Page 4574 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 6 December 1994
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Let us go back through the process for which this Assembly quite properly has developed a good reputation in this community - a sound reputation for careful, considered law-making. Having been bitten once with our absurd actions last week, let us not do it again. Rescind and no more.
MR HUMPHRIES (4.31): Mr Connolly has raised a number of problems that he perceives with the amendment before the house. Unfortunately, he seems to have either accidentally or, I suspect, more likely deliberately overlooked the single saving safeguard in this amendment of Mrs Carnell's which clearly deals with all the points he has raised. There is that provision, very clearly made, which obviously was not clear to the Government before the debate last week, that a medical practitioner, in order to be able to conduct this kind of medical research, in order to be able to authorise the possession by a patient of cannabis, must have an authority granted under section 33 of the Drugs of Dependence Act. Who grants that authority? Not Santa Claus, not the Ayatollah; the Minister, Minister Connolly.
The point is that if Mr Connolly does not think you can get the right dosage to give to a patient as part of a medical protocol, he does not authorise the program of research. That is the simple answer. If he does not believe that it is possible to have a consistent means of measuring the outcome of a particular process of research, he does not authorise the research. If he has any other reason, any misgivings about the structure of this thing, he does not authorise the research. What this does do, which this Minister with the much commented upon nose did not care to mention, is protect those people who happen to be operating under a program that he has authorised, that he has approved. It does protect those people if they happen to be in the position where they have drugs either administered to them or in their possession. The point about the amendment Mrs Carnell is moving is that it is hedged in with that protection, and the Minister has quite deliberately chosen to ignore that fact. He would choose to continue the outrageous misrepresentations that have characterised this Government's behaviour on this matter since day one. This Government of hypocrites has, on the one hand, argued that it believes in drug law reform. On the one hand, it has a party policy which is unequivocally in favour of allowing individual personal possession of cannabis for personal use. It is a government without any hesitation putting those things forward in its policy, but which now says, "No, we do not think people should be able to use it for medical research".
To my way of thinking, that is the most gross hypocrisy it is possible to imagine in this place. Not only have they apparently chosen to abandon their party policy totally - set fire to it, shred it and then flush it down the toilet; that is about all that is left of it once you have done all that these people have done - but, having done that, this Minister and this Government then attack the position their very own policy represents. I repeat the question, and I challenge one of these people across the way - the wonderful Mr Lamont, or any of you - to tell us the answer: Why is it that your policy allows you to have personal possession for recreational use but not for medicinal purposes? Why not for medicinal purposes?
Mr Lamont: Just repeat that a couple more times - the wonderful Mr Lamont. Just keep on going for a few more times.
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