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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-03-04 Daily Xml
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Road Traffic (Drug Testing) Amendment Bill

Introduction and First Reading

Mr ODENWALDER (Elizabeth) (11:26): Obtained leave and introduced a bill for an act to amend the Road Traffic Act 1961. Read a first time.

Second Reading

Mr ODENWALDER (Elizabeth) (11:26): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Again, I will not delay the house unduly with a lengthy explanation of something that has been well canvassed time and time again. In fact, before prorogation this private member's bill was the oldest bill before the house. I note the member for Kaurna's observations about the bill that he just reintroduced a moment ago, that it had been postponed 27 times. This bill was postponed, by my count, at least 30 times in the last parliament. As I have said before, it is a very simple bill. I will quickly run over the main provision: it amends the Road Traffic Act so that police have the power, upon a positive roadside drug test, to search a person or vehicle for drugs. This seems to me an eminently sensible measure.

Indeed, when the government were elected, they were elected partly on a platform of winning a war on drugs—their words, not mine—and so when I reintroduced this bill, which formed part of a package of reforms that were in the previous parliament, I assumed that the government would jump on it. I assumed the police minister and the Attorney-General, would say, 'Yes, of course, we were planning to do that, but we will support this. It's a sensible measure. We know the police support it. We know it was a recommendation of the Ice Taskforce. We will support that straightaway.' But, no, they postponed it 30 times.

I think there were a couple of contributions. I think the member for Heysen made a quite erudite contribution, as he always does. The Attorney made a contribution, too, along the lines that the Road Traffic Act and the drug testing regime around the Road Traffic Act should be about road safety. That is true; they should be about road safety, but why should that be to the exclusion of waging a war on drugs? If the war on drugs is so important, why not give the police all the powers they need, indeed the powers that are recommended by the Ice Taskforce and that they support? Why would the government not support those measures?

The police commissioner, in a response to a letter from the Budget and Finance Committee earlier this year, said in no uncertain terms that he supported the provisions of the bill. There were no ifs or buts; he supported the provisions of the bill. SAPOL supported the provisions of the bill. When that became a media talking point for the minister and the commissioner, the minister then scurried around to try to propose certain changes around the Road Traffic Act but skirted around this particular issue, this very simple proposition. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

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