Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Labor will not be opposing these bills, but the bills are only necessary because of problems and issues with the government's handling of the legislation surrounding the national scheme.

In February this year, parliament passed the Narcotic Drugs Amendment Bill 2016, which allowed for the establishment of a national scheme for access to medicinal cannabis. Labor did support that legislation at the time. We had been very much at the forefront of a push for a national scheme so that we could ensure that access to medicinal cannabis was equal regardless of where you lived across this vast country. But here we are now, some six months later, and we learn through this legislation of existing loopholes and errors that these bills have been drafted to fix. When you look at what those errors or loopholes are, it is very clear that these issues should have been looked at earlier, and should have been identified through the earlier phases of the work that was done on the bill passed back in February this year. These are things such as the need to protect sensitive law enforcement information that is available to determine whether an applicant for a cannabis licence is a fit and proper person—that should have been foreseen; the need to guard against cannabis licences transferring from one person to another, for example, when a business changes hands—again, this could have been foreseen in earlier phases of the work; and the fact that enabling laws were required to recover the cost of regulating the new medicinal cannabis industry. All of these things should have been part of earlier phases of policy work prior to the original legislation coming into force.

We know that these issues—as identified and as covered off in this amending bill—could have real consequences. The Minister for Health herself has said:

It is important that the government is able to communicate on the full regulatory costs of this scheme as soon as possible in order to allow potential applicants to plan their businesses and complete their applications.

But here we are, some time after—in fact, 12 days after—the start of the national scheme on 30 October.

We will support these bills because they address some of those problems that have been identified, and because Labor supports the need for a national scheme. That is why we supported the original legislation in February. For some, that decision could have been controversial, but Labor was driven by the science and the compassion, particularly of those individuals have been lobbying hard for these laws to be put in place. We firmly believe the time has come for a national scheme.

This proposed legislation addresses some problems with that national scheme. It is now over to the government to get everything in order to make sure that the national scheme works, and that it is subjected to no further delays. We support these bills. We wish that these problems had been dealt with earlier, in the February legislation, but we accept that the problems were identified later and that these bills address those problems. As such, we will be supporting the bills today.