David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let me give you 25 billion more reasons to legalise cannabis, because, according to data on cannabis use, supplied by the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, the currently illegal cannabis industry is worth something north of $25 billion annually. Every year that's a whole lot of cash going to the wrong people. The profits from this massive illegal industry are currently being pocketed by bikie gangs and organised crime.

If the argument for justice or the enormous public support for legalisation haven't yet swayed you, let me try to make my appeal in terms maybe Labor and the coalition do understand—revenue. A regulated legal market could see $25 billion transferred from an unregulated market run by the criminal underworld to a legal market that can be taxed and oversighted. If we tax it, even very lightly, we know that there are billions every year in public revenue to be had. So, the next time a politician tells you there isn't any money for your local school or hospital, tell them you've got an answer ready to go: legalise cannabis. There are literally billions in it for good.

Parliaments across the country removed the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse matters because the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse told us that victims of abuse will often need decades before they are able to say what happened to them and often years more to stand up to their abuser in court and demand justice. Despite this, new evidence shows institutions, including churches, are using a fresh legal tactic called permanent states to deny victims fair compensation. A recent New South Wales Court of Appeal judgement has endorsed this backward step. It's empowering the worst institutional abusers to defeat victims' claims by saying, 'The abuser has died,' or they kept no records.

Victims are being told by the legal system that because their abuser is dead their case against this institution is put on hold forever. It means the law in Australia is reviving what used to be called 'dead man's statutes', but only doing it for survivors of historical child abuse. The same offensive reasoning is not used for other legal disputes like wills or property settlements. It's obscene to see this centuries-old, discredited and unfair legal theory being used to stop victims from getting justice. We can't let this continue. If the High Court won't fix it, then parliaments must.