Drug and Alcohol Testing

The Hon. T.J. STEPHENS (15:08): Supplementary: does the minister actually know the process by which police conduct drug testing? Does every patrol car have the ability to drug test? Is there only one unit? Are there two units? Are there five units? Please explain to the chamber how these drug tests take place.

The Hon. P. MALINAUSKAS (Minister for Police, Minister for Correctional Services, Minister for Emergency Services, Minister for Road Safety) (15:08): My understanding is that the majority of drug driving tests are conducted as a result of a drug driving operation similar to an RBT, but in terms of who does it, where it is done and the times at which it is done, that is being done on an intelligence-based policing model. With respect to the testing regime itself, it is entirely different to drink driving, in that the nature of the test itself is different in terms of its detection. With drug driving, it simply detects a presence as distinct from detecting the level of impairment.

With drink driving there is technology in place for a testing regime through breath analysis and a subsequent test following that to be able to test the level of impairment. My advice is that that technology does not currently exist or hasn't been in existence and been practised or utilised, basically, anywhere in the world. Rather, what is tested for here and in all Australian jurisdictions is the presence of drugs in the system as distinct from the level of impairment.

The nature of the test is as follows—and if my memory serves me correctly, I have articulated this in this place before—normally a drug driver is pulled over, they submit a test at the roadside and if that delivers a positive result then there is a secondary test conducted on site, normally in the bus or the van, so to speak, which is a second analysis and that, again, adds another degree of robustness to the initial test. If that delivers a positive result, that initiates a third test to be conducted forensically. It is a three-stage process.

It may be the case that that process needs to be changed in order to maximise efficiency and also by the changing nature of technology, but that is the three-test process that currently applies for the overall majority, if not all, drug driving tests that occur in this state.