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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
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Statutes Amendment (Drink and Drug Driving) Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 27 September 2017.)

Mr KNOLL (Schubert) (12:05): I rise to continue my contribution on the drink and drug driving bill, and in doing so I want to break down my contribution into four main areas. The first is identifying the scope of the drug problem that we have in Australia and South Australia. The second is looking at other ways that we could help to enhance the drink and drug driving bill and some associated policy measures that we think would actually help to improve that. I will then go through a discussion of the bill and the amendments because the bill that has come before our house is a bill that has had a number of amendments in the Legislative Council.

I will say from the outset that we like the bill as it has come from the Legislative Council. I am not sure that the government will see fit to, but we would love for that version of the bill to pass unamended. Having said that, I know that the minister has filed three tranches of amendments, so we will get to those in committee and have our discussions.

I talked in my previous remarks about alcohol and drug deaths in South Australia and the fact that overall the number of alcohol-related deaths has been falling in absolute terms and the number of people dying whilst driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs has held steady at somewhere between 10 and 15 persons per year. There are a couple of large national studies that really help to identify the problem and also some of the specific problems that we in South Australia face.

As I go through these statistics, the level of the problem we have here is quite remarkable, and I know that it is why the government has brought the bill to this place. It is also why we need to look at not only these measures but a broader range of measures in how we deal with drink and drug driving. The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission conducted an Illicit Drug Data Report in 2015-16. Chris Dawson APM is the CEO of the Criminal Intelligence Commission. At the beginning of the report, he essentially talks about the way that the illicit drug trade is evolving and the new challenges that presents for law enforcement and also legislators. He says:

The illicit drug market continues to evolve and diversify, presenting new and unique challenges for law enforcement, policymakers and the community. The threat and harm posed by illicit drugs to the Australian community is ever-growing and we need to continue to work collaboratively to combat both the supply and demand for illicit drugs in Australia.

Serious and organised criminals are at the centre of Australia's illicit drug market, motivated by greed, power and profit. We know that serious and organised crime groups continue to generate significant profits from the sale of illicit substances, with the price paid for illicit drugs in Australia among the highest in the world.

I suppose that is one of those times when we would not mind having the highest prices in the world, unlike electricity. He continues:

As such, the importation, manufacture, cultivation and distribution of illicit drugs and related precursors in Australia remain a focal point of Government, law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

The nature of drug use and drug importation in Australia is changing and presents us with new challenges, especially in relation to the way these new drugs that are coming onto the market impact upon our society. The executive summary goes on to say:

The report presents illicit drug data from a variety of sources, including law enforcement, health and academia. The Illicit Drug Data Report (IDDR) is the only report of its type in Australia and provides an important evidence base to assist decision makers—

I suppose that means us—

in the development of strategies to combat the threat posed by illicit drugs.

They talk about numerous instances of record detections at the Australian border this reporting period, with the number of cannabis, cocaine, gamma butyrolactone (GBL), GHB and ketamine detections in 2015-16 the highest on record. This does not seem to be a war that we are winning at the moment.

It goes on to say that the number of illicit drug seizures has actually increased by 84.7 per cent over the past decade, from 62,496 in 2006-07 to 115,421 in 2015-16, and that the number of illicit drug seizures increased 9 per cent in this reporting period alone. In one year, we have seen a 9 per cent increase in the number of illicit drug seizures, which is one of the methods by which we measure the level of the drug problem in this country.

Essentially, in this reporting period we have seen an increase from the 105,862 in the 2014-15 year. In this reporting period, cannabis accounted for the greatest proportion of the number of national illicit drug seizures, followed by amphetamine-type stimulants, other and unknown drugs, cocaine, heroin and other opioids. Cannabis and ATS are the two top drugs, and they are the two of the three drugs that we are really trying to attack and get at when it comes to this drink and drug driving bill.

The weight of illicit drugs seized nationally has increased by 78.6 per cent over the past decade, from 11.7 tonnes in 2006-07 to 21 tonnes in 2015-16. That is the fourth highest weight on record. The report goes on to say that the number of illicit drug arrests has increased by 87.6 per cent over the past decade, from 82,389 in 2006-07 to a record 154,538 in 2015-16. National illicit drug arrests increased 15.4 per cent in this reporting period, from 133,926 arrests reported in 2014-15. In one year, we have seen a 15 per cent increase in the number of illicit drug arrests in this country. Again, this is not a war that we are winning; in fact, it seems to be a war that we are losing.

The number of clandestine laboratories detected nationally has increased 61.5 per cent over the past decade, from 356 in 2006-07 to 575 in 2015-16, and the number of clandestine labs detected nationally decreased 13.8 per cent this reporting period—that is good news—from the 667 detections in 2014-15. It goes on to say that methylamphetamine remains the main drug produced in labs detected nationally and that the majority of clandestine labs detected in Australia continue to be addict-based and located in regional areas. That has important implications, especially in South Australia.

Our leader, the member for Dunstan, yesterday stood up in front of the police conference and talked through a number of issues that we are dealing with in South Australia. He was very quick to commend SAPOL and the broader law enforcement community for the work they have been able to do to reduce the rate of offending and reduce the number of arrests in certain areas, especially related to property crime and crimes against the person. It seems that in a number of measures we have been able to make inroads into the crime rate in South Australia and that, in fact, over the past decade to 15 years we have seen a continued decrease in some of those things.

When I look at the police annual report for 2015-16, what I see most clearly is that the one area we are not doing well in is the rate of illicit drug offending in South Australia. It is really a sore point when it comes to our efforts to reduce crime and improve our community and it is why we need to have a broader suite of measures to deal with these issues.

If I delve deeply into the report, it has some interesting statistics about what our specific problems are in South Australia. We know that the drink and drug driving bill deals with alcohol; it also deals with MDMA, ATS and cannabis. They are the three that we need to deal with in South Australia. If we look at the number of illicit drug seizures as a proportion of total seizures by state and territory in this Illicit Drug Data Report, we see that South Australia is the only state where ATS (amphetamine-type stimulants) accounted for the greatest proportion of the number of illicit drug seizures.

Cannabis accounted for the greatest proportion of illegal drugs seized in all states and territories in 2015-16. In South Australia, we have an ice problem. Everywhere else in the country, cannabis is very much the most common drug that is seized, especially when we look at Queensland, Tasmania and Northern Territory, three states where cannabis far and away is the greatest proportion of total seizures. South Australia is the only state where ATS is the biggest issue. We have an ice problem. In South Australia, 66.9 per cent of the number of illicit drug seizures related to ATS, the highest proportion recorded by any state or territory.

The report goes on to talk about the number of seizures and the weight in grams of the drugs that are seized. Essentially, for amphetamine-type stimulants we saw in 2015-16 that state police and other law enforcement were able to seize 18½ kilos of ATS and that the AFP (the federal police) were able to seize 63.727 kilograms of amphetamine-type stimulants. I was lucky enough to be granted permission by the Attorney-General to go to the Forensic Science SA lab and look through some of the processes they go through to determine drugs and their purity and type. It is quite important and relevant to this bill because we are essentially now asking forensics to undertake the stage 2 drug analysis that has previously been done by police on site.

Having a look through that facility really did open my eyes. As somebody who has basically had no interaction with illicit drugs in my lifetime and essentially—

Mr Odenwalder: No interaction?

Mr KNOLL: —yes, that's right, no interaction with drugs in my lifetime—to have a look at what these things actually look like, the scariest thing that happened was when we went to the area where they detect certain drugs but also detect the purity level of certain drugs. An interesting comment made by one of the lab technicians was, 'We very rarely these days actually test for the purity of ice because over previous decades the clandestine labs and the stuff that is being imported is now of such purity that we know that all of the stuff is 80 or 90 per cent pure.' Essentially, the production of these drugs has actually become more professional and more sophisticated.

They went to this locker, which was locked up in the corner, and they pulled out four one-kilo bags of what looked like rock salt. They showed them to me (I did not get to hold them, not that I really had a great desire to) and said, 'This little bag,' of what looked like rock salt, 'is essentially a million dollars' worth of ice'. We are talking here about 18½ kilos seized by SAPOL and 63 and a bit kilos seized by the AFP. We are talking about basically just over $80 million worth of ice that was seized in 2015-16. We have an ice problem in South Australia.

The report goes on to talk about cannabis and that essentially the state police were able to seize, in 456 seizures, 1.114 tonnes of cannabis. That is a lot of marijuana in one year—1,114 kilos of cannabis. That is a phenomenal effort and a real credit to SAPOL and the work they do, but it also goes a long way to show the problem we have here in South Australia. Looking at this, it actually rates us as having the third highest amount of cannabis seized.

Victoria had the most at about 1½ tonnes, New South Wales came in second at about 1.45 tonnes and then we came in third at 1.114 tonnes. In relation to ATS, a lot the seizures were of smaller size; in fact, SAPOL achieved 1,148 individual seizures of ATS. The AFP had only 18 for their 63 kilos, which obviously shows the size of the busts that they are going after. It goes on to talk about heroin seizures, which were really quite small (only 345 grams); although the comparative havoc that heroin can cause gram for gram is a lot worse. There was not much there for other opioids.

This report, which has a good couple of hundred pages, showed me the specific challenges we have in our state and the specific challenges we need to address. Speaking to police across all levels and spheres, the ice problem is of personal importance to them because ice is different from other drugs. Cannabis tends to make people a bit more mellow and a bit more relaxed, cocaine has the complete opposite effect, but ice is known to make people exhibit different behaviours—more angry and violent behaviours, more oppositional behaviours—and this is what creates the issue for our police.

That is one of the reasons why yesterday our leader, the member for Dunstan, announced that we are going to have an accelerated trial into light-armoured vests because when we are asking our police to go into these houses to search for these clandestine drug labs, to search for drugs, they are going to come across those who are addicted to ice. In the wrong context, at the wrong time and at the wrong level of their drug taking, our police are the ones who are going to be at the forefront of dealing with the aggressive and violent behaviours of those on ice, so giving them the tools to keep themselves safe during those times is extremely important.

We know that whilst gun violence is still an issue in South Australia, it is far outweighed by the level of knife attacks and other associated attacks upon our police, so we know that light-armoured vests that will be stab-proof as well as bulletproof for low-calibre guns are extremely important, and they are durable and wearable and deal with the South Australian climate which, as we are about to experience again, is dry and hot and unforgiving, so our police should have them.

The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission does some other important and groundbreaking work in relation to the National Wastewater Drug Monitoring Program. In South Australia, we have eight different sites: four in the city, as I understand it, and four in the country where our wastewater (essentially, our sewage) is monitored and tested to see what level of drugs exist in those waste streams.

That is quite important because a lot of indicators that are talked about in the Illicit Drug Data Report relate to seizures, the identification of clandestine labs and the number of arrests. Whilst they are important indicators, there are known unknowns that do not allow us to identify fully the scope of what happens in there because for everyone who is arrested, I am sure there are a number of people out there who are not arrested. For every clandestine lab that is detected, there are more that go undetected. For every seizure made by SAPOL or the AFP, there are drugs that get through our system: they get onto our streets and they wreak havoc with people across all age spectrums in our state.

Looking at wastewater streams is a more honest way to look at the drug problem we have in South Australia and more broadly in Australia. It is an important piece of work and one that we support and one that I would like to now quote in defining the problem that exists in South Australia. If I look at the population weighted average annual consumption of oxycodone in Adelaide—and these figures all come from Drug and Alcohol Services South Australia (DASSA)— it shows that we have seen an increasing use of oxycodone in Adelaide since 2011. In fact, we have seen over a tripling up until 2015, but thankfully there was a drop in 2016. That is a welcome drop, but it is still well above when the data was first collected and something we need to be vigilant about.

The same goes for fentanyl, where we have seen an increase up until 2015 but a decrease in 2016. It is rather minor drug use. We have seen some real ability to decrease the consumption of methylone and mephedrone in Adelaide, and that is extremely important work and quite valuable.

Moving on to the more major drugs (not that it is relevant to this), nicotine consumption in regional South Australia rates the second highest in Australia, well above the regional national average and certainly above the entire national average. We are beaten only by the Northern Territory, which is by far and away the worst in the country. Nicotine use in metropolitan areas in South Australia is below the national average and below the capital city average, which is welcome. Hopefully, more work can be done towards that.

Alcohol consumption results are quite interesting. These are probably results that go against what I think most of us here would suggest is the hypothesis of alcohol consumption in South Australia. Again the Northern Territory is way out in front, well over double the rate of the estimated alcohol consumption in terms of litres per thousand people per day. South Australia on the capital average is below the national capital average, and the regional South Australian average for alcohol consumption is about half of the regional average across regional Australia.

Basically, this data says that people in metropolitan South Australia consume more alcohol than people in regional South Australia. I know and will often state, as the member who encompasses the Barossa Valley, that responsible alcohol consumption is okay. It is good to see that we are responsible, at least according to these figures, in the amount of alcohol that we consume on the whole.

We move on to methamphetamine. Again, this is where we have a specific problem. In terms of the estimated methamphetamine consumption in milligrams per thousand people per day, metropolitan Adelaide rates as the second highest in the country—interestingly, behind WA—and we rate third in the regional average in South Australia compared to other regional datasets collected across states. In fact, in both of those, we were beaten only by WA and regional Victoria. Again, this is more evidence of the fact that ATS is a problem for our community and why it is a specific drug that we need to target in our beautiful state.

It goes on to say that for cocaine consumption we are well below the national average. There has been some discussion, which we will discuss in another bill, about cocaine testing for police officers. I know that it is not part of this bill, but it is something that I think is considered, was considered and, potentially, should be considered in relation to whether or not it forms part of our drug-testing regime for drug driving.

South Australia does not have a particular problem; in fact, and maybe unsurprisingly, our hypothesis would be that this drug has its biggest problem in metropolitan Sydney. Whether or not that speaks to its use in certain sectors in certain industries of a more professional nature and in financial hubs is only my hypothesis, but certainly that is where the cocaine problem is. In South Australia, our capital or metropolitan average is less than half the national metropolitan average and our regional average is about a third, as I am looking at this graph, of the regional average. It is probably not the biggest problem, but again it is something for us to be aware of.

MDMA is the other drug that is part of our drug-testing regime for people who are pulled over on the roadside. We are well below a third or a quarter of the national averages in both metropolitan and regional areas. Whilst this is small, I think the effects of people driving under the influence of MDMA warrant it being on the list, and thankfully it is not the biggest issue we are dealing with. In fact, the Northern Territory—in Darwin, essentially—is where the largest problem by far exists.

It is interesting that the drink and drug-testing regime we have in South Australia and in Australia is to a certain degree unique. We are one of the few countries in the world that actually drug tests and, as I understand it, one of the few countries in the world that tests for alcohol in drivers. At least, we have one of the most comprehensive regimes. When we look at international comparison of drug use, if we include amphetamine, methylamphetamine, cocaine and MDMA, Australia ranks second in the list of countries that were compared—second in the world for overall drug use.

For a country that is by all standards prosperous, free and happy, that we have such a problem says something about our culture that I think we do not necessarily want to acknowledge, and that is why again we need to do important work in this space. We are second only to Slovakia. When it comes to the different drugs, on both of these scores, excluding cannabis use, methylamphetamine is very much the biggest problem for Australia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, which are the three highest ranked countries,.

By comparison, if we look at other major Western countries, we see a lot of the European countries—places like Norway, the Netherlands, Iceland, Germany, Croatia and Finland—tending towards about half our overall consumption but with amphetamine being a much greater component. Essentially, we outrank them when it comes to the use of methylamphetamine where, as I said, we are second only behind Slovakia. Interestingly, though, for use of cocaine, we are well down the list, well below most European countries and much of the world. That is very good to see but unfortunately according to this graph, in terms of use of MDMA, Norway and the Netherlands have specific problems and we sit fourth behind them.

Compared with the rest of the world, you can see that drug use in Australia is a problem we are grappling with while many other cultures simply do not have the same level of problem. Alcohol consumption, as well, is not at all a unique issue to Australia and in fact we sit well below many other countries. Denmark actually rates as the worst. I thought it would be somewhere like Germany where drinking beer for breakfast is considered okay, but actually Denmark has the highest rate of consumption. That is quite interesting data.

You can see that those figures speak to the definition of the problem we have in Australia. How that problem manifests itself in South Australia speaks to the good work that SAPOL and the AFP have been doing in trying to get drugs off our streets and also speaks to the fact that on a number of measures we still have a lot more work to do and we need to tackle those problems. We are looking at that and we are certainly looking at this bill and at the second reading speech of the police minister in the other place. Interestingly, in the change of the guard, the police minister is now here in our house handling this bill.

This drink and drug driving bill is very much about trying to send a signal to those who would drink and drug drive that it is not okay, sending a signal that, if you are going to consume these substances—in the case of alcohol, to excess—you should not drive. You should not get behind the wheel and damage or potentially put in danger others within the community. There is a lot of merit in this bill. We agree with the sentiment. We very much agree with the measures the government has sought to put in place and that is why we will be supporting this piece of legislation, but we think there are ways to make it better.

We think there are measures that could be included and should be included to help improve the rate of drug use. Whilst this bill specifically wants to deal with stopping people from drink and drug driving, we should also, especially in the case of illicit drug use, be looking at ways to reduce overall illicit drug use in our community. If we can do that, by extension we will be reducing the number of people who drive on drugs on our roads. If we can reduce the amount of times or the number of people who take drugs on a regular basis, we can reduce the number of people who are driving on drugs on our roads.

An important measure around this is the use of the drug diversion program. This is the process as explained to me by the police commissioner: essentially, what happens is that officers pull over somebody and pinch them for simple possession charges but, instead of straight up giving them an expiation, they send them off to a drug diversion program. If the person successfully completes the drug diversion program, that offence goes away.

Especially for low-level possession offences, it is a way to send a message to people saying, 'Here is the stick. Here is the offence, and we are going to hold this over you as the stick to push you to change your behaviour.' The carrot then becomes, 'If you successfully complete a drug diversion program, this offence goes away.' I think that that is a good thing. I think that this carrot and stick approach in relation to drug diversion is extremely important and is a common tool used extremely often by police to try to change people's behaviour.

That is essentially what we want to do: we want to change people's behaviour in relation to their drug use. The statistics on the use of this, though, are actually quite damning. Essentially, the statistics on the number of people who are sent to drug diversion but then, more importantly, the number of people who complete the drug diversion show that this program has limited application in its success. An FOI that was returned to my office in late July shows the following in relation to the South Australian illicit drug diversion initiative. I will go through the years and break it down by youths and adults, again stating here that I think that a lot of the focus we need to have is around early intervention.

I said in my previous remarks that we need to balance enforcement and education and there needs to be a focus on prevention. This drug diversion initiative attempts to do that: enforcement on the one hand by the abeyance of a simple possession offence with a drug diversion program that is supposed to provide education. If we can tackle it when people are engaging in low-level offending, divert their behaviour and change their behaviour, then it has essentially saved us from having to deal with more serious crimes later on, whether they be heavier possession offences, drug dealing offences or drug-related crime offences down the track.

That is an extremely good thing and one that we on this side of the chamber support, except that we have to look at the evidence as it is presented to us. A significant report was done quite a number of years ago now in relation to this initiative that had some specific recommendations about changes to its use and in fact recommended what we in the Liberal Party have taken on board in relation to trying to change that.

In 2013-14, 804 individual youths were sent off to a drug diversion program. Of those 804, 81½ per cent completed that program. Interestingly, there were 981 episodes of youths being sent off to the program, which says to me that a number of kids, essentially a couple of hundred, were sent to the program more than once in the 2013-14 financial year and that 81½ per cent completed that program. I would say that that is a pretty good effort. I would say that that is 80 per cent, 650 or 680-odd kids, who successfully completed the program and it is hoped that it helped to change their behaviour. In 2014-15, that number was relatively similar, at 822 youths, with 992 and a compliance rate of 83.6 per cent. It was certainly trending in the right direction.

What we saw in 2015-16 was that 748 youths were sent for 897 episodes of treatment but the compliance rate dropped to 75.9 per cent, showing that this program from one year to the next went backwards significantly. But that is not the most alarming figure; it is relation to the adults where we have seen a complete collapse in the ability of this program to do its job. In 2013-14, 2,919 adults were sent off for 3,770 episodes of drug diversion. That shows that quite a number of people were sent more than once in a year, and in fact there would be a number of them who were potentially sent for more than that, at a compliance rate of 70.4 per cent.

Again, 70 per cent is a pretty good figure and shows that the program does have a level of success. In 2014-15, though, the figure increased by about 20 per cent, and 3,546 adults were sent for drug diversion for 4,692 episodes. That shows me that quite a number of people were sent to drug diversion at least twice in 2014-15. Unfortunately, the compliance rate dropped to 65.4 per cent. It is not a good figure, but it is still a reasonable figure. We move on to 2015-16, where we have seen another massive increase—50 per cent in two years—in the number of adults sent to drug diversion: 4,571 adults for 6,434 episodes.

By my rough calculations, this means that 2,000 people were sent to that program at least twice. Interestingly, the rate of compliance dropped. It started off at 70.4 per cent and fell to 51.5 per cent. So we have seen a full 20 per cent drop in the number of people that complete the drug diversion, and now only one in two adults who are sent to this program actually completes it. That is half. That shows that the program it certainly hitting a bit of a brick wall when it comes to its effectiveness in helping to change drug-taking behaviour of people in our community.

The fact that there were almost 2,000 more episodes than there were people shows that most of those 2,000 people would have been sent twice, and there may have been some who attended more times. This shows that this program has its weaknesses. That is why we on this side of the chamber want to limit this program. We make the very sensible conclusion—a conclusion that was reached in the significant report that was done into this drug diversion initiative—that we would allow people to participate in this program a maximum of twice before people no longer get that option.

We saw evidence in the 10-year review that I think a single person had been through this program up to 20 or 30 times. If you look at the effectiveness of this initiative, we have the police attempting to use a carrot and stick approach to get people to change their behaviour. If it does not work the first time, or if there were some extenuating circumstances or some reason why a person did not complete the initiative, they should be given a second chance. I think that is a fundamental principle that we as a community should abide by; that is, in most circumstances, people deserve a second chance.

But once you have been through the program a second time and failed to complete it, or even if you have been through a second time and completed it, at some point the effectiveness of this initiative has to be called into question. Either you fail to complete and therefore you just do not take this seriously as an alternative pathway, or you do complete but that does not change your behaviour.

That is the reason we need to limit this as a program. It also potentially means that we are spending our time, our effort and our very limited resources on those who do want to change their behaviour as opposed to those who so very clearly do not. That is why we have put that option on the table: to help to more cleverly target or more properly target where our drug diversion initiative takes place.

I said earlier that we need to try to intervene and prevent as early as possible in a person's life cycle with drugs. The Institute of Health and Wellbeing's household survey says that a lot of people get their start in drug-taking behaviour when they are in their teenage years, when they are at school. That is why we need to tackle that more clearly. That is why I believe the government has chosen to put a new offence into this bill around drug taking whilst having children in a vehicle: not only because you are putting those kids at risk but also because we should be ensuring that parents or caregivers of children are responsible. We should be sending a message to the community that this is completely unacceptable behaviour.

The act of taking drugs, having kids in the car and then continuing to drive, is more serious because you are doing damage not only to yourself and potentially other road users but also to those people for whom you have responsibility. We know that children do not make these decisions for themselves; they trust in their parents and they rely on their parents. That is why we as a legislature want to hold those parents to account who choose to put their children at unreasonable risk.

However, we need to do more than just this. This is very much the stick, but we need to do more. The reason this measure is important but we should be doing more is that it is not just about the immediate risk to those children but it is also about the risk that these kids grow up seeing that taking drugs is okay, that there is a cultural or an intergenerational experience that means that today's drug users teach their children by example to be tomorrow's drug users. That is why this new offence in this bill is important but it is also why we need to do more, and we need to intervene as early as we possibly can.

In addition to what the government is seeking to do here, there are a number of other measures that we think need to be put in place. We cannot wait to test people as they are driving. We need to try to get more at the root causes or intervene in a broader range of circumstances when people are undertaking drug-taking behaviour. That is why we are very much wanting to engage schools in the war against drugs. That is why we want to help put a plan in place that allows sniffer dogs (little beagles) to go into schools to try to intervene at an early stage.

Much like the drug diversion initiative, this is not necessarily about trying to charge and convict young people for low-range drug offences. The method by which SAPOL will be allowed to go into schools means it will be very difficult to collect evidence to convict someone because we do not want the kids to be present when these inspections are undertaken. Much like the drug diversion program, it sends a message that says, 'We want to stop you right here. We want to come and we want to find where the problem is. We want to identify where the problem is and we want to help you to change your behaviour.'

Certainly, as a young person growing up, in my high school there was an occasion—in fact, as we understand now, one of the very, very few occasions when SAPOL has gone into a school—when my school was searched for drugs. I do not think that the experience yielded anything, but what happened was that all of us were scared straight by the experience.

The act of SAPOL coming into a school shows that they are serious about tackling drug use in schools. It shows that they are serious about intervening and educating our kids that it is not okay. It really did work and it was not about pinching kids and necessarily charging them. It was about intervening at an early stage.

It is interesting that the media picked up on this part of the policy when we also announced at the same time that we are going to improve education initiatives. What I will come back to time and time again is that we need to balance enforcement with education. We need to intervene early to help prevent these issues, and that is why we need to take a balanced approach.

We treat young people differently from adults. It is when they are forming their norms and their behaviours for later in life. It is when they are very impressionable. If we are able to intervene at that stage, we are going to help stop a lot of problems into the future, which is why we need to be giving them the education to teach them what happens if they take the path of illicit drug use and what that is going to mean for them going forward. It is also why we need SAPOL to help provide that gentle stick or gentle reminder for those amongst high school students who are choosing to head down that path that SAPOL is there to enforce, to get involved and to help do their part in reducing drug-taking behaviour into the future.

Another area that we believe needs to be addressed—again from the Illicit Drug Data Report that the Australian Crime and Intelligence Commission put forth—is around the role of outlaw motorcycle gangs in drug possession, drug dissemination and drug dealing in our community. It is why we have put our policies in relation to banning outlaw motorcycle gang members from visiting prisons. We know there is discretion at the moment with the chief executive of the department, but we want to send the signal that OMCG members will not be allowed to visit prisons because we need to intervene at every stage we possibly can, and we feel that this is a positive measure to do that.

We also announced increasing the maximum fine for cannabis to $2,000 from $500 in relation to drug possession offences, again sending another clear signal that we are serious about stamping out drug use in our community. We also need other methods to be able to intervene. We will get to talking about the drug dependency test, which is an established part of the Motor Vehicles Act, and the fact that the government has a great desire for the drug dependency test to be the be-all and end-all when it comes to assessing people in relation to their drug-taking behaviour and in relation to them being able to get their licences back, but that cannot be the only part of the story.

We need a full suite of measures and, as I have demonstrated with the drug diversion initiative, it has limitations, as does the drug dependency test. It is not the sole arbiter of whether somebody is going to offend again. In fact, as I will table in evidence later on, it does not work in a significant proportion of cases, which is why we need to look at a full suite of measures. It is why another policy that we have announced is in relation to youth treatment orders. We want to intervene early and we want to intervene strongly, which is why we want to give magistrates the ability to send youths off for mandatory drug treatment.

We need to acknowledge the fact that some young people are able to drive and are under the age of 18, and send them off in an attempt to intervene early and change their behaviour at a younger age to try to stop the spiralling, ever-increasing use of drugs that people who get addicted and hooked tend to jump on. That is why we have announced a policy of providing children with a residency at a treatment facility for up to 12 months. Once a young person has been confirmed as suffering from an addiction or being at risk of harm, they would be provided with support from medical practitioners in a supportive and professional environment. These measures will ensure that those who need drug treatment the most will be able to undertake a drug rehabilitation program.

This is because we want to stop what is currently happening in our community. We want to stop young people in their tracks and divert them onto a better path earlier on in life. That is one measure. There is another measure that the government is undertaking, and interestingly one of the amendments that we are seeking to introduce in the bill is to give people greater access to drug rehabilitation. We think that that is an important part of the mix to help change people's behaviour.

It is why we have announced another policy, which would be complemented by our amendments, around greater access to rehabilitation services. We have announced one in the beautiful electorate of Chaffey, which I think everybody acknowledges has a significant problem with ice. It is something that the member for Chaffey has talked about on numerous occasions. I know that he has an ongoing forum that deals with these issues, and I know that he is extremely committed because his community is beautiful. In fact, at the next election he is going to steal part of the beautiful electorate of Schubert.

We talk about South Australia having an ice problem, but the Riverland has an ice problem. It is not solely the Riverland that has an issue; there are many pockets across South Australia. I know the member for Mount Gambier has made reference to it before. I know the member for Hammond has made reference to it before. This is something that exists in many larger regional centres across our state and it does seem to, unfortunately, have a particular manifestation in regional areas. That was something that was borne out by the wastewater treatment analysis and it is why we need to tackle it. Essentially, this is the type of treatment that we would like people to undertake if our amendments are successful, and I sincerely hope that the government gets on board and deals with this.

If I could take one step back, in the Barossa we had an ice forum organised by the Southern Barossa Alliance, which is a group of local businesses and retired business people who have a particular interest in the towns around Lyndoch, Williamstown, Rowland Flat and Altona, and who have a particular interest in looking after their end of the region. The chair of the alliance is a guy called Simon Taylor, who is an extremely hardworking advocate for his community and is involved in a whole host of organisations from the local aged-care facility, to helping the Men's Shed, right through to the Southern Barossa Alliance. He is an extremely active member of the community and I wish we had a lot more like him.

He said that he personally knew of a number of families who had been affected by ice and he was inspired to put a forum together. He got—I am going to get this name wrong—family support services to come up. The woman from family support services who came up did not really speak. What she did was bring up a parent of an ice addict and an ice addict who has, thankfully, come out the other side and been clean for quite a long time. The stories they told were absolutely scary. They did drive on drugs.

One gentleman, in particular, had come over from South-East Asia and he had had some significant drug-taking behaviour while he was over there. He came here, was clean for a while, but relapsed. He talked us through the stages of how he was going to commit suicide because he was so shameful at having relapsed after spending, I think, nine years clean. It was the death of a friend that triggered him to start using ice again.

He spoke about the methodical way that he thought through as to how he was going to kill himself and it involved a car. It involved taking his brother's car. The reason he would take his brother's car was because it did not have the airbags and all the things that would probably keep him alive when he crashed it. Essentially, the only thing that stopped him from doing it was the fact that his young son, who he was looking after during the day as he was thinking about all this stuff, walked for the first time. He took that as a sign that maybe he should hang around because there are some things in life that are pretty good. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

Sitting suspended from 12:59 to 14:01.

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