Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator statements come around once a year, and it's an opportunity for senators to get up and make a contribution about something that's personal to them and important to their electorate. My first statement in 2012, as a new senator, was on the terrible problem we face with plastic pollution in the oceans. My staff at the time did a quick search of Hansard, and we believe we were the first people to ever talk about this issue in this chamber. It pains me that nearly 13 years later, the problem has continued to get worse.

Plastics in our oceans are arguably one of the greatest environmental challenges of our time. We know that microplastics are all through our food chain in the oceans, including in plankton. They've been detected in the Antarctic. We know it's all through the seafood we eat. We know it's through the human body now. Recent work by the Minderoo Foundation has unfortunately informed us we have microplastics inside the human brain. This is a very serious issue.

What are we doing about it? Next week, people will gather from across the globe in South Korea for the final meeting to establish what is being touted as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to solve the plastics crisis and sign a global plastics treaty. The treaty has the potential to create global rules and obligations for the full lifecycle of plastic, setting standards for plastic recycling, production, consumption and pollution. It's been a two-year process to get it to this point. People who are interested can read the minutes from those meetings themselves. It's been a very frustrating, difficult process. This is a very big, complex, urgent and critical issue. I can tell you what the treaty is trying to achieve; it aims to reduce pollution, improve waste management, eliminate or minimise the most polluting and available plastic products and the most dangerous chemicals, design plastics for reuse and finance clean-ups and global transitions away from plastics.

These all have significant merit and are urgent issues. But what is simple is the stumbling point for this treaty, which is that big producers, retailers and manufacturers of plastic—for example, plastic packaging, which we have through our lives—have refused to be regulated. Walk down any supermarket aisle and have a look at the shelves; it's all plastic packaging. This has been a stumbling point in the global treaty negotiations to date. It's the big corporations that produce plastic. For senators who aren't aware, plastic is a very significant sink for global fossil fuels. Why do big corporations not want to be regulated? That's a really good question that we need to answer. They don't want to be regulated, because they want to continue to drive demand for plastics and for fossil fuels. It's not just internationally. They're happy to see a voluntary agreement, by the way, so they can greenwash this, but they don't want to be regulated. They don't want a binding agreement that sets targets and holds them to account.

Australia is on the international stage showing leadership, and our environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, has been to these previous negotiations. It is telling that, while we're calling for a mandatory binding agreement internationally, we don't have one in Australia. Our plastic packaging companies, our retailers and our brands have had 25 years of failed voluntary plastic and packaging reduction targets. That's 25 years of official failure, and yet we still haven't regulated these companies. While we're calling for it on the international stage, we still haven't done it in Australia. The clock is ticking, with an election around the corner. When are we going to see proper, binding, government regulated packaging regulations in Australia?

The second thing I want to talk about today is a very personal thing to me. My colleague Senator Shoebridge will very soon be introducing in this chamber a bill to legalise cannabis. It is not the first time the Greens have done this. We've seen state parliaments around the country also introduce these bills. I urge senators to take this issue very seriously. I am the only federal politician who's gone public with being on the medicinal cannabis scheme, a legal scheme in this country that has seen over a million scripts written out for Australians. I want to talk today about the stigmas associated with being on this scheme and the barriers to more Australians accessing what I believe to be an amazing medicine. It's been a game changer and life-changing for me—I've been on the public record about this—and many other Australians are also experiencing that.

The biggest stigma and barrier to uptake for more Australians on this legal scheme is roadside testing. At the moment in Australia, all around the country, if you get roadside tested with a drug test, a saliva test, and you test positive, that test then goes away to a lab. Each state has set thresholds at which cannabis can be detected. If it's detected in your system through a lab test, you can lose your licence, be fined, lose your job or worse. But here's the problem: this test is not an impairment test. It is simply testing for the presence of cannabis in your system. Cannabis lasts four to five hours in terms of potential impairment.

Recently, it's been noted around the country that Tasmanian MP Craig Garland, an Independent member for Braddon in the north-west of Tasmania, tested positive at a roadside test. What's on the public record is that Craig has said, 'I had a joint the night before,' and it was detected when he was driving the following afternoon, towing his boat. Even if he tests positive, this test cannot test whether he was impaired or not. However, he will lose his licence or worse. This is not just happening to a member of parliament, so it's high profile; this is happening to thousands of Australians around the country. It's not roadside tests where people who are legally accessing this medicine are then losing their licence, getting fines and losing their jobs; there's also workplace testing. We've heard stories where people have successfully applied for a job, and told their employer that they're legally on the scheme for a number of well accepted reasons, and the employer has said, 'Well, I can't employ you anymore,' or people have failed a test at work when they're not impaired because, like me, they had taken the medicine before they went to bed, to help them sleep, and then the following afternoon they lose their job.

We've got to fix this, senators. This is entirely unjust and unacceptable, when there are impairment tests we can introduce. Like California, Canada and other places around the world which have legalised cannabis, we need to have an impairment test that can test if you're impaired. You shouldn't drive if you're impaired, but at the moment we can't determine that, and that's simply not good enough. It will be an impediment to legalising marijuana.

I urge senators to take this issue very seriously. We know that a lot of Australians do access cannabis, legally or illegally. A lot of money is spent on policing this. There aren't tests for driving for other drugs that we know also impair drivers, like benzos and opioids and other legal drugs. We have to change our laws and make them just.

I would ask senators to have a look at Senator Shoebridge's bill when it comes to the Senate. We are very excited about this, as, I know, are a lot of people around the country. Not just states but other countries around the world are moving down this path. The war on drugs has been a colossal failure. Numbers of cannabis users have continued to rise. Police resources have been tied up. So much money has been spent on this, so many lives have been ruined and so much injustice has happened all around the world. It's time we looked at cannabis, treated it seriously, took a harm minimisation approach to people using it and developed a set of laws for the 21st century, because I can tell you this issue's not going to go away. I would hope that the government won't touch the legal scheme. It could certainly do with some improvements, I'm all ears about that, as I know my colleagues are, but we have to listen to Australians and change these unjust laws.