Page 446 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 8 March 2006
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working group before Mr Pratt put his legislation on the table. I need to make the point that the government is not saying “no” to this. What we are saying is “not yet”. We are not ready yet because of the differing ways and the extent to which this is being looked at across the country. I do not want us to be out of step with the rest of the country but I do not want us to go in boots and all and find that it is not working either.
We already have laws which police officers can invoke if they suspect someone to be driving under the influence of a substance. They can do that already. So we have got that covered in the interim. We also need to have this as a complete package. I am very anxious to see the results of the Tasmanian experience because that state is, in fact, covering a greater suite of drugs than the Victorian model. I am not confident that if we just test for heroin, we just test for methamphetamines or we just test for cocaine, we in fact will really be doing much on the road safety issue at all. We know that a contributing factor to some of the fatal accidents that occurred last year was impaired driving resulting from the injection of substances. But there is no consistency.
I have to say that I am really anxious to see the results of these trials because out of them will come not only the actual drug regime itself but the legal aspects of testing people, charging them, taking them to court and whatever. We will make sure that the processes and procedures stand up in court, and I am not confident that that actually applies in Victoria. We have not seen it happen in the other jurisdictions yet; so we are also being a bit cautious there.
Mr Speaker, in view of the amount of work to be done to arrive at an appropriate scheme for the ACT, I think it would be premature to proceed with Mr Pratt’s private member’s bill at the present time. Accordingly, we cannot support the bill. But I want to re-emphasise the point I made a moment ago that this is not a case of the government saying “no” to this approach. It is not about us not recognising that driving ability is impaired by the ingestion of substances. However, our opposition to this bill is merely that we do not think it is comprehensive enough. There are activities going on interstate that we can learn from. Most importantly, we wish to cover all elements of this problem, and we have convened a working group to do that and to advise us.
Let me assure the house that I regard this as a particularly serious issue and I will be back with legislation to cover off on it when we have that information, but not before. So unfortunately, Mr Speaker—and unfortunately for Mr Pratt—we cannot support the bill.
DR FOSKEY (12.10): I am quite sympathetic to the motivations behind Mr Pratt’s bill but I have to endorse many of the remarks that Mr Hargreaves made. I will make my speech and address the issues as we go along. The Greens are concerned about the impact that the use of drugs and alcohol has on the road toll and all of the accidents that we never even hear about. We acknowledge that legal and illegal drugs can impair driver safety and we see that the ACT Assembly has a role in taking action to prevent more accidents occurring. Mr Pratt’s bill is a rough first attempt to do this but I think we need to go through quite a few procedures and steps before we have the right legislation that addresses these problems.
I acknowledge and applaud the ACT government’s random breath testing program for discouraging driving under the influence of alcohol. However, I think more action needs to be taken before we start being concerned about other drugs. We have accurate and
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