and the intent of this bill, there remain some serious concerns around the details that would allow the scheduling of a medicinal cannabis product to a schedule 4 item. The coalition has some further concerns about how this rescheduling would allow access through a medical practitioner, so at this time the coalition is not in a position to support this bill.