Page 1000 - Week 03 - Thursday, 10 March 2016
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individual. That is very important, but we cannot ignore the broader impact on our community and on their families. To an extent, it sanctions illegal drug use. It essentially says that the government should be involved in the testing of drugs, making their sale easier, should be providing recipes for drugs and the components of drugs online, and providing public injecting facilities. I reject that as the appropriate response.
When it comes to messages, we have to be very careful about what messages we are putting forward. Mr Rattenbury is the minister for justice. When you have the minister for justice in a government—in a coalition government; Mr Corbell used those terms yesterday—saying we should decriminalise drugs, we should test drugs at parties, we should provide places to inject drugs and we should decriminalise drugs, that is sending a message out there that makes a parent’s job even harder.
I am a parent, Mr Rattenbury. I have a 17-year-old and a nine-year-old, and I understand the complex issues that are at play here. But should we be simply putting these messages out when you have younger adults, teenagers, who are often in a state of rebellion? That is the natural course; we have all been there, as we have all been teenagers before. To have a minister of the ACT saying, “Hey, drugs should be decriminalised, drugs should be legal. We’ll test your pills for you so that you can party on at festivals,” does not send the right message and makes parents’ lives in terms of what they are trying to do, which is to keep their kids safe and keep their kids away from drugs, even harder.
What I would say to Mr Rattenbury—through you, Madam Deputy Speaker—is that, whenever he opens his mouth about providing testing of drugs at festivals, decriminalising drugs, making them legal and providing places where you can use drugs, he makes it difficult for parents in the messages that they are trying to send to their kids, which is to stay away from drugs. It is no different from the message he was sending out in the last sitting period in this place about not worrying about wearing bike helmets. He said, “Let’s have a conversation about that.” There are parents out there, myself included, who want to send a message to their kids saying, “Stay away from drugs. These are not good for you. They are dangerous. We want you to stay away from them.” I try to send messages to my kids, to my nine-year-old, saying, “Make sure you wear your helmet at all times,” and here we have a minister of this government sending a different message, the wrong message, and one that is entirely contradictory to the actual established message of this government.
It is not good practice. It is not good governance to have one minister—the minister for justice—at odds with the rest of the government, with the Attorney-General. It might be seen in this place as executive members’ business, but in the broader community the distinction is not so clear. We have the minister for justice touting a message and causing confusion, particularly amongst younger, more impressionable and vulnerable people.
We will support the government amendment, once we have amended it. I thank Mr Corbell for indicating that he will support my amendment. My amendment, as the Attorney-General stated, makes it very clear that this government will not go down the path of decriminalising dangerous illicit substances such as ice and heroin. That is
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