Melissa Price (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I applaud the Australian and New Zealand police commissioners who this morning came together here at Parliament House to stand against violence towards women and children. I was particularly pleased to see my Western Australian commissioner, Karl O'Callaghan, who joined with this group. This is a very powerful union which sends a strong message that our police leaders take claims of domestic violence seriously and puts perpetrators of domestic violence on notice that Australia does not tolerate domestic violence towards women and children, that perpetrators will be 'punished with the full severity of the law'—to quote the Prime Minister from this morning's event—and that domestic violence victims will be protected.

In Geraldton, amphetamines and other synthetic drugs are prevalent amongst the general population as well as the Aboriginal population. We all see this in our towns, cities, rural communities and remote communities and also within our workplaces, families, friendship groups and neighbourhoods. I recently hosted a community crime forum in Geraldton where my co-host for the day, the Minister for Justice, the Hon. Michael Keenan, was urgently called back to Canberra as soon as he disembarked his flight in Geraldton. The forum, held on 18 September, went some way towards further fleshing out the drug related crime incidence and the causes and strategies in place to counter these in Geraldton. During the forum, we sought the community's views on what practical and tangible actions might be taken to help address the crime and antisocial behaviour which frequently stems from drug and/or alcohol abuse. I acknowledge the City of Greater Geraldton, the Geraldton police and regional Western Australia commander Murray Smalpage for their support of and participation in the forum and the excellent work they are doing in Geraldton and its surrounds to help combat the supply of drugs into the region and to help combat antisocial behaviour, crime, violence and personal harm arising from drug and alcohol abuse.

It is worth recording some key sentiments that emerged from the crime forum discussions amongst the 50-odd participants. One was that illicit drug use feeds crime, including burglary, house break-ins and muggings, and that the regrettable loss of funding for programs such as the youth bus and Midnight Basketball will have adverse impacts. People are terribly concerned about this because they fear an increase in drug taking, antisocial behaviour and crime.

Another observation was that leadership within the Geraldton community, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, is strong and that joint endeavours to address drugs, crime and associated impacts of harm and violence are characterised by collaboration and planning amongst stakeholders, both government and not-for-profit groups. There is a strong sense that there is capacity in Geraldton to address the problem; however, a long-term view, with bipartisan support and ongoing funding for programs, is an essential element.

Food, clothing, shelter, education and personal safety were considered causal factors for alcohol and drug abuse and resultant antisocial behaviour, harm and violence. Another observation was that drug and alcohol misuse and abuse are symptoms of greater problems and not the cause of people's problems. There was discussion of parental responsibility. Somehow, we must get parents to exercise responsibility. Money for programs can only achieve so much and is not the complete answer. It is about changing children's lives with their parents; it is not just about taking kids of the streets—although that is a jolly good start.

The discussion at the Geraldton community crime forum inevitably led to discussions that alcohol and illicit drugs are root causes of crime and antisocial behaviour, including domestic violence, underpinned by a range of social issues with which we here are all too familiar. A number of my constituents in Geraldton are passionate crusaders for drug reform. In particular, they campaign for a reduction in drug usage rather than for a reduction in harm caused by illicit drugs, which, they allege, simply fuels the gateway of the ongoing criminality of illicit drug dealing, manufacture and usage. The Crimes Legislation Amendment (Psychoactive Substances and Other Measures) Bill 2014 will ensure that new psychoactive substances cannot be imported while the government assesses the harm they cause and considers the appropriate controls to place on them—thereby limiting supply and usage.

I am using the opportunity today to commend the work and the initiative being undertaken by the Midwest Gascoyne Human Services Regional Managers Group. This group comprises around 20 members, those members being the heads of government agencies—that is regional managers and CEOs—across the Mid West and Gascoyne regions of Western Australia, and is currently chaired by District Superintendent Andy Greatwood of the WA Police. This group has been in operation since 2006, which is more than eight years. They strive to coordinate resolutions and prioritise locational needs; act as a conduit between community and government departments, systems and processes; and facilitate and clarify funding possibilities to address local issues. The group recently developed a new strategic plan which aims to align the group with the cabinet standing committee on Aboriginal affairs and various state subcommittees. They meet regularly in Geraldton and Carnarvon and have a system of community based subcommittees which collaborate on program delivery, with a good deal of their time dedicated to dealing with the harms of alcohol and drug misuse.

Synthetic psychoactive substances pose a serious risk to the community, just as traditional illicit drugs do. Associated harm and tragic deaths arising from the use of these substances have been well reported. The legislation will ban all psychoactive substances unless they have a legitimate use and will close the loophole that allows people to avoid prosecution by ever so slightly changing the chemical structure of a drug. I commend this bill which amends a series of acts and contains a range of measures to improve Commonwealth criminal justice arrangements, to ban the importation of substances that have a psychoactive effect and that are not otherwise regulated, and to ensure that Australian Customs and Border Protection officers have appropriate powers to stop these substances at the border. I commend this bill to the House.

Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The bill before the House is the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Psychoactive Substances and Other Measures) Bill 2014. The 'other measures' go to firearms control and related matters— and I will have something to say about that. We support the legislation. We have some deep concerns about the mandatory sentencing provisions within the legislation, and I will have something to say about that as well. Like previous speakers in this debate, I applaud action which is directed towards dealing with the terrible scourge of drug addiction and all the social ills that that causes. However, I have deep concerns about the capacity of the criminal law system to do all that is necessary, particularly in the area of prevention and treatment, for those who are suffering from drug addiction.

The measures within the bill ban psychoactive substances that are not otherwise regulated or banned. The United Nations Office of Drug and Crime uses the term 'new psychoactive substances' to refer to substances of abuse, either in pure or preparation form, which are not otherwise controlled by the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs or the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances. A sense of the scale of the issue that we are dealing with here can be seen by looking at those drugs that are currently proscribed by legislation—that is, those drugs which it is a crime to use illicitly, to trade or to exchange. In mid-2012 the number of these new psychoactive substances reported by the United Nations body exceeded the number of substances that were under international control—251 to 234—for the first time ever. That number rose over the next 18 months by around 38 per cent. Why is this happening? Quite simply, as soon as legislatures around the world move to criminalise a substance, canny marketers and chemists are able to bring new substances onto the market which mimic the psychoactive effect of the proscribed drugs and to sell them to their unwitting clients. Therefore it is necessary to take a different approach, at least a different criminal law approach, to these substances.

Labor supports the way the government has approached this issue in this bill. We think that it is a sensible approach. We know that we have a terrible problem with psychoactive drugs within our community. I listened carefully to the member for Durack as she spoke about the impact of psychoactive drugs on her community. I share those concerns. We have the same problems within the area of Illawarra. I will return to this issue in a moment, but I also want to say something regarding the firearms offences, the penalties for which are increased by this legislation.

We support the strengthening of firearms penalties, but I have deep reservations about the provisions within this bill that go to mandatory minimum sentencing. It is uncommon in Australian law. Although some jurisdictions are getting more active in this space—notably in New South Wales—we have deep concerns with this aspect of the bill. The shadow minister for justice has indicated this in his reply to the second reading speech. I want to go through some of the reasons why we have concerns about the mandatory minimum sentencing.

On 30 June 2011, the president of the Law Council of Australia, Mr Alex Ward, had this to say about the idea of mandatory sentencing:

Mandatory sentencing laws are the antithesis of fairness and have no place in the Australian criminal justice system.

He went on to say that:

Mandatory sentencing reduces the incentive for offenders to plead guilty and can lead to an increased case load for the courts.

All of that is true and it is borne out by the practice.

What mandatory sentencing does—as the former director of public prosecutions, Nick Cowdery, has pointed out—is it fetters the judicial discretion that is needed to provide justice within the context of each individual case. Parliament, in fact, is usurping the judicial discretion by introducing mandatory minimum sentencing. It actually sends, as the former DPP of New South Wales said, a vote of no-confidence from the parliament to the judiciary.

It also has the problem of undermining the system of guilty pleas upon which the criminal justice system relies. This is a point that has also been made by the Law Council. What that means is this: if a person is charged with a crime knowing that they are likely to be found guilty of that crime on the evidence that is before them, they are more likely than not to fight that tooth and nail if there is a mandatory minimum sentence in respect of that crime. That is as opposed to putting their hands up, as it were, and entering into a plea bargain. For this reason, it is likely to lead to more complex and hotly contested trials, in which families and witnesses have to return time and time again to court. It will undoubtedly lead to more costly, lengthy trials where that need not be the case.

From my own region and the University of Wollongong, Dr Quilter has argued that mandatory sentencing requirements do not remove discretion from sentencing but rather displace it from judges to police and prosecutors. She points out that:

Studies of mandatory sentencing indicate that ‘discretion’ is not removed from the system; rather it is displaced often onto police and prosecutors, and significantly so in the area of charging and charge negotiation.

The prosecuting authorities, and in particular the police, often have lots of options available to them as to the charges that they bring against an alleged perpetrator.

What Dr Quilter points out is that mandatory sentencing actually shifts the discretion to the police officers involved or the prosecuting authorities involved where it should probably belong with the judicial authorities. Once displaced onto the police and prosecutors, such decisions become unreviewable. This is to be contrasted with sentences that are determined by a judge, which are reviewable on appeal. Whilst we support the provisions in the bill, which go to the issue of firearms control, we have deep concerns about the mandatory sentencing provisions.

I return to the issue of the psychoactive substances, which is the main subject within the bill. It is most important provision, to my mind, within this bill. When a new drug appears on the streets, as I have asserted, it is not often captured by the existing legal definitions of existing illicit drugs. Organised criminals ran sophisticated operations and there is evidence emerging that they are now designing chemical substances to evade the existing legal definitions of illicit drugs.

Schedule 1 of this bill will mean that future psychoactive drugs that are not already defined in the Criminal Code will not be able to be imported while the government assesses the safety or harms associated with those substances. We say it is a sensible approach. We actually did a lot of work on this particular area where we were in government and we are proud of that fact. The existing legal framework on psychoactive drugs remains in place and this bill simply closes a legal loophole that previously allowed drugs that mimicked the psychoactive effects of illicit drugs to be imported until the government was able to assess and legislate to ban them, if necessary.

I will use this opportunity to say a few things about crystal methamphetamine. It is a scourge within my community in the Illawarra. I have spent the last couple of months travelling throughout rural and regional Victoria, New South Wales and other parts of the country. I can say that in each and every regional town that I have visited one of the first or second issues that they have raised with me, when I asked about the public health issues impacting on that community, was the issue of crystal meth. It is ruining lives, it is ruining communities and it is something that requires a response from all levels of government.

The National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre also found that the use of crystal methamphetamine or ice amongst a sample of regular injecting drug users has increased by 39 per cent between 2010 to 2011. That is an increase of 39 per cent. There has also been evidence showing that the number of seizures at the borders of amphetamine substances has skyrocketed over the last year. The level of purity is increasing and the number of ambulance responses to crystal meth cases is skyrocketing. Australia-wide there were more than 20,000 medical episodes where methamphetamine was a principal drug concerned between 2012 and 2013.

The statistics are alarming. It is not something that we can continue to ignore. As I have said, it is not something that can be dealt with by one jurisdiction alone nor is it something that can be dealt with purely within the purview of the criminal justice system. Based on the consultations that I have been engaged in throughout regional communities in Australia, we need to deal with the social issues that are leading to young people experimenting with illicit drugs. With crystal meth the length of time between experimentation and addiction is very short indeed, so we need to be dealing with the issues which are causing kids to experiment with crystal meth.

I was up in Moree just late last week and I was talking with leaders within the Aboriginal community there. They put it quite succinctly: when there is no hope within the community, when there is no hope of a job, when you are dealing with the lingering burden of decades of discrimination and you do not think that within your lifetime there is any prospect that things are going to change, then drugs like crystal meth become an attractive alternative. Unless we are able to deal with some of the social determinants that are leading kids in communities like Moree and communities right throughout the country—I do not want to point to one town because I have visited dozens—unless we are dealing with the social issues that are leading to drug use, we will fail.

We do need a criminal law response such as the bill before the House. There is no argument about that. We do need a criminal law response because, quite apart from the punitive effects of the criminal law, when the law says that this is an illicit substance it sends an important rhetorical message throughout the community that something is not good.

In addition to that, and in addition to dealing with the social determinants of drug use, we also need to be doing more in terms of treatment and rehabilitation of people with drug addiction. It is simply not enough to be waving the criminal law as a response to these problems and saying that if we just get tough on these crimes somehow that is magically going to make it go away. Quite simply, it will not; all experience bears that point out.

So, using criminal law, dealing with the social issues that are leading to drug addiction and ensuring that we are investing more, across all tiers of government, in rehabilitation to deal with those people who have been unfortunate enough to fall into a life of addiction must be part of a joined-up response between all tiers of government. And we must work with the community to ensure that we can address that issue. That, in a nutshell, is at the heart of the legislation before the House. We support it with reservations.

Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this bill, which includes legislation to close a serious and life-threatening loophole in our drug import prevention. Now, all psychoactive substances such as synthetic drugs will be prohibited unless importers can prove they have a legitimate use. This radical overhaul closes a loophole that currently allows people to deliberately avoid prosecution by slightly changing the chemical structure of a banned substance so it can be legally imported into our country.

It should come as little or no surprise to most people that the majority of new psychoactive substances are intended as legal replacements of controlled drugs. The year 2013 provided further evidence that entrepreneurs and, increasingly, organised crime groups are regularly expanding the types of substances they plan to offer as legal alternatives. Of particular concern, especially in Europe and now in Australia, are the new synthetic opioids which have been reported in the last few years.

Until about a decade ago, most new psychoactive substances that emerged were typically sold on the illicit drug market. They were sometimes sold as drugs in their own right or as a new type of ecstasy, but often they were sold surreptitiously as amphetamine and MDMA. Only a few were reported each year. Usually, these were stimulant-type or hallucinogenic drugs produced in Europe or the United States either in small amounts in amateur laboratories or on a commercial scale in clandestine laboratories organised by crime groups. New substances also occasionally emerged from the division of medicines. Importantly, this continues to be the base, with some of these substances simply acting as a temporary substitute for established controlled drugs that are in short supply, such as MDMA; while others, such as 4-methylamphetamine, appear to be produced accidently as a result of the use of uncontrolled precursors in the production of amphetamine.

Only a few years ago the issue of new psychoactive substances was regarded as having limited significance to drug policy. In the past few years, however, there have been significant changes in this market. Today, the question of how to respond to the challenges posed by the emergence of new drugs has become a major concern internationally. Synthetic drugs are often marketed as a safe and credible alternative to illicit drugs, yet tragically we have learned too many times through death or injury to people—especially young people—that this is not the case and they are, indeed, extremely dangerous.

There is nothing synthetic about the damage these drugs cause. They are not harmless. They are not safe. They have deadly consequences. While it is clear that many new substances will not gain a foothold as drugs in their own right, and spread to broader groups of users, they are still capable of causing serious harm. The largely unknown pharmacology can pose serious risks to users. This is compounded by both the growing range of substances and the generally high availability. These problems are especially apparent when they are sold as 'legal highs', with no information provided to the user of the actual substance present. And as a result of an increase in the quantity, we are finding that they are making their way onto the black market, where they are sold to unsuspecting users as ecstasy, cocaine, ketamine, heroin, or LSD.

In addition, while much attention has been paid to the use of new substances by recreational users, these substances are also being used by problem drug users, including those who inject. This situation is presenting challenges for service providers, including low-threshold services such as needle and syringe programs that often have limited experience of these drugs and their effects. Little is also known about the treatment requirements for users of new psychoactive substances, which in part may reflect the fact that many have emerged only recently.

According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, illicit use of drugs is a direct cause of death and disability as well as being a risk factor for a number of diseases which affect drug users and the wider community. The relative health impact of the illicit use of drugs varies depending on the specific type of drug used and the circumstances of its use. Overall, however, illicit use of drugs and illicit drug use disorders account for an increasing proportion of the global burden of disease, moving from the 18th to the 15th ranking risk factor between 1990 and 2010. Illicit use of drugs includes use of illegal drugs, non-medical use of pharmaceutical drugs and inappropriate use of other substances.

The number of people participating in any illicit use of drugs, including pharmaceutical misuse, in Australia is increasing. However, the proportion of people using most illegal drugs has remained relatively stable; in fact, use of some illegal drugs has even slightly decreased over the last few years. Instead, non-medical use of pharmaceuticals in recent times has increased overall since 2007 and was at its highest level of use since 1998 in 2013—only last year. Increasing numbers of Australians are engaging in the misuse of pharmaceutical drugs and in the use of these so called 'legal alternative' drugs, which take advantage of a loophole. Last year, the Director of the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, Professor Michael Farrell, said that one approach will not solve the problem. Criminal organisations are producing drugs to specifically get around the current legislative controls. Basically, you can ban some things, but something else will come in its place. Professor Farrell advised against a banning spree, believing that Australia needed a measured response to the problem. The coalition government is taking action to shut down the market and undermine those who seek to profit from this misery in Australia.

Schedule 1 of this bill creates new offences for importing psychoactive substances and those represented to be alternatives to illicit drugs and allows Australian Customs and Border Protection Service officers to exercise relevant powers, such as seizure, in relation to those substances. 'New psychoactive substances', or NPS, are substances of abuse that are not captured by the major international drug treaties. Along with other Western nations, Australia has been struggling to keep up with the number of new psychoactive substances entering the drug market and has found the current regulatory approach to be inadequate.

The amendments in schedule 1 will implement a measure first announced in June 2013 and represents the Commonwealth legislative component of a broader national response to new psychoactive substances developed by the Intergovernmental Committee on Drugs and endorsed by Commonwealth, state, and territory ministers in July 2014. The offences themselves are broad but are subject to a range of broad exemptions, including for food, tobacco and therapeutic goods, for which a defendant will have an evidentiary burden. Rather than law enforcement having to prove a synthetic drug is illegal, the burden will be placed on the person importing it to prove that it is legal and has a legitimate use. This means that governments and law enforcement are not trying to play catch-up every time a 'new' synthetic drug is produced.

The legislation in this bill will target psychoactive drugs marketed as 'legal' alternatives to illicit drugs like ecstasy, LSD or cannabis. Importantly, medicines and other chemicals that are imported for proper, legitimate use are already certified by relevant authorities, such as the Therapeutic Goods Administration. Existing arrangements will continue to apply to these substances. The ban will not replace existing illicit drug offences. These will continue to be the primary way in which we deal with illicit drugs and the people who try to import them.

This bill also expands the existing firearms trafficking offences, streamlines the processing of transfer applications for the international transfer of prisoners and extends the geographical jurisdiction to slavery offences. It also retrospectively validates the use of federal police powers in investigations of applied state offences at designated airports between March 2014 and May 2014, and other minor and technical amendments to the Criminal Code, the Customs Act, the Financial Transaction Reports Act 1998 and the Surveillance Devices Act 2004.

I understand that the Labor Party and the Greens have objected to schedule 2, which expands existing firearms trafficking offences. The coalition made a commitment at the last election to introduce mandatory minimum sentences of Commonwealth firearms offences, and now we are delivering. As the Prime Minister has stated again and again, the safety of this nation and the Australian people is a top priority for the coalition government. This amendment, along with the crackdown on the import of psychoactive substances, is just part of the government's broader vision to ensure our promise is kept. I call on Labor and the Greens not to stand in the way of this legislation, which will see harmful drugs taken off our streets and out of our homes—protecting Australians from the harmful and deadly effects of illicit drug use. The coalition is determined to prevent Australian lives from being ruined by illicit substances and the synthetic drugs which we have seen take so many lives and destroy so many families already. I commend this bill to the House.

Karen McNamara (Dobell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Crimes Legislation Amendment (Psychoactive Substances and Other Measures) Bill 2014 introduces measures to reduce the threat of harm from several illegal activities. As a mother, as a member of the Central Coast and as the member for Dobell, I take seriously our obligation to curb the devastating effects of illicit drug use. This bill strengthens the powers of law enforcement agencies to combat the importation of new psychoactive substances and the importation of substances represented to be serious drug alternatives.

It is crucial that as a nation we remain on the front foot in the fight against illicit drug importation and distribution. Of growing concern to our community is the emergence of new psychoactive substances and products deliberately designed to mimic the psychoactive effects of prohibited, serious drugs. Manufacturers of these products use chemical structures that currently avoid penalty under existing drug importation controls. Shamefully, the manufacturers of new psychoactive substances market these drugs as 'legal highs', falsely purporting them as a safer alternative to illicit drugs, and falsely promoting the illusion that they have been tested or assessed by government. In reality, these unknown drugs are potentially dangerous. There are documented cases where their use has been directly linked to serious illness and, tragically, death.

We are fighting a battle against what the Minister for Justice described during his second reading speech as:

… untested chemical compounds which masquerade as illicit drugs but are presented as being legal analogues of those drugs.

The ability of foreign manufacturers of these drugs to alter their chemical composition to avoid current importation laws is resulting in these drugs being freely available on our streets. Attempts by previous governments to progressively ban these substances have failed to curb the manufacturer's determination to import these drugs into the Australian market. It is time that we as a government stand up and put an end to this. The 2010 National Drug Strategy Household Survey revealed some startling statistics: of 12-17 year olds in Australia, 40 per cent had consumed alcohol, 17 per cent had taken inhalants, 15 per cent had taken cannabis and 10 per cent had taken either heroin, cocaine, amphetamines or hallucinogens.

The Australian Drug Foundation reports that new psychoactive substances are being developed around the world at an unprecedented rate. While there is little in Australian data showing usage of these drugs, statistics from the United Kingdom indicate that these drugs are increasingly causing harm with 52 deaths being directly attributed to new psychoactive substances in 2012—an increase from 25 in 2008 and six in 2003. Alarmingly, the same data from the United Kingdom found that in 2013 approximately 230,000 people aged 14 and older admitted to using synthetic cannabis.

New psychoactive substances pose a particular risk to children as they face a higher likelihood of overdose or severe adverse effects as a result of consumption. This in part is due to the inability of younger people to metabolise the ingredients of the drugs. Furthermore, a risk for young people arises from the role of the internet place in the distribution and sale of these drugs. As we know online transactions can occur without the need to prove age or identity, therefore increasing the ease for young people to purchase these substances online.

This bill is s an important tool in protecting our children, our youth and our future from illicit drug use. As a mother, I am extremely concerned about the impact these new drugs can have on our children. Our children should not be able to obtain easy access to drugs that are a thousand times stronger than marijuana; nor should such substances be marketed and distributed as 'legal highs'. These so-called legal highs can cause psychosis, heart attacks, liver damage-and cardiovascular problems—to name a few. Unfortunately, these 'legal highs' have also resulted in the death of Australian teenagers. It is our responsibility as a responsible government ensure Australian youth are not exposed to or able to obtain access to these dangerous drugs. We must also as parliamentarians, parents and responsible members of our community highlight the existence e and impact of these illegal substances. Children as young as 13 are using psychoactive substances, such as synthetic cannabis. Many parents have not heard of these drugs and many of those who have incorrectly believe the manufacturer's false claims.

The National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre of Australia demonstrate the unknown nature of these psychoactive substances by stating:

These products can contain synthetic cannabinoids that are often described as 'research chemicals.' Research chemicals are experimental chemical that are not approved or human consumption. The vast majority of these chemicals have only been recently synthesized and little, if any, data exists currently about their side effects, adverse reactions, long-term damage or dependence potential. Most importantly there are no officially published safety data and almost nothing is known about their effects on humans.

In Australia, as in other parts of the world, synthetic cannabis is sold through the internet, as well as specialised adult stores tobacconists and some service stations. Synthetic cannabis is marketed under different brand names including: Kronic, Northern Lights, Mojo, Lightning Gold, Lightning Red and Godfather. It is also marketed under other general terms including aphrodisiac tea, herbal incense and potpourri.

While illegal drugs remain prevalent in modern society, we are seeing an increase in the supply of new psychoactive substances and we need to put a stop to this new market of dangerous drugs. This bill will ensure that the government is properly armed to tackle this problem by introducing offences into the criminal code to ban the importation of substances based on their psychoactive use where they are presented as alternatives to illicit drugs. In addition, the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service and the Australian Federal Police will be afforded powers to stop these drugs, seize them and destroy them before they can enter the market. It is important to note that these measurers will not apply to imports that contain psychoactive elements and hold a legitimate purpose, including: foods, medicines, industrial, agricultural and veterinary chemicals. These items serve important functions in our society and economy. In his second reading speech the Minister for Justice rightly highlighted that:

These items should not, and will not be caught up in this regime.

The intent of this bill is to stop these purported 'legal highs' from being sold to Australian citizens.

Stopping the distribution and sale of new psychoactive substances is not solely the role of the Commonwealth. Legislation outlawing synthetic psychoactive substances was passed by the New South Wales government in September 2013. This followed the death of 17-year-old student Henry Kwan in Sydney. The then New South Wales Minister for Mental Health, Kevin Humphries, said:

Synthetic drugs are prevalent in the mining and transport industries, where workplace drug-testing had driven users to use synthetic substances that were very difficult to detect.

The New South Wales legislation introduced maximum penalties of 20 penalty units and/or two years' imprisonment for those manufacturing or supplying synthetic drugs. It is important that we continue to work closely with the states and territories to ensure that our objectives are aligned and measures to prevent import of these dangerous drugs are relevant and effective.

The objectives of this bill are to deter the importation of these dangerous chemicals and prevent their distribution to be used as alternatives to illicit drugs. There is no questioning that these products are unsafe for consumption and that their presence in our community will lead to a long-term burden on communities, including social, health and economic problems.

The Crimes Legislation Amendment (Psychoactive Substances and Other Measures) Bill 2014 also seeks to enhance our nation's security by strengthening the powers available to law-enforcement agencies in relation to firearm offences. Australians are entitled to feel safe, knowing our borders are free from the importation of illegal firearms which, in the hands of the wrong people, could have detrimental effects and lead to tragedy. This legislation establishes a comprehensive set of offences and penalties for the trafficking of firearms and firearm parts. The impact of the illicit firearms market is directly related tithe number of illegal firearm entries across our borders and entering our community.    There is no denying that these firearm are being accessed and used by groups and individuals to commit serious and violent crimes, tragically in some circumstances resulting in death.

Currently the potential exists for the evasion of firearm-trafficking offences and penalties through the disassembling of firearms and subsequent trading of individual components. This bill introduces penalties for the trafficking of prohibited firearms or firearm parts in and out of Australia, by establishing offences which carry a penalty of 10 years imprisonment and/or a fine of 2,500 penalty units.

This legislation ensures that those who traffic firearm parts are subject to the same punitive measures as those trading in illegal firearms. These amendments affirm that we have a comprehensive set of offences and penalties that reflect the seriousness of gun crime.

The Minister for Justice, in his contribution to this bill, provided the following statistic:

… in 2012 firearms were identified as being the type of weapon used in 25 per cent of homicides in Australia …

We remember all too well the tragic events of 28 April 1996. It was on this day that Martin Bryant, armed with a semiautomatic rifle and a semiautomatic assault weapon, killed 35 people on a murderous rampage in Port Arthur, Tasmania. In the aftermath of this massacre, then Prime Minister John Howard set about reforming our nation's firearm laws. These reforms would ensure the prohibition on the ownership, possession, sale and importation of all automatic and semiautomatic weapons. Following the tightening of gun ownership laws, some 700,000 guns were removed and destroyed. This represented one-fifth of Australia's estimated stock of firearms. Since this time, gun related homicides in Australia have declined. Former Prime Minister John Howard reflects upon this important reform, saying, 'Australia's 1996 gun law reforms were followed by more than a decade free of fatal mass shootings, and accelerated declines in firearms deaths, particularly suicides.' We must continue to build upon the strong result of this reform and prevent guns returning to our streets and communities. Australia is undoubtedly a safer nation as a result of strong gun control. Our laws must maintain pace with criminal activity and, where possible, foresee and adapt to future challenges and threats.

This bill also introduces several measures to strengthen Australia's International Transfer of Prisoners Scheme, slavery offences and Australia's anti-money-laundering regime. While time does not permit me to elaborate on these measures, I would like to commend this government for ensuring our law enforcement agencies have the appropriate tools to target crime wherever it occurs. As a nation and as a parliament we face uncertain times as global security challenges threaten to impact our great nation.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has said to this parliament: 'Protecting our people is the first duty of government. This government will do whatever is possible to keep people safe.' This legislation builds upon our commitment to enhance national security and ensure that Australia's citizens are safe as they go about being free citizens of this wonderful country. This bill strengthens our nation's border protection to counteract two emerging threats to our citizens. The importation of illicit drugs and the importation of illegal guns both pose their own challenges that we are tasked to address.

I commend the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Psychoactive Substances and Other Measures Bill) 2014 to the parliament and reinstate my commitment as a member of this government to enhance security here in Australia.

Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend the member for Dobell for her very eloquent support of this bill, as indeed I commend the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Psychoactive Substances and Other Measures) Bill 2014. I am sure we have all heard anecdotal stories from friends or people in our communities about psychoactive substances that are designed to mimic the psychoactive effect of illicit drugs but whose chemical structures are not captured by existing controls on those drugs. That is the essence of this bill. Through TV reports and many other things, we have seen that a substance that mimics these psychoactive drugs is not covered by existing legislation, even though the effect they have and the damage they can do is exactly like that of such drugs.

Mr Deputy Speaker Kelly, as you know and as we all know, synthetic psychoactive substances can pose as serious a risk to the community as traditional illicit drugs, as we have seen through the tragic deaths—in fact, there have been some just over the last week or so—of many young people across Australia. Not only do these substances have effects on people's life and death; they can also have effects on the mental health of many of the users of these substances.

New psychoactive substances have been a growing problem for governments throughout the world, including in Australia, in recent years. As we and many governments have progressively banned these substances as evidence about their use and harm has become available, manufacturers are simply altering the composition of the substances to avoid the law as it currently stands. To address this serious community safety issue, the government has introduced this legislation to ban the importation of all psychoactive substances unless they have a legitimate use. These legislative changes will put us ahead of criminals, and we obviously always need to be ahead of criminals.

The other aspect of this is the illicit trade of these substances, and I think we are all aware that the people who market and sell this stuff are very organised and make a lot of money from it, which poses problems within our communities. The ban will close the loophole that allows people to deliberately avoid prosecution by slightly changing the chemical structure of these banned substances.

The bill also introduces offences into the Criminal Code to ban the importation of substances based on their psychoactive effect where they are presented as alternatives to illicit drugs. As you can see, this is throwing the onus back onto them to prove that what they are doing is not illegal. This bill will also amend the Customs Act to allow officers of the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service and the Australian Federal Police to stop these drugs, to seize them and to destroy them before they can be put on the market. As I have just said, it will be up to a person whose goods have been seized on suspicion of them being a new psychoactive substance to show why they should be returned to them—that is, by showing they have a legitimate use, such as for foods, medicines, or industrial, agricultural and veterinary chemicals. This approach will operate alongside existing drug offences. It will reduce the availability of potentially harmful new substances, giving authorities time to place appropriate controls around them. As I said, it throws the onus back onto these people to prove that what they are doing is not going to involve an illegal or illicit product.

The bill also introduces the election commitments in relation to firearms. In the lead-up to the election last year the coalition undertook to implement tougher penalties for gun related crime. As with all of our election promises, we are following through on that promise. In relation to this one we are creating a more comprehensive set of offences and penalties for the trafficking of firearms and firearm parts. In 2012—I am sure you are aware of this Deputy Speaker Kelly—firearms were identified as being the type of weapon used in 25 per cent of homicides in Australia. Currently, criminals can potentially evade firearms trafficking offences and penalties by breaking firearms down and trafficking them in their parts. This bill closes that gap by enabling the conviction of those trafficking parts. The bill also introduces mandatory minimum sentences of five years imprisonment for offenders charged with trafficking firearms or firearm parts. As an adjunct to that, the minimum mandatory sentence will not apply to minors.

The introduction of these measures aligns with a key government priority of detecting and disrupting organised crime groups and criminal gangs within Australia. These groups have a culture of violence. They are involved in the illicit drugs trade, firearms trafficking, money laundering, extortion et cetera. obviously, these people are not necessarily ones you would invite around for Sunday lunch. They are very well organised. They are involved in illegal activities and from these activities they are making a lot of money and increasing their influence within the wider part of our society, which we do not want them to do.

To target this threat the government has already delivered on a number of key election commitments. The national anti-gang strike teams have been established in a number of states. This means specialists from a range of national agencies have been embedded with state police. The Australian Gangs Intelligence Coordination Centre, based in the Australian Crime Commission, has been established. It collates information from the national anti-gang strike teams to target cross-border operations. Also, $88 million has been committed to Customs and Border Protection to increase cargo screenings, to stop drugs and firearms before they hit our streets. New legislation to strengthen Australia's unexplained wealth regime has been introduced. We passed this through the House of Representatives recently. It will strike at the heart of organised crime by taking away the profits and assets of criminal syndicates. In fact, as you would be aware, a lot of the money we are getting from that is being put into crime fighting—things like CCTV cameras, of which I know there are some great ones rolling out into my community.

With all bills there is always a question of balance. Obviously there have been some points made in relation to human rights with all government legislation. Human rights is something we need very much to protect within our community. I believe the amendments are compatible with human rights, because they advance the right for individuals to know the nature and cause of any charge against them. To the extent that it may limit the protection against unlawful, arbitrary interference with privacy, I believe those limitations are reasonable, necessary and proportionate. I commend the bill to the House.

Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak today on the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Psychoactive Substances and Other Measures) Bill 2014. The bill is an omnibus bill containing five schedules that address separate issues. Schedule 1 will create new offences for importing psychoactive substances, and those represented to be alternatives to illicit drugs. It will allow Australian Customs and Border Protection Service officers to exercise relevant powers, such as seizure, in relation to those substances.

Importantly, the new psychoactive substances are substances of abuse that are not captured by the major international drug treaties. Along with other Western nations, Australia has been struggling to keep up with the number of new psychoactive substances entering the market, and has found its current regulatory approach to be inadequate. The amendments in schedule 1 represent the Commonwealth's legislative components of a broader national response to new psychoactive substances that was developed by the Intergovernmental Committee on Drugs and endorsed by the Commonwealth and state and territory ministers, in July 2014. The offences themselves are broad, but they are subject to a range of broad exemptions, including for food, tobacco and therapeutic goods, for which a defendant will bear an evidential burden.

Schedule 2 will expand existing firearms trafficking offences to also apply to firearm parts, creating new offences for international firearms trafficking, introduce mandatory minimum penalties of five years imprisonment for firearms offences, and allow Customs officers to exercise the relevant powers in relation to the new offences. During the 2013 federal election campaign, the coalition committed to the introduction of mandatory minimum sentences for Commonwealth firearms offences.

Schedule 3 will make a range of amendments to clarify the application of the International Transfer of Prisoners Scheme, or ITP scheme, and streamline the processing of applications for transfer. The main amendments will make it easier for prisoners serving suspended sentences to be transferred under the ITP scheme. It will introduce the concept of 'close family member', which will be relevant in demonstrating ties to a community and determining who may consent to a transfer on behalf of a prisoner who is not an adult or is otherwise unable to consent to his or her own transfer. It will allow the Attorney-General to close unviable applications and to exercise discretion in processing re-applications received within 12 months of a negative decision or the withdrawal of a previous application.

Schedule 4 will apply the broadest level of extended geographical jurisdictions to slavery offences so that they will apply whether or not the relevant conduct, or a result of the relevant conduct, occurs in Australia.

Schedule 5 will retrospectively validate the use of federal police powers in investigations of applied state offences at designated airports between March 2014 and May 2014, when the replacement regulations were made.

Schedule 6 will make several minor and technical amendments to the Criminal Code, the Customs Act, the Financial Transaction Reports Act and the Surveillance Devices Act.

There would not be a person in Australia who does not have some direct knowledge of the destruction that is caused throughout the community by the growth in the use of illicit substances. I am sure that at some stage of our lives, each of us has had either a friend or a family member, or someone we have worked with or been confronted with, or has otherwise known someone, who has fallen into the bleak world of illicit drug use. As a former criminal lawyer I can say that, inevitably, almost every terrible outcome was connected in some way to drug use; the lack of judgement it causes, or the criminal enterprises it funds. It is an issue which we must address on several levels. It is not only a law and order issue, it is a mental and physical health issue and it is a community services issue; it is a housing issue, a sporting issue, a regional development issue, and an employment issue; it is a national security issue and it is a budgetary issue. Regardless of this, sadly, no segment of our society is unsullied. From the wealthiest financial trader to the poorest person sleeping rough on the street, each is as susceptible as the other to falling for the wicked of illicit substances, and the consequences are equally devastating for both.

Not so long ago, drug use and the drug culture was widely perceived to be made up of so-called soft drugs like marijuana. While some of the claims made by various people at various times about the dangers of drugs have lacked finesse, and have perhaps been overstated in some specific instances, it is true to say that any substance which affects your judgement and perception can be dangerous to you and to others. During the 1970s and 1980s, the rise of what some people probably consider to be the harder drugs—such as cocaine and heroin—came to prominence, especially with the flood of product being made available to the West from developing countries who had discovered a vastly more profitable enterprise than traditional agricultural farming. The government's response to these issues was to toughen the law-enforcement response, and to slowly but surely dismantle these criminal enterprises through a series of related measures including policing and sentencing, disruption of supply, and health interventions to reduce demand; and to outlaw a number of substances that had been more freely available. Comparatively speaking, even though there were—and indeed there continue to be—significant challenges in dealing with these types of drugs, the number of new drug types over that period was fairly steady, and governments were able to make laws within a reasonable time to help address the emergence of new trends.

With the birth of the rave culture and designer drugs, we saw the production—and the capacity for someone with little more than high school or first year chemistry knowledge to produce—drugs with similar effects and toxicity but sufficiently different in chemical structure to avoid being captured by the legislation, and thus the drugs could occupy a legal grey area where they can be marketed to people as so-called 'legal highs'. But in practice, there is very little difference in the health risks, and very often there is an elevated risk; because of the interactions the new compounds have with different people, with prescription medications, and with health conditions; and simply because of the quality of the manufacturing process. They are often produced by the same syndicates and involve the same social risks and interactions as more long-standing and well-known illicit substances. Perversely, these new drugs do not have the benefit of having been around long enough for anyone to have any detailed knowledge or understanding of the risks of these new compounds. They are marketed in this fashion because the aim is to attract high-value market share—the types of people who can afford to go out on the town of a weekend, but who would otherwise be wary of interacting with criminal types who are dealing drugs. It is overall a much more comfortable and therefore enticing way to sell essentially the same substances, but it is deliberately designed to make the experience less dark, less scary and less off-putting. The ease with which these new substances can be produced is such that a new version could be available almost every weekend, if people were so inclined. It is obviously extremely challenging to a government's ability to keep pace with this, given how many different versions of a particular drug can be produced just in the time it will take for this bill to pass through this place.

As with all profitable and therefore valuable things, the trade in drugs needs to be protected—or at least so say the proponents; that is, protected from competitors, protected from government, protected from employees and protected from the unwilling. This is done with brutal, physical violence and intimidation. This need to ensure that they are able to protect their supply and their markets from a variety of threats, combined with what must be said to be a ruthless desire and a streamlined decision-making process, has meant that where gaps have emerged in the capabilities of criminal organisations, they have acted—often more effectively than law enforcement agencies and governments are able to—to add that capability, and with the most effective means available. That has meant the proliferation of increasingly powerful and lethal weapons, including military-style automatic weapons, in suburban streets.

Already the Abbott government is attacking this problem on a number of fronts; through increasing the powers of federal agencies to follow the money, to ensure that the ultimate perpetrators of these enterprises are not able to be rewarded while the low-level, street criminals are left to face the jail time. This legislation will attack other struts of these groups by making it harder for substances which mimic the effects of illicit substances to be imported into Australia without sanction. The bill also cracks down on the international illicit arms business that underpins the drug trade, and is the dark side of the drugs business, which too many in our community fail to realise is a direct and real threat to our community. That is why, in addition to creating a number of new offences for acts relating to the trade in firearms—including the sale of parts of weapons—and for acts of international trade in weapons, the Abbott government will give greater powers to Customs officers to police this trade, and will introduce mandatory minimum sentences for breaches of the act, something which I understand—to their eternal shame—the Labor Party is not supporting.

Whether it be the control of our borders, our national security and defence matters, policing, or the question of tougher sentences for dangerous criminals, Labor fails to meet community expectations. Only the Abbott coalition government will take the necessary action to punish those who deal in misery and vulnerability. Only the Abbott coalition government will provide the health and treatment resources for the victims of these criminal kingpins and for the predatory behaviours of these criminals, and the resources to make sure that the relevant agencies have the tools they need to do the job that is asked of them.

I commend the bill to the House.

Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Improving the safety of my community is of paramount concern to me and I welcome any steps taken to achieve this. That is why I am taking the opportunity to speak today on the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Psychoactive Substances and Other Measures) Bill 2014. The bill before us today is yet another example of how the coalition government is working hard to tighten our laws and stay ahead of the criminal gangs. The measures introduced in this bill complement a suite of new measures that the coalition has already implemented as part of our key priority of detecting and disrupting organised crime groups and criminal gangs within Australia. These gangs profit from other people's misery, such as the misery that far too many communities are currently experiencing as a result of the scourge of ice—a problem which lamentably affects my own community of Deakin and which I have spoken about in this place before.

Today we are talking about a different drug problem, a problem that does not have as high a profile as other drug issues but which still causes very real harm to communities throughout the country including in my electorate of Deakin. The bill addresses, amongst other things, the growing problem of new psychoactive substances. New psychoactive substances, or synthetic drugs as they are commonly referred to, mimic the psychoactive effect of illicit drugs such as cannabis, cocaine, ecstasy and LSD. The manufacturers of these drugs use new chemicals to replace those that are banned so that they can avoid the law—but these drugs are clearly far from safe. As the Australian Drug Foundation has made clear, there are huge misconceptions in our community about the safety of these drugs. In a policy paper published earlier this year—'New psychoactive drugs: No easy answer'—authors Geoff Munro, the National Policy Manager of the Australian Drug Foundation, and Dr Chris Wilkins, a senior researcher at New Zealand's Massey University, explained:

Persons who use NPS, and those who may be attracted to them, need to understand the risks as NPS are often more powerful than the drug types they are purported to mimic and little is known of their effects.

It is terrifying to think that some people—often they are young people—are purchasing and taking these drugs in the misguided belief that they are getting a safe high. It may have been legal to purchase the synthetic drug but it is clear that these are far from safe to consume. The Australian Drug Foundation warns that the packaging of these drugs is often misleading and fails to list all of the ingredients or the correct amounts, making it very easy to overdose. Many of the drugs contain a range of fillers and numbing agents that can lead to health problems particularly if injected, and some contain caffeine in such high quantities that additional caffeine, such as having an ordinary coffee, could lead to an overdose. It is also very difficult for doctors to treat someone who has overdosed on a synthetic drug because of the large number of different drugs on the market and inevitably the lack of information about what particular drugs contain and the lack of research about their effects. Indeed, these synthetic drugs can pose as serious a risk to the community as traditional drugs, as we have seen through the tragic deaths of many young people throughout Australia. Last November in my home state of Victoria three people ended up in intensive care after smoking a synthetic drug mimicking cannabis. In the 14 months to January this year, five people died after taking synthetic drugs, including three school children.

We do not really know how prevalent the use of synthetic drugs are in Australia, which is another problem. The policy paper I referred to earlier pointed to European estimates that around five per cent of people aged between 15 and 24 have tried synthetic drugs. The report said:

An Australian representative of licit retailers who sold NPS estimated the value of the "legal market" at $600 million in 2012 (Patton, 2013).

That legal market does not account for the untraceable online sales, so, while we do not know the exact scale of the problem, we do know that it is significant and that it is growing both in Australia and overseas. Governments around Australia at a state level are doing their best to tackle the problem by progressively banning substances as evidence about their use becomes available. But it is far too easy for the manufacturers to evade these bans by simply altering the chemical composition of the substance and continuing to sell it, clearly to the great detriment of our community. Some states—Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia—have introduced blanket bans on possessing or selling any substances that have a psychoactive effect other than alcohol, tobacco and food.

In the bill before us today, the Commonwealth is playing its part to help the states and territories address this problem and close any loopholes in the existing legislation ultimately so that our community is better protected. The Commonwealth is banning the importation of all psychoactive substances, save for those with a legitimate use. There will be new offences introduced into the Criminal Code that also ban the importation of psychoactive substances based on their psychoactive effect and where they are presented as an alternative to illicit drugs—meaning that we do not have the issue of composition of drugs allowing these criminal gangs to skirt existing rules. No longer will people be able to simply make a slight change to the chemical structure and then continue to sell it. It is gratifying to see this loophole closed and I congratulate the Minister for Justice.

The bill also arms the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service and the Australian Federal Police with the powers they will need to stop these drugs from entering the market and instead seize and destroy them. At the same time, people who import psychoactive substances for a legitimate use, such as foods, medicines, industry, agriculture or veterinary chemicals, will of course be able to continue to do so. These people will not be caught up in the new regime introduced in this bill, notwithstanding its wide-ranging purview. The bill is targeted at bringing an end to the abhorrent trade in NPS that is harming our community and it does so by turning the tables completely on those who profit from the trade.

In his second reading speech on this legislation the Minister for Justice said:

The large number of potential new psychoactive substances and their rate of appearance means that we cannot stay ahead of the market. This bill changes the dynamic. From now on, the government will be in front.

I commend the minister for recognising the serious danger posed to our community by synthetic drugs and making it a priority for this government to address. I know that people in my electorate of Deakin welcome the government's efforts to make their communities safer. Parents of teenagers, in particular, will find these measures reassuring as they operate to better protect vulnerable young people in our community from the harmful effects of drugs. Together with the existing initiatives of the state and territory governments, this bill will make a real difference to addressing the growing problem posed by NPS. I therefore wholeheartedly support the measures.

The bill also deals with a range of other criminal issues which I will touch on briefly in the time remaining. Tough new penalties for gun related crime are introduced by this bill, in line with our commitment in the lead-up to last year's election. Thankfully, Australia already benefits from restrictive firearm laws, which were overhauled back in the 1990s under the Howard government. However, we must continue to be vigilant when it comes to gun laws, particularly in light of the fact that some 25 per cent of homicides involve firearms. It is therefore vital that we do everything in our power to stop these weapons from being acquired and utilised by criminals. That is why we are delivering on our promise with a more comprehensive set of offences and penalties for the trafficking of firearms and firearm parts. We know that, currently, criminals could potentially evade firearms trafficking offences by breaking up firearms into parts. This is an absolutely perverse outcome. This legislation closes that loophole by introducing new offences for trafficking firearms parts. It also strengthens the penalties for firearms offences, introducing mandatory minimum sentences of five years for offenders charged with trafficking firearms or firearm parts. I welcome these tougher new penalties which reflect the seriousness of these crimes.

It is worth noting that these mandatory minimum sentences will not apply to minors and there will not be a specified non-parole period, giving the courts the discretion to set custodial periods in line with the particular circumstances of each case. I think it is fair to say that Australians take a very dim view of people who commit firearms offences. I believe this bill brings gun laws into step with community expectations—something Labor failed to do for many years.

The bill also makes some important amendments to our International Transfer of Prisoners Scheme, which came into operation some 20 years ago. That scheme is effective but it will benefit from measures to streamline existing processes. The bill also amends the Criminal Code to make it clear that slavery offences have universal jurisdiction and to ensure that Australian law enforcement agencies have the tools they need to deal with this abhorrent crime. And the bill introduces a range of other minor but important measures to boost our criminal laws in Australia.

The coalition has an unwavering commitment to reduce crime in this country and do everything in our power to protect our communities from harm. I thank Minister Keenan for the outstanding work he has done in supporting communities like mine in Deakin to not only feel safer but actually be safer. The bill before us today is another step in that direction. I therefore support the bill, which I believe is a very important step in delivering on our election commitment.

Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure to finally get to speak to this bill. I rise to speak in support of the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Psychoactive Substances and Other Measures) Bill 2014. This bill addresses the important issue of how to stem the increasing availability and negative effects of psychoactive substances and also substances which mimic the effect of these illicit drugs but are not categorised as illicit drugs under current law. This is an area of real concern to me at a number of levels. I represent an electorate of more than 145,000 people, around 16 per cent of whom are aged between 15 and 24. This is the most highly represented age group for drug use. Parents, including me, are united in our care and in our sense of responsibility for not only our young ones but a whole generation of youth.

I am also aware of my responsibility, as part of the federal government, to support a legislative framework that will reduce the likelihood of our young people falling victim to pedlars of dangerous substances. The legislation before us today is in response to disturbing evidence of a more modern drug culture that involves addictive and dangerous substances similar in potentially negative impacts to those already listed as illegal; but in this case their pedlars are free to operate in what has been an ominous environment of legal loopholes. The nature of these new psychoactive drugs, which are also referred to as synthetic drugs, is that they can be advertised as legal. This leads to the false perception that they are safe. They are not safe. They are unregulated, they are untested and, in the case of an overdose, they are difficult to identify or treat effectively.

We have sadly seen a number of deaths in Australia resulting from cardiac complications, seizures, brain injury or misadventure following the unregulated use of psychoactive drugs. Some of these very same substances can be sold in a pharmacy or as a health tonic. But there is also an increase in online sales and imports, which has been of great concern. Europol is currently monitoring 280 new psychoactive substances, 73 of which were added to the list in 2012 alone. This indicates that there is something of an epidemic. Some of the best available data that we have on the dangerous impacts of these drugs comes from the UK, where six deaths from psychoactive drugs were recorded in 2003. That figure jumped to 25 in 2008 and then to 52 in 2013. It does not take a mathematician to see that there is a dangerously increasing trend at play here.

I find these statistics disturbing, but I am encouraged that we now have open to us a window of opportunity to stop the spread of psychoactive drugs and to stop the usage that is part of a youth culture and a threat to our social fabric. State governments in Australia have tried to take action to ban some psychoactive substances, because evidence of their use and harm has become available, but with the way our current legislation is designed manufacturers can simply alter the composition of account to avoid legal ramifications. In this case, manufacturers have taken advantage of a legal loophole and not made the drug safer.

This is an emerging and disturbing area of activity that clearly requires government intervention. The Abbott government recognises its responsibilities to close any and all loopholes in the interest of community safety, which in this case relates to the banning of the importation of all psychoactive substances, regardless of their composition, unless they have a legitimate use.

The detail of this legislative amendment is designed to prosecute criminals who would make a quick buck at the expense of others and with no regard for their wellbeing. The offence of the importation of psychoactive drugs will therefore be enacted under the Criminal Code. Proposed amendments to the Customs Act will also allow the Australian Federal Police and Customs officers to intercept importation of these drugs, seize them and destroy them before they even reach the market and before they can place users at risk. I would like to emphasise that anyone found to be a legitimate user of these substances will be able to put forward their case under the new amendments. Legitimate use could include medicines and industrial, agriculture and veterinary chemicals. They will be permitted. I fully commend these legislative amendments, which will stop the so-called legal use of psychoactive substances, for the valuable contribution they will make to community safety outcomes and to the wellbeing of our youth.

There is a second part to this bill that responds to an election commitment made by the coalition, when we were in opposition, to implement tougher penalties for gun related crimes. Again, the proposed amendments are about closing legal loopholes and staying one step ahead of the small but dangerous criminal element that would seek to disrupt the wellbeing of Australians. It is apt that we consider these amendments in the same bill, given that both will serve to strengthen community safety in Australia.

In 2012, firearms were identified as being the weapon of choice in 25 per cent of homicides in Australia. Moreover, criminals are able to evade firearms trafficking offences and penalties by breaking down firearms and trading parts. There are several loopholes, and I have no doubt that we are all sick and tired of seeing the firearm related offences that happen all too frequently all over our communities being reported on the news. Regrettably these news reports seem to be happening more and more each day. Under these new measures, there will be a mandatory minimum sentence of five years imprisonment for offenders charged with trafficking firearms or firearm parts, which provides a clear deterrent. Providing there is clear intent, it will no longer be possible to simply break a firearm down into its components to sidestep the law. The measures being proposed in this bill will disrupt organised criminal groups and gangs with a culture of violence in Australia, as well as dealing with lone-wolf attacks.

Coordination between federal and state levels of government is essential if we are to strengthen the security fabric of our nation. I commend the work that has already been done in this area and emphasise the necessity of these legislative amendments to underpin the work of our law enforcement agencies at all levels of government. Criminals, gangs and firearm traffickers do operate across our borders. They do not respect jurisdictional boundaries. As such, this is an issue that crosses state borders and jurisdictions and which should quite properly concern all of us here today. National antigang strike teams have been established across Australia, including in my home state of Queensland, to work with state police to crack down on firearms trafficking as well as money laundering and extortion. An Australian Gangs Intelligence Coordination Centre, based in the Australian Crime Commission, is also collecting data and mobilising strike teams to target cross-border operations. I further commend the fact that $88 million has been committed to customs and border protection to increase cargo screening to stop drugs and firearms before they reach our streets, when it is already too late.

I will briefly address the more administrative elements of the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Psychoactive Substances and Other Measures) Bill before concluding my speech in support of the amendments. The bill will amend the International Transfer of Prisoners Act 1997, or ITP Act, which governs Australia's international transfer of prisoners scheme to promote the successful rehabilitation and reintegration into society of a prisoner, while preserving the sentence imposed by the sentencing country as far as possible. The proposed changes are designed to clarify and streamline the ITP process and reduce unnecessary red tape associated with applications. Key proposals include removing the requirement for the Attorney-General to make a final decision where a transfer application is clearly unviable and does not meet all requirements; imposing a one-year time limit on re-applications; clarifying application procedures and prisoner eligibility criteria; and clarifying the conditions under which the Attorney-General's consent is required—for example, this would be a discretionary rather than mandatory requirement in the event that variations were made to the terms of a transfer.

Of utmost consideration with regard to these changes is Australia's reputation as an upstanding international citizen and bastion of human rights—national characteristics that are non-negotiable. In fact, through clarification, it is possible for prisoners and their families to have the security of knowing where they stand legally, while keeping our legal system free from excessive bureaucracy that is socially and economically costly.

Finally, while slavery is not an issue that many of us would be personally familiar with, it does occur elsewhere in the world. It is an insidious crime and one which we must guard against occurring on Australian soil in any form. This bill provides for clarification that slavery offences have universal jurisdiction, eliminating any uncertainty for law enforcement agencies responsible for investigating and prosecuting slavery offences in Australia or by Australians.

Deputy Speaker, the measures brought before you today and presented in the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Psychoactive Substances and Other Measures) Bill are about creating the kind of Australia you and I and the majority of law-abiding Australians want to live in. We want a country that is secure in all facets of life. We want our young people to grow up secure in the understanding and knowledge that there is a difference between what you can buy freely and an illicit and dangerous drug—they are not one and the same. We want to be able to walk our streets, secure in the knowledge that, while firearms may exist, we do not live in a community where it is easy or even remotely acceptable to carry weapons that can at a single movement of the trigger cause serious bodily harm or death. We are fortunate not to have a gun culture in this country. It is something that sets us apart from other parts of the world and something that we must never take for granted or lose through any complacency. We want to live in a community where bikie gangs and criminal groups know they will experience the full force of the law should they disrespect it. We want the next generation of Australians to experience and know that the government will go to great lengths to ensure their safety, wellbeing and quality of life.

In conclusion, I am pleased to say that the vast majority of Australian citizens are law abiding. Nevertheless, if the government is negligent in its constitutional responsibility to protect its citizens, those who are not law abiding are able to do us great harm. The Abbott government has been clear on where it stands on security and community safety issues. Needless to say, this will not be the scenario in play on our watch. I fully support this bill in the confidence that it will close legal loopholes and takes us another leap forward in making Australia one of the safest countries in the world, with the quality of life we should all expect. I commend the bill to the House.

Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This bill is important to Australian families and individuals. The bill will ban the importation of new psychoactive substances and deliver on the key government

election commitment to implement tougher penalties for gun related crime. The bill will also improve Australia's criminal justice arrangements by: streamlining Australia's International Transfer of Prisoners Scheme; clarifying that slavery offences have universal jurisdiction to ensure agencies are able to investigate and prosecute these offences wherever they occur; and enhancing Australia's anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism financing regime. It will also make minor edits to the Commonwealth's drug regime and arrangements for policing in certain airports. The bill amends the Commonwealth Places (Application of Laws) Act 1970, Criminal Code Act 1995, Customs Act 1901, Financial Transaction Reports Act 1988, International Transfer of Prisoners Act 1997 and the Surveillance Devices Act 2004. There are quite a number of acts covered here.

We know there has been a war waged throughout the world between drug suppliers and those whose job it is to protect our community from the scourge of illicit drugs. Until the introduction of this legislation, there was a loophole that basically helped the drug pushers ply their vile trade. Governments both state and federal tried to identify and ban known illegal psychoactive drugs by placing them on a list. The criminal element subverted the intent of the law by developing minutely different substances that had the same effect but a new name. New psychoactive substances are designed to mimic the psychoactive effects of illicit drugs; however, their chemical structures are not captured by existing controls on those drugs because they are not specifically named. These substances are often presented as 'legal highs'. They are frequently presented as safer than other illicit drugs and claims are made that they have been tested or assessed by the government. In reality, they are potentially very dangerous and have been linked to serious injuries and deaths.

Such new psychoactive substances have been identified by the Western Australian government as a real and growing problem. On 29 June this year, the WA mental health minister, Helen Morton, listed an additional 33 substances in schedule 9 of the Western Australian Poisons Act. All 33 were psychoactive substances, including synthetic cannabinoids. Currently all synthetic cannabinoids are illegal in Western Australia but are still generally put on the list.

Governments progressively ban these substances as evidence about their use and harm becomes available, yet manufacturers can still alter the composition of these substances to avoid the law. The government is closing this loophole with this legislation. It is very important. That is the intent of the bill and that is what we are doing. It will introduce offences into the Criminal Code to ban the importation of all substances based on their psychoactive effect and not just on their name.

The bill will also amend the Customs Act to allow officers of the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service and the Australian Federal Police to stop these drugs, seize them and destroy them before they can be put on the market. It will be up to a person whose goods have been seized on suspicion of being a new psychoactive substance to show exactly what they are, what purpose they serve and why they should be returned to them. If an importer cannot do this—for example, by showing that the goods have a legitimate use—the goods will be destroyed. These measures will not apply to imports for a legitimate purpose. Foods, medicines and industrial, agricultural and veterinary chemicals may all be psychoactive, but they serve important functions in our society and economy. In other words, the onus of proof will be on the importer.

The measures in this bill will introduce offences, as I said, to ban the importation of substances based on their psychoactive effect and where they are presented as alternatives to illicit drugs. The Australian Crime Commission's Illicit drug data report 2012-13 states that the number of cannabis detections at the Australian border increased by 36.4 per cent to 3,629 in 2012-13—the highest on record. That is the reason why this bill is important. The report said cannabis seeds form 89.2 per cent of detections. Of the cannabis that came by parcel post, the greatest weight of seeds came from Iran to Sydney, the greatest weight of cannabis leaf came from Canada to Sydney and the greatest weight of buds and leaves came from the Netherlands to Melbourne. Parcel post—this is an interesting issue—accounts for 98.8 per cent of border detections. Forty-three embarkation points were identified—43 countries, which was more than in previous years. In order, the most came from the UK, with 59.5 per cent, followed by Iran, Canada, South Africa and the Netherlands. The greatest weights came from Iran and Canada.

Clearly the Australian market is driving this demand. The report also noted that the 2010 National Drug Strategy Household Survey found that 35.4 per cent of Australians aged 14 years or older reported using cannabis at least once in their lives. Nationally there were 62,120 cannabis arrests in 2012-13, which was an increase on the previous reporting period. There are great challenges for the Australian Federal Police and our customs services, particularly with the drugs that are sourced online. Members in this House know the work that I do with online safety and online issues. We look at the websites. We look at what is being offered online. Not only are people taking risks with illegal substances; they usually have no idea at all what they are buying from an online source—or what is actually in those substances that they are buying. These come from illicit drug websites. They have absolutely no idea at all what they are buying.

We have seen what happened with the Silk Road website and what was in the drugs from that side that some of the young people had taken. We saw the US FBI deal with the Silk Road website, but we also saw a range of others emerge quite quickly after that site was taken down. We have seen the sorts of impacts of these substances, the hallucinations—young people who think they can fly—and we have seen people risking their health because they have no idea at all what is in those substances that they are buying online. They have no idea what they are taking and no idea what they are ingesting. They are buying it online thinking there is less chance of being detected, perhaps, or simply because it is cheap. I do not know what is driving them, but they are taking a huge risk with their health.

Organised criminals find that the internet provides an ideal platform for their activities. The online buyer has this false impression that somehow they are anonymous because they are online. They think that perhaps they can safely buy a range of illegal substances, from performance-enhancing drugs right through to cannabis and narcotics. This perception of safety—that it is okay and they will be safe if they take or ingest these substances—can come at a very high physical and mental health cost, which is something that people who buy online have no idea that they could well suffer. It is unregulated, the buyers have no idea what is in the products they are buying and those products are not listed. Even those that claim to be health products and healthy for you—besides those that are illegal—are certainly not listed by the Therapeutic Goods Administration.

Stopping the sale of new psychoactive substances needs a cooperative effort between the Commonwealth, the states and the territories to ensure that health, law enforcement and education initiatives—the things I have just spoken about—are all aligned. This is a critical process. The bill will complement the national framework for new psychoactive substances that the Law, Crime and Community Safety Council announced on 4 July 2014. It also introduces new, international firearms-trafficking offences, amends existing cross-border firearms offences and introduces mandatory minimum sentences of five years' imprisonment for these offences.

The entry of illegal firearms into the Australian community can certainly have a significant impact on the size of the illicit market. This growing pool of firearms can be and is accessed by groups and individuals to commit serious and violent crimes that can result in death and absolute misery. In the current system, criminals could potentially evade firearms-trafficking offences and penalties by breaking firearms down and trafficking their constituent parts. This bill closes that gap as well. It enables the conviction of those who engage in trafficking of firearm parts. It also creates a new offence in the Criminal Code for international trafficking of firearms and firearm parts, complementing those international trafficking offences already in existence in the Customs Act. It extends the current cross-border firearms-trafficking offences in the Criminal Code, which are limited to trafficking within Australia, to capture the trafficking of firearms and firearm parts into and out of Australia. Finally, the bill will introduce mandatory minimum sentences of five years' imprisonment for offenders charged with these offences under the code. However, this mandatory minimum sentence will not carry with it a specified nonparole period, nor will it apply to minors.

The bill also makes changes to the international transfer of prisoners. The International Transfer of Prisoners Act, which currently governs our international transfer scheme, came into operation nearly 20 years ago. It is time to make the existing processes governing this scheme more efficient, timely and simplified. We will streamline this process. There are a number of measures to    improve arrangements governing unviable transfer applications. These include removing the requirement for decisions to be made in unviable cases; implementing time frames for reapplications so that the Attorney-General is not required to consider a reapplication within one year from the date of refusal; and simplifying the process of notifying and seeking the consent of the transferring country.

Australia's International Transfer of Prisoners Scheme promotes the successful rehabilitation and reintegration of a prisoner into society whilst preserving the sentence imposed by the sentencing country in the prisoner's home country. The scheme is important for community safety, as it ensures that prisoners can be reintegrated into that country's community and appropriately monitored, supervised and supported during the enforcement of the sentence.

The bill will also enhance Australia's anti-money-laundering regime through amendments to the Financial Transaction Reports Act that will simplify the obligations of cash dealers under Australia's anti-money-laundering regime, removing duplication and red tape.

In conclusion, the bill contains a range of measures to improve Commonwealth criminal-justice arrangements, including the very important one of banning the importation of all substances that have a psychoactive effect that are not otherwise regulated or banned. Others measures ensure that the Australian Customs and Border Protection officers have appropriate powers to stop these substances at the border, which is of critical importance; correct an error in the definition of a minimum marketable quantity, in respect of a drug analogue, of one or more listed border controlled drugs; introduce new international firearms-trafficking offences, amend existing cross-border firearms offences and introduce mandatory minimum sentences of five years imprisonment; streamline the international transfer of prisoners; amend slavery offences; and validate access by the Australian Federal Police to investigatory powers in designated state airports.

It is all part of how this government is committed to the security and safety of Australian citizens. This bill is very important to Australian families and individuals. I would encourage all families to be aware of what their young people are doing and buying online. The same conditions apply for adults. Be very careful what you are buying. Whether it is supposedly a legal product or something that is supposedly to aid your health, I would encourage you to look at the therapeutic goods list and purchase product from that list only. For those who are seeking to buy illicit drugs online, this bill goes a long way to helping deal with that and giving the powers our law enforcement officers need to deal with those issues.

Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to speak on the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Psychoactive Substances and Other Measures) Bill 2014. I will begin by thanking you, Deputy Speaker Whiteley, for coming in for this speech. I do appreciate it.

Brett Whiteley (Braddon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is my pleasure.

Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I worry a lot about these sorts of matters, illicit drugs and the abuse of legal drugs. It is a major problem now in society. As we know, all around the country there are problems with drugs in our electorates, towns and suburbs. Anywhere, really. It is a great tragedy.

My views are formed by a background of a couple of years in the Federal Police. The member for Forrest mentioned Parcel Post. When I was in the Federal Police 'parcels post' was the reference for part of the drugs squad. It was a common occurrence that Customs made a call to the Federal Police and we ended up going out and looking at what they had found. This is on the public record. They had taken possession of the findings as exhibits. Then there would be the follow-up investigation.

I saw enough to maintain my lifelong view that these sorts of drugs are completely wrong. I have never smoked cannabis or had anything to do with such drugs and never well. I know this is not an opinion held by everybody in this place, but I really do believe that we must continue the fight—the war—against drugs for as long as it takes. If that is generations, then that is generations. If we never win, then we never win. But we should always fight and fight with a determination to win.

Acquiescing and pursuing nothing but a harm-reduction policy is a mistake that will betray future generations. We have to be very careful about mainstreaming illicit drugs or the abuse of legal drugs. We have to be very careful about suggesting in our language or actions that it is okay or not so bad to use illegal drugs or abuse legal drugs. Right now, all the way around this country, there are people who are buoyed and supported by the fact that there are laws that make what I talk of illegal. When pressure is being put on them in schools or other places to buy some or try some, the fact that they are illegal allows them to say very easily—and to be socially acceptable—'No, it is not legal. I will not be involved in it.'

Imagine what it would be like if these were suddenly legalised and it were said, 'We cannot beat illicit drugs so we must just try to minimise the harm.' We would mainstream those problems and weaken the support for people trying to do the right thing. That could be at schools, sporting clubs or anywhere else. It could be steroids, psychoactive substances or anything like that.

The government's proposal will pass through the House hopefully today. We often think about these things. People have already said that these new psychoactive substances are drugs that mimic illicit drugs, particularly cannabis and ecstasy. That has already been said by a lot of people. When we look at the terminologies 'legal high', 'soft drugs' and 'legalisation' we must be very careful. We must act exactly like this bill suggests so that we can combat that and provide the supports, disincentives, for anyone involved.

Of course, it is not just a problem here. Some five years ago, the Irish decided that they needed to act in a similar way. As a result the Garda, the police, found that after those laws came into effect the 120 'head shops' around Dublin, which sold drugs such as these new psychoactive substances in all their various forms, almost disappeared because of the actions of the police, backed up by these good laws. In the last month or so, there have been reports that the UK as a whole is pursuing the same sorts of laws that we are discussing today.

There is nothing soft about this; there is nothing harmless about these drugs. In the last three years, some 140 people have died in connection with the psychoactive substances that we are talking about. Russia also has a problem, and I note that a report in early October said that Russian authorities have linked a batch of these manufactured drugs, actually bought online, to the deaths of at least 13 people and the poisoning of another 300 people in the Siberian city of Surgut and the other city of Kirov. So there is most definitely a threat out there, and the threat is certainly real.

As we have heard through other speeches, up until this legislation passes through this place, the initiative, in many ways, is with the manufacturers. Again, they have that ability to change the substance a little bit so that it is no longer the same substance that was previously prohibited. It is exactly through this bill and the arrangements under part 9.2, 'Psychoactive substances' and 'division 320' of the code that we are going to be able to combat this. Apart from some extra definitions, I certainly appreciate the offence of importation being created, with that five-year prison term and 300 penalty points. There are exclusions; substances will not include food, tobacco products, other goods under the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 et cetera.

The other part that I am particularly drawn to, as well, is that it is not just a matter of the imported substance or products, as you might call them, just being the psychoactive substances; if they purport to be, or suggest that they are, a legal alternative for existing drugs then there will also be an offence and that carries a two-year jail term. I think that that is a particularly good move. Again, I say that I applaud the bill and the changes that it will enact by ensuring that an effective application of offences applies. Together with the cooperative framework by states and territories with plans to cover the health, law enforcement and education initiatives, the plan for combatting this scourge is well commenced.

Of course, the bill is not just about psychoactive substances. I also would speak briefly about changes to gun laws to provide for tougher penalties for crimes involving guns. As we know, around 25 per cent of murders in Australia involve the use of firearms. So it is always an important thing. As a previous speaker reported, since Prime Minister Howard upgraded the gun laws in Australia great progress has been made. The ability of criminals to avoid the harsher penalties of trafficking guns by breaking weapons down into component parts is a loophole that we should be very happy to address through this bill today.

I would also speak on matters regarding the international transfer of prisoners scheme. This is an acknowledgement that there is hope for the rehabilitation of prisoners and a hope that they can be reintegrated into society. This is the case for Australians serving periods of imprisonment here and overseas. Obviously the sentence imposed by the sentencing country must be taken into consideration in the prisoner's home country and preserved. It is an interesting point. A lot is said about rehabilitation of prisoners. I live with the hope and wish that prisoners can be rehabilitated through the right programs within prisons. I call it a hope, and, hopefully, through these changes to the International Transfer of Prisoners Act 1997, that hope can be moved to reality.

I remember some years ago I had the opportunity of speaking to the superintendent of Karnet prison, in Western Australia, which is a lower security prison for those that are passing through and will be released in the not-too-distant future. It is not high security, maximum security or even medium security; it is a low-security prison. At that time, I had had quite a bit of contact with prisoners through my job that I was doing at the time. I said to him, 'What sort of prisoners do you actually get rehabilitated?' because it was always a question that I was wondering about, because it seemed so often that the media reports—as accurate as they are—would say someone has reoffended and is back in jail and that some of the worst crimes are being committed by people that have been released recently. So I asked an expert, 'Who is normally rehabilitated?' Disturbingly, the only group that he said to me was murderers; the only group that can be rehabilitated

I asked him: 'Surely you don't mean serial murderers,' and, of course, he said, 'No, not serial murderers.' But mostly, in that crime, it is a crime of passion, a mistake at the time—a grievous, terrible, tragic mistake, there is no doubt. But at that point there is a one-off, there is hope that they can learn their lesson—after a long period of imprisonment. I said, 'What about people involved with drugs?' and he said, 'No. They always reoffend.' Again, that is his opinion through his experience. I said, 'What about child molesters?' and he said, again, that they have a history of reoffending. We went through a number of different areas and it just seemed like again and again what hope there is is, I think, a little bit on the wishful side.

But, in any case, we live in hope that the right programs can see the person rehabilitated and, through changes that are envisaged in this bill, that those Australians overseas and those of other countries that are imprisoned here can be rehabilitated and sent back to their country to serve the remaining part of their sentence. Yes, we live in hope there. In conclusion, I looked through this bill and the aspects of it and it is significant compared to so much of what we see come through here. I see that there is everything to be supported here. It is a good way forward. The fight against drugs must be continued, and that is at the forefront of this bill. The other measures that make it up are well and truly worthy of our support. So, in final conclusion, I completely endorse the substance of this bill and I look forward to it passing at the first available opportunity.

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no greater duty of a member in this place than to do everything humanly possible to ensure the personal safety of our constituents and our communities. The Crimes Legislation Amendment (Psychoactive Substances and Other Measures) Bill 2014 is a well-reasoned, timely and positive step in that direction, and it is for this reason that I give it my wholehearted support. This bill contains a suite of measures aimed at preventing and deterring crime. Crime is an issue prevalent in all electorates around the nation. Regardless of how safe or unsafe a neighbourhood might seem, all communities know only too well the effects of crime, one way or another.

The same can be said of another great scourge of the modern world: the damage associated with substance abuse and drug addiction. As a father, I know only too well the concerns that grip any parent when he or she thinks about the topic of drugs and crime. Not that I would ever suspect my children—or anyone's children, for that matter—of turning to it, but the fear of the unknown and the slightest possible risk always resonates with a parent. After all, the most cautious and law-abiding citizen still feels the damning and hurtful impact of crime and substance abuse. Crime and substance abuse is not just a concern for those directly involved. Streets, suburbs and entire communities can feel its effects. It can lead to the breakup of families and societal decay. Worst of all, substance abuse and crime can and does cost lives. It preys on the vulnerable—the young, the old—or anyone who falls in its path.

That is why the government is working vigorously to fight against crime and against those that peddle illicit substances and to help those that fall victim to its grasp. This is why I support this bill and the measures within it. Most significant to me are the steps taken to target the growth of new psychoactive substances, as well as new laws aimed at tightening the trade in illegal firearms and parts. These measures are being introduced in accordance with the promise the government made to the people at the last election to be tough on crime and to help create safer communities for all.

In regard to new psychoactive drugs, I applaud the government's efforts in stemming the flow of substances that purport to provide legal highs. These substances are known to be dangerous and have been linked to many tragic incidents before. We owe it to the mothers and fathers of Australia to eradicate any foothold this dangerous psychoactive substance industry gets in this country. At this moment, new psychoactive substances are being manufactured intentionally to work around the prohibitions of illicit drugs. Some chemistry here and there and you can manufacture a substance that may have the same effect on the mind and the body as LSD. However, despite having similar hallucinogenic effects, these new psychoactive substances may be perfectly legal at the moment to buy and sell.

Our agencies are working endlessly to identify and prohibit potentially harmful substances. However, it is never that easy. Sadly, it often takes a tragedy to identify harmful substances, locate their suppliers and take them off our streets. In 2012 and 2013, for example, two teenagers from New South Wales tragically died following their consumption of a substance known as NBOMe. This substance had similar hallucinogenic effects to LSD and was clearly dangerous. However, it could be sold legally until the tragedy occurred.

The measures in this bill will stop the supply of these substances and, as such, stop them from being sold legally in stores and tobacconists across the country. To do so, this bill will introduce offences to the Criminal Code to ban the importation of substances based on their psychoactive effect and where they are presented as alternatives to illicit drugs. This is necessary as these substances are hardly ever manufactured in Australia. We need to stop the flow of these substances at the border to protect our own constituents from the misleading and harmful substances. This bill will not cause undue inconvenience to those who may legitimately need to import such substances. Certain foods and medicines, and industrial, agricultural and veterinary chemicals, may be psychoactive; however, they have legitimate purposes and, when used for their proper purpose, are largely safe. If the authority suspects someone is importing these new psychoactive substances, then officers of the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service and the Australian Federal Police will be authorised to seize and destroy them before they can reach the market. To ensure no-one has imported substances wrongfully seized and destroyed, affected persons will be entitled to a proper review and can challenge any seizures made. In doing so, they will have to prove they are importing the substances for legitimate purposes. If they cannot prove there is a legitimate reason for their importation they will be destroyed for good, before any more lives can be ruined by these wicked substances. Wicked may seem like a strong word, but this truly is a serious issue that requires urgent action.

To illustrate the problem of new psychoactive substances, consider this: the current approach simply would not stand if we replaced the drugs in question with alcohol. Imagine that some cunning beverage peddler pioneers a drink that mimics the effects of alcohol but contains not a single drop of it. With no alcohol present, this drink would fall outside the current legal framework that regulates the sale and consumption of intoxicating beverages. There goes the age restriction; there goes the drink-driving prohibition; there go the public prohibition laws. Even though the laws are clearly in place to target the effects of intoxication, they would be useless against these faux beers because they do not exactly fit the wording of the legislation. This hypothetical exercise applies perfectly to psychoactive drugs.

While the current legislation does well to target harmful substances already classified as illicit drugs, the scope of the legislation is sadly too narrow to include the chemical structures of these new psychoactive substances. This is exactly the reason we need the provisions of this bill, as these new psychoactive substances are specifically designed to work around the legislation and provide legal ways to get a high. The drug-marketing machine has been hard at work to sell these legal highs. According to the New South Wales police, misleading names include 'herbal highs', 'bath salts' or 'plant food'. Regardless of how the legal drug dealers disguise their products, the truth of the matter remains that these substances are still dangerous. One of the reasons they are dangerous comes down to how they are marketed.

Whether we are winning or not, we are fighting a war on drugs. Key to this has been the information war, which I think we can say we are winning. People know drugs can be harmful to them. People know the risk of serious injury or death that can come from their high. People know that safer drugs such as marijuana can still cause serious mental harm, or be a gateway drug to more dangerous drugs out there at the very least. People know they are illegal and that willingly dealing with them could lead to serious criminal charges. Essentially, people know that drugs, in the main, are dangerous and best avoided. Herein lies the problem with these new psychoactive substances: these substances, while having the same effect as illicit drugs, can still at times be legal. This gives the dealers a free pass to the market to sell their wares, as the substances' legality can be taken to imply that the substances are safe, or at least somehow less harmful than the illicit drugs whose effects they are supposed to replicate. Of similar concern is the inference some may draw that, if a substance is legal, it therefore must have been through some form of testing or approval. This is sadly not the case. These new psychoactive substances are nothing more than an untested cocktail of potentially dangerous chemicals.

This bill will stop people from importing such dangerous and untested substances. By doing so we will be protecting our children from the harms of potentially dangerous and lethal substances. This is our chance to nip this potential problem in the bud before it grows too large. With this bill we can stop the deadly trade in new psychoactive substances. We can prevent future harm, loss and grief. Considering how great a challenge it has been to bring illicit drugs under control, anything we can now do to prevent another problem emerging is a win for the country.

The other big issue this bill tackles is the lingering problem of the illegal firearms trade and gun related crime. First and foremost, this bill will see the introduction of a mandatory minimum five-year sentence for those convicted of firearms trafficking offences under the Criminal Code. This will send a clear message to those currently engaged in the illegal firearms trade, or those who may one day enter into this illegal activity, that it is a serious offence and will be dealt with by the courts in a serious manner. According to the Australian Crime Commission, there were 250,000 long arms and 10,000 handguns in the illicit firearms market in 2012. In that same year, the ABS reported that there were 454 murders in this country. Firearms were used in 25 per cent of these murders, meaning at least 113 people lost their lives to firearms. This is a frightening statistic when you consider that only a handful of these illicit firearms get into the hands of hardened criminals to make an impact. The hundreds of thousands of illicit firearms in the market and the impact they make on national crime rates makes it ever more clear that action needs to be taken here. These measures are ever more timely considering the current national security climate, the rise of Islamic extremism and the threat of terrorism at home and abroad. This bill goes further to tackle the illicit gun trade by also targeting those that traffic prohibited firearms, and firearms parts, into and out of Australia. New offences in the Criminal Code will complement existing international trafficking offences in the Customs Act.

These offences will not only make the smuggling of prohibited firearms an offence under the Criminal Code but will also criminalise the traffic in firearms parts. Currently, criminals have been able to work around current legislation by breaking down firearms and trafficking their constituent parts to be reassembled in Australia. Firearms can be quite durable and a weapon slowly smuggled into Australia part by part could survive as a lethal weapon for decades once assembled. These weapons could then find their way into the wrong hands, the hardest criminals and others with evil intentions. As a country, we have already done so much to prevent criminal and nefarious elements accessing firearms and we are often recognised internationally for our success in this area.

Following the heartbreak of the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, Prime Minister Howard was quick to act in our national interest. He implemented brave reforms in the area of firearm regulations prohibiting the lethal automatic long arms that had previously caused so much pain and suffering. This has been an overwhelming success. Today we can thank our former Prime Minister for his work in this area. This bill continues that work and strives further towards preventing firearms getting into hands that should never grasp them.

The bill sends a clear message that engaging in illegal firearms trade is a serious matter and will be treated as such from here on. By closing potential loopholes around the trafficking of firearm parts, we are cutting off yet another aspect of the illegal gun trade. There will be one less gun available for organised crime with every gun that we stop illegally entering the country.

All of this is being done in keeping with the promise that we took to the electorate last year. I look forward to reporting back to my constituents that with the passage of this bill we will have made good on our promise to the people of Australia. The same goes for the prohibition of the importation of psychoactive substances. The days of these drugs being sold in our stores are over. The safer, unsuspecting customers— (Time expired)

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In concluding this debate with near unanimous support for the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Psychoactive Substances and Other Measures) Bill 2014, I want to observe that we are in a global battle against psychoactive substances, not just a national one or even a state one. Synthetic drugs are taking an ever-increasing share of the drug problem. We saw heroin and cocaine were popular in the 70s and 80s. They were replaced in the 90s where there could not be a party without there being a pill. Methamphetamines replaced amphetamines and now, ultimately, they have been replaced by what we refer to as designers drugs. It is important that the government can respond to the ever-increasing threat. It is a complex and fast-changing threat.

We have been waiting a very long time for legislation that takes a standards based approach to these substances and that identifies not just individual molecular threats to the health of young people and people who ingest them but identifies that any substance that is not legitimately a pharmaceutical or a food that attempts in some way to create a similar effect to an illegal drug is just as illegal as the illegal drug itself. We are tired of our law enforcement officers having to consume taxpayer funded resources to chase people who abuse these substances at enormous cost to the public only to have the recipe slightly changed by the drug cook and then those supplying the substances can walk scot-free. We have an enormous scope and variety in these NPSs, new psychoactive substances. They appear to be originating predominantly from parts of Asia and West Africa. These networks are only just being understood now by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Increasingly, a large amount of product destined for Europe is going through Turkey. West Africa is increasingly providing to the dominant global market of South-East Asia and South Asia. Still the markets in Hong Kong, Japan and China are increasingly seeing the bulk of the trade. Around 36 tonnes of this material was intercepted by global authorities but that is really only the tip of the iceberg. What we know is that increasingly Japan and Malaysia are the targets. Wherever South-East Asia establishes a supply, sure as you can be certain, Australia will be a target market as well. Ketamine is another popular drug traditionally well known to us in Australia as a veterinary anaesthetic but still abused, particularly by our near northern neighbours.

Precisely what did Queensland—the state that, under Campbell Newman, led the way as part of the safer night out strategy—do to come up with a legislative solution that other states have started to follow? It was the important addition of a clause that any dangerous drug that intends to have a substantially similar pharmacological effect to a scheduled drug should be identified as dangerous and is illegal under section 4C of the Drugs Misuse Act 1986. This was a very important change. No longer did we have this invidious delay between the drug being cooked up and hitting the market and the authorities needing to respond legislatively. That delay no longer exists.

We have also seen in Queensland some substantial seizures in both Townsville last year and in Mount Isa under operation Lima Evergreen and Lima Steward. We need to be able to ban these products immediately, as soon as they hit the market. As we said: when you see hoof prints, you do not think of zebras. They are clearly drugs that are being abused and used by the same target market. People are taking an extraordinary risk when they consume them.

This surge has just led to literally hundreds of these products. As I said, a simple molecular manipulation is enough to create a new product, but, of course, then it is mixed up in varying compositions. So we have the ridiculous situation where someone can take a simple leaf or a herb, take hand sprayer, spray the psychoactive ingredient over it, chop it up and press it into a pill. It is that simple but it is also unpredictable. The product that you might have had safely yesterday with the same name is no longer necessarily safe tomorrow.

What we have is an inability to identify a life-threatening substance that has been consumed and we are powerless to administer any sort of ban to prevent it from continually being supplied. So we need to be able to act quickly, particularly with drugs like with mephedrone where there is now an international agreement thanks to the UK approaching the United Nations. There are now 348 of these products reported globally, and I am sure even that number is old. We saw the total number of substances mimicking cannabis alone double from 60 to 110 in just one year between 2012 and 2013. So it is important that we are standing here to stop the tragic deaths.

We are not going to stop people experimenting. Every behavioural psychologist will tell you that between the ages of 15 and 25 as the frontal lobe develops, young people will take great risks at that time of their life. All we can do as a society is delay the point at which that experimentation occurs and to reduce the intensity of it. The common wisdom that is provided—and I know that it is schoolies week right now so the Red Frog teams around the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast will be working very hard even as we speak—is to stay in groups, stick with your friends, do not get isolated and do not do drugs. It is simply the wrong place with no supports. Do not take those risks at any time, particularly at schoolies, where you are most likely to be less risk-averse.

We need to ban the importation of these substances. That is obvious, and the bill does that. But we are a part of a global market; the demand is in Australia and so too will be the importation. The sophistication of these measures is extraordinary. Smugglers are now able to purchase two postcards; use the obverse sides of two postcards, cutting them down to be thinner; place some gladwrap in between the two postcards; iron some illegal drug in between the two sides of the postcard, melding them together; and simply post drugs, using standard delivery systems. We need to be able to stop, seize and destroy this immediately—and the federal government gives us that option with this legislation tonight, supporting the states, who have been calling for it for a very long time, asking for federal support with preventing importation.

I want to mention briefly that, regardless of the name of these products, what you bought yesterday is not necessarily what you will buy tomorrow. The most common active ingredient was initially BZP, benzylpiperazine, but also trifluoromethylphenylpiperazine, piper nigrum, phenylalanine, tryptophan and tyracine. They were the active ingredients initially; now, we have moved on to BZP-free drugs. These are also an increasing concern.

Why are these drugs so dangerous? If they are just mimicking cannabis, isn't the easy solution to simply legalise cannabis? The answer is no. For every reason that most of us understand in here, cannabis is an extraordinarily dangerous drug. There is a no safe dose of that drug. We should never be contemplating the legalisation of it, despite what some states in the United States may well be doing.

More importantly, there are unique characteristics of these synthetic cannabinoids that make them particularly dangerous. The first one is the absence of cannabidiol, which has some moderating impact on the tetrahydrocannabinol. The second one is that it is a full rather than a partial agonist, meaning that it acts on the CD receptors with a 100 per cent effect—and the CD receptors are very common through the brain, neurologists tell me. Last of all, even the metabolites of these artificial cannabis products still retain some kind of effectiveness. The great benefit of cannabis is that the active ingredient, once broken down, is no longer effective. That is not the case with these. So we take an extraordinary risk when we consume these artificial cannabinoids.

What Queensland has done with artificial drugs is a lesson to the rest of the country. What they have done with their Safe Night Out strategy is even more audacious and bold. Australians understand that it is utterly unacceptable for people of any age to be out in a drinking precinct, being a danger to themselves and then needing the health system to bail them out; or being a danger to others through alcohol-fuelled violence and hospital admissions.

It is not good enough to simply employ more police on double time, running around the streets picking these people up and trying to keep them apart; while the offenders refuse move-on orders, costing huge amounts of taxpayers' money—none of which is recouped from them. It is not good enough to simply give them a suspended sentence. It is time for some serious law reform in this area. It is utterly unacceptable that these people do not pay the costs of their behaviour. If they are a threat to the lives and the health of others, they need to be charged for it. If they are delaying, diverting or consuming police and ambulance resources through drug-affected behaviour, they need to be charged for it.

Queensland has taken the first tentative but significant steps in this area with their 'sober safe' centres. If you are deemed to be in that state of mind, you can be picked up by a police officer and not taken through that extraordinarily complex piece of paperwork that involves detaining, arresting, calling into court and running through the legal system. This is clearly something not dissimilar to a basic infringement. If you are consuming police resources, threatening the life or health of someone else and are clearly a danger to the people around you, Queensland will take you to 'sober safe' centres. Offenders will pay a proportion of the cost of being detained before they are released. It is a very important step in that direction.

Sure, these are stronger penalties, but nothing up until now has really worked very well. If I am a parent and I think my children are in safe drinking areas, I have the right to expect that they will come home the next morning alive. That is a basic expectation. It is inadequate that Australia and a handful of countries cannot manage these illegal drugs and risky alcohol-consuming behaviour.

We are working hard with government advertising, but 20 years of that has not made a jot of difference. We have had the alcohol industry onboard working hard—although obviously in a conflicted situation—and doing their best to ensure responsible drinking in venues and making sure there is not a single pill in these places. Ultimately, I think that initiatives like DrinkWise and new apps are encouraging. We need people saying hello to Sunday morning; we need people knowing that you can drink responsibly and still be cool. Ultimately, it simply is not good enough to be carried out by an ambulance or arrested by a policeman—regarding that as being some rite of passage.

We have an opportunity here as a federal government: to prevent the importation of these drugs, to ensure that we seize these products and to clearly identify that these are illicit substances even if you choose to tweak the molecule. This federal legislation does that, and I congratulate the government for its action.

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Crimes Legislation Amendment (Psychoactive Substances and Other Measures) Bill 2014 delivers on the government's continuing commitment to combating drugs and gun-related crime. This bill will also ensure that Australia's criminal justice arrangements for the international transfer of prisoners, anti-money laundering and counterterrorism regime and the investigation and prosecution of slavery offences remain up to date and effective.

The member for Batman, when he was not repeating the second reading speech verbatim, stated that the Labor Party supports the ban on psychoactive substances because they 'wrote it'. This is incorrect. Like many important areas of reform, the previous Labor government talked about the issue but never actually delivered. They had six years of government to introduce legislation of this type, and they did not. The coalition has delivered on this important priority.

Since coming to office, the government has developed a bill that strikes the right balance between stopping new synthetic drugs and allowing legitimate trade. The bill will implement a carefully targeted and refined ban on illegitimate psychoactive substances; one that is centred on protecting the Australian community from this scourge but does not add to the regulatory burden of an already complex border environment. The government finalised this approach after a long period of consultation within government and following consultation with the community.

The opposition have also raised concerns about the introduction of mandatory minimum sentences for new and existing firearms trafficking offences in the Criminal Code, detailed in schedule 2 of the bill. The introduction of mandatory minimum sentences of five years imprisonment for firearms trafficking offences is consistent with the government's commitment to pursue a strong and nationally consistent approach to gun crime. The introduction of the penalty was part of a suite of election commitments made in the government's policy to tackle crime, in which we detailed a range of measures to stop illegal guns and drugs at the border. This change makes the penalties for firearms trafficking more proportionate to the level of harm the offence can have on the community. As the member for Dobell has rightfully pointed out in her speech, Australia is unfortunately no stranger to violent gun crime.

The previous Howard government made landmark changes to gun ownership which made our community safer. This government recognises the harm that illegal gun ownership and trafficking has on our community; this is why we believe that tougher penalties and mandatory minimum sentences are appropriate to further tackle the use of firearms by violent criminals. The government recognises and respects the importance of preserving a court's discretion in sentencing and the court's ability to take into account the particular circumstances of the offence and the offender. Therefore, the mandatory minimum will not apply to a person who was under the age of 18 when the offence was committed and it does not impose a non-parole period.

I have noted the concerns raised by the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee and the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights in relation to mandatory minimum sentences. In response to these concerns, the Minister for Justice has agreed to amend the explanatory memorandum for the bill to note that:

…the mandatory minimum sentence is not intended as a guide to the non-parole period, which in some cases may differ significantly from the head sentence.

The minister is satisfied that this is sufficient to address the concerns of the committees. The minister also notes that the validity of mandatory minimum penalties for aggravated people smuggling cases in the Migration Act were upheld as constitutionally valid the High Court case referring to Magaming v The Queen. The appellant's argument that the imposition of these penalties was arbitrary and non-judicial was not successful.

In conclusion, the bill will reduce the availability of new psychoactive substances by banning their importation and allowing Australian Customs and Border Protection Service officers and Australian Federal Police officers to stop, seize and destroy these substances where they are detected. This will ensure that the drug laws keep pace with new and emerging substances where they are presented as alternatives to illicit drugs. The bill also demonstrates the seriousness with which this government considers firearm trafficking and the gravity of supplying firearms and firearms parts to the illicit market by creating a more comprehensive set of firearm offences and penalties.

Australia's International Transfer of Prisoners Scheme is important for community safety, as it ensures that prisoners can be reintegrated into that country's community and appropriately monitored, supervised and supported during the enforcement of their sentence. The bill will make existing processes governing this scheme more efficient, timely and simplified, while appropriately maintaining prisoners' rights.

This bill will also make clear that slavery offences within Commonwealth criminal law have universal jurisdiction. Slavery amongst the most abhorrent of all crimes and this amendment will ensure that Australian law enforcement agencies have the appropriate tools to target this crime wherever it occurs. In addition, the bill will take steps to improve Australia's anti-money laundering regime by enhancing the ability of the Australian Taxation Office to catch tax cheats and bolster the budget's bottom line.

I commend this bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.