Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

The government does not support this bill, the Legalising Cannabis Bill 2023. Laws dealing with the recreational possession and use of cannabis are matters for the states and territories. Senator Shoebridge's bill cannot change that basic fact. This bill is a stunt by Senator Shoebridge and the Greens, and it has a flimsy legal basis. The Senate committee inquiry into this bill could not determine with any confidence that the bill was constitutional. When asked to provide to the committee the legal advice on which the bill was based, the committee was told it may have been lost.

Apart from the glaring constitutional issues, there are a number of serious concerns about how it would operate. For example, the bill imposes minimal penalties for trafficking in cannabis contrary to the bill, including by selling the drug to children. And it makes to attempt to remove organised crime from the cannabis supply chain, imposing no character conditions on the persons to whom licences to trading cannabis can be granted.

As Senator Shoebridge knows, state and territory parliaments have considered and adopted various measures to balance criminal law and health care and harm minimisation responses to cannabis. Of course, that is a matter for them. It's unclear how the bill would interact with the complicated regimes that the Commonwealth law establishes for the regulation of pharmaceuticals, including medicinal cannabis products, and for controlling the import and export of both legal and illegal drugs. It's important to note that the government does recognise and support the need of patients and their doctors to access a safe, legal and reliable supply of medicinal cannabis products for the management of painful and chronic conditions. We continue to support the Australian medicinal cannabis licensing schemes to ensure that patients have appropriate access to safe medicinal cannabis when they need it most.

All Australian governments support a harm minimisation approach to illicit drugs, with an emphasis on harm reduction, supply reduction and demand reduction, as agreed through the National Drug Strategy 2017-2026. Harm reduction is a key pillar of the National Drug Strategy 2017-2026, and diversion away from the criminal justice system is a key method for reducing drug harm use. In attempting a ham-fisted Commonwealth takeover of state and territory drug laws and regulations, this bill would undercut all of that careful work. Also, through a circuitous and legally uncertain use of Commonwealth constitutional power over intellectual property, which includes intellectual property in varieties of plants, it would establish the Cannabis Australia National Agency, responsible for registering and licensing the use of particular strains of cannabis. Once a strain of cannabis was under the control of the CANA, the bill would attempt to override state and territory laws that would otherwise apply to the sale, possession and use of the cannabis strain.

This bill is ill-conceived, possibly dangerous and probably unconstitutional, but that's pretty typical of the Greens. The government will not support the bill, and I urge all senators across the chamber to do the same.