Page 4945 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 28 November 2018
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I think there are a number of points that we need to discuss. If we do bring this legislation in, and my understanding is that it has the support of the Labor Party and the Greens, are there some consequential effects? Do we need to consider where people are getting their seeds from and so on? I do not know the answer to that. That is why I think it would be useful for a committee to examine those sorts of issues.
When there is an issue on the table that the government is pushing and they get support from a doctors group or individual doctors, and I cite pill testing here, the government tend to hide behind that and say, “The doctors support it; therefore we must do it.” We have a situation here where the doctors do not support it, but they are going to ignore that. They are going to ignore that advice. The health minister has indicated her support for the bill despite the fact that that is not what the AMA is supporting. It is difficult for me to understand why the health minister and the Minister for Mental Health, given the advice from the AMA, would not want to hear further from the AMA, would not want to put this to an inquiry to consider in more detail what the AMA has to say.
With no upper house, as we have often heard from the Greens and members of the Labor Party, and certainly we agree, it is useful to have committees. We hear from Ms Le Couteur all the time that this is what the committees are there for. When there is a piece of legislation that a committee could look at to provide further depth of understanding so that we make sure we get the legislation right and the legislation gets up, and to see what other issues we may need to consider, that is what a committee can do. I do not understand, then, why the Greens would not support a committee looking at this, given the potential effects highlighted by the AMA and what the effects on demand and usage will be. I do not know the answer to that.
I suspect, given what happened in Canada recently, although that was a different model, that demand is going to significantly increase. The deterrent has gone, particularly for younger people. I am a parent of a 19-year-old and a 12-year-old. The fact that something is not legal is very useful for a parent to deter kids, younger people, from being influenced into something.
What is the education on the mental health implications? What are we going to do to make sure that that is fully understood? What impact will this have on vulnerable groups? What is the control of seeds? Where are they sourced from? What quality, and what measurement are we going to allow in weight? For THC, quantities can be very different between various forms of marijuana, between leaf and HID. What is the answer to that?
What is the evidence from other jurisdictions? Why would we not want to gather that to understand it better? Mr Pettersson has said that this has been modelled on the Vermont model, but what are the learnings from Vermont? What did they find when this model was introduced?
As I said, I have a 19-year-old and a 12-year-old. When you have kids, you want to make sure that when you are passing legislation in this place you do no harm. I think we would all want to be in a place where, understanding the realities we face of drug
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