HANSARD
SITTING CALENDAR
SEARCH
LIVE BROADCAST
Hansard Dynamic Member Index
House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-04-30 Daily Xml
Contents
Xml

Bills

Controlled Substances (Destruction of Seized Property) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Minister for Climate, Environment and Water, Minister for Workforce and Population Strategy) (11:02): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to have the second reading explanation and explanation of clauses inserted into Hansard without my reading them.

Leave granted.

Mr Speaker, I am pleased to introduce the Controlled Substances (Destruction of Seized Property) Amendment Bill 2024.

The Bill amends the Controlled Substances Act 1984 to enable the Commissioner of Police to authorise the destruction of prescribed hydroponics equipment, or PHE, seized under the Act.

PHE refers to equipment prescribed under regulation 9(1)(a) of the Controlled Substances (Controlled Drugs, Precursors and Plants) Regulations 2014, being equipment that is, or may at some stage have been, capable of being used for hydroponic cannabis cultivation.

Where a police officer suspects on reasonable grounds that an offence against the Act has been committed, the officer may seize and remove from the premises anything that the officer has reasonable cause to suspect affords evidence of the offence. PHE is often seized as evidence in relation to a charge of possessing or supplying prescribed equipment under section 33LA of the Act. It may also be seized as evidence in relation to the prosecution of more serious offences such as cultivation and trafficking offences.

Currently, the Act requires seized PHE to be held pending proceedings for an offence against the Act. The property may only be destroyed once a court has ordered that it be forfeited to the Crown. The Bill enables the Commissioner of Police to authorise the destruction of seized PHE prior to the finalisation of proceedings and without the need for a court order.

The Bill also provides a mechanism for the Commissioner of Police to seek a court order to recover the reasonable costs of destruction of PHE from a person who is convicted of an offence in relation to the destroyed PHE. This may include the costs of collecting, transporting and dismantling the PHE as may reasonably be required for the purposes of destroying it.

Schedule 1 of the Bill contains transitional provisions. These make clear that the Commissioner of Police may authorise the destruction of PHE in the Commissioner's possession on or after the commencement of the Bill, whether the equipment was seized before or after that commencement. The transitional provisions also clarify that the Commissioner of Police may only apply to the court for recovery of the costs of destruction of PHE in relation to property seized after the commencement of the Bill.

The requirement to hold PHE is resource intensive for South Australia Police and has resulting in a large and expanding volume of PHE being held in storage awaiting finalisation of proceedings. The Bill is intended to alleviate this burden by enabling the Commissioner of Police to authorise the destruction of PHE where appropriate and in accordance with guidelines developed with the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Retention of PHE is not necessary for the prosecution of an offence under the Act. It is common and accepted practice to rely on secondary evidence of PHE, such as photographs and video recordings, during the prosecution of such offences. Further, given it is an offence to possess prescribed equipment without reasonable excuse, PHE would not ordinarily be returned to the person from whom it was seized.

A key objective of this Bill is to free up police resources, so that rather than seizing and sitting on pallets upon pallets of PHE, police can be out on the beat, fighting crime and protecting our community. This Government will do everything it can to effect improvements so that SAPOL can operate as a modern and efficient police force for South Australia.

The 2022-23 Report on Government Services shows SAPOL has 238 operational sworn staff per 100,000 people – the most of any state and eight per cent higher than the national average of 221 – while satisfaction with services provided by SAPOL leads the country at 78.8 per cent compared to a national average of 73.9 per cent.

This comes off the back of last year's State Budget, in which our Government committed more than $12 million to an accelerated police recruitment course to hire 900 new police officers over three years and an additional 189 police security officers.

Mr Speaker, I commend the Bill to Members.

Explanation of Clauses

Part 1—Preliminary

1—Short title

This clause is formal.

Part 2—Amendment of Controlled Substances Act 1984

2—Amendment of section 52E—Seized property and forfeiture

This clause provides for destruction of prescribed equipment for the purposes of section 33LA that is, or may at some stage have been, capable of being used for hydroponic cannabis cultivation and also clarifies the power to recover costs of destruction from convicted persons.

Schedule 1—Transitional provision

1—Equipment seized prior to commencement

The amendment allowing destruction of prescribed equipment applies to any such equipment in the possession of the Commissioner of Police on or after the commencement of the measure (whether the equipment was seized before or after that commencement) but the ability to recover the costs of destruction only applies to such equipment seized after that commencement.

The SPEAKER: Before I call the member for Dunstan, I remind the house that this is the member's first speech and that she should be accorded the normal courtesies and respect accorded to new members on this important occasion.

Standing order No. 113(a) provides that any member making a first speech has one hour, and all other members for Address in Reply have 30 minutes. These courtesies are: no objections, no points of order, and the rules of relevance and the use of other members' names are relaxed.

Ms O'HANLON (Dunstan) (11:03): In this place, each of us is afforded the opportunity to tell our story. Mine is perhaps an unusual one, and I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to introduce myself to members, to my community and to the broader South Australian community in this way in my first contribution to this place.

As a courtesy, my story does allude to domestic and family violence and substance abuse, which I wanted to let people know in case they find these topics difficult to listen to. In touching on these topics, I am mindful of the protest that occurred on the steps of Parliament House on Saturday. I stand in solidarity with the people who gathered on the steps of parliament, including the member for Reynell and the member for Gibson. While I do not choose this speech to tell the deeper story of a childhood scarred by violence, that time may come, and in the meantime I simply say: violence against women and children is a national crisis. It has been a crisis for years, for decades, for generations.

I would also like to acknowledge that I stand in this place on the lands of the Kaurna people, and I pay my respects to their elders past and present. In sharing my story, I do not seek to elicit any sympathy. I wish to convey the facts of my life so that my community of Dunstan understand what has made me the person I am today: resilient, determined and possessed of a deep understanding of the precious value of community.

I was born in Sydney in 1972. My mother was 18 years old when I was born, and her parents were living in France. My father's parents lived in Melbourne. My mum was barely out of childhood, and my father had started to display behaviour that would later upend our lives. After I was born, my father, only 21 himself, struggled to adjust to the responsibilities of fatherhood, and my grandparents in France sent for my mum to provide her safe haven from my father's increasingly erratic behaviour.

I arrived in France as a four-month-old baby with my mum and would live there and in London for the next three years. My father joined us after about six months, and by all accounts it was a period of relative calm. At the same time, my paternal grandparents had also moved to Europe, and I spent time with them as well in Greece, Italy and Spain, in which time I was imbued with a lasting sense of Mediterranean culture, one that I recognise in the beautiful multicultural communities I live amongst today.

After I turned three, we returned to Australia, and my sister was born soon after. I remember loving being her big sister from the moment she was born and loving pushing her pram. Over the next two years, we moved so frequently from house to house and suburb to suburb that I had no real sense of place.

My father was very bright and after being accelerated twice through high school had graduated from year 12 at the age of 14. Too young and probably too ill-disciplined to consider university, he became a bricklayer and something of a knockabout, and very much a man of the 1970s. He was something like a mix between the Solo man and Paul Hogan—the Solo man being the rugged moustache man in 1980s Solo soft drink ads kayaking thrillingly through the rapids—only my dad's thrills and spills involved racing Ducatis and arriving home late at night and deciding we were all driving to Melbourne, right now, to visit his brothers and parents, even if he had been at the pub since knock-off.

My dad had an exacting expectation that did not allow dissent or failure. Occasionally though, my dad had a tender side. Throughout his life, he would read Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson poetry and short stories to my sister and I with such fervour that he would sometimes be brought to tears. Reading The Drover's Dog was sure to have this effect. He also wrote beautifully himself.

The blessing in my life at this time was the fact that my grandparents lived in a great big house just around the corner and I had the freedom to come and go as I pleased. My grandparents were the artists David and Hermia Boyd, and my grandfather, whose main focus was his painting, worked studiously six days a week. My grandmother was loving and an excellent cook, and I often sat with her on the lounge shelling peas or peeling potatoes while we watched TV. They had a swimming pool, a piano, a potting wheel, my grandfather's paints and a ton of books, all of which I made the most of.

My parents continued to move frequently from Sydney to Newcastle and back again, and by the time I had finished my primary years I had been to six primary schools. While I felt a strong sense of identity within my family, my lack of a real sense of home persisted. When I was 12, my father moved us to 100 acres of steep and rugged bush in the Hunter Valley. It was a huge culture shock.

After spending most of my childhood up until then in relatively normal houses, we moved to a steep bush block with no electricity, no phone and no house. We lived for the first year in a shed with no walls and slept in an army tent. We had kerosene lamps for lights and a kerosene fridge, and my mum cooked on kerosene stoves. When the lamps were blown out, if there was no moon it was pitch black. The idea was that my dad would build our house, but his work kept him in Sydney for weeks at a time, so progress was slow. In the meantime, my mum and sister and I were living in a kind of permanent camping arrangement out in the Australian bush.

One day, my dad came home with a horse, an ex-racehorse called Champ. I was thrilled, but still being fairly inexperienced as a rider I was also pretty apprehensive. I remember my first day riding him as if it was yesterday. Dad put me on Champ and I rode up the driveway, which was about 100 metres, but as soon as I turned him around to come back Champ put in an almighty pigroot and bucked me off.

I landed on my stomach and thought I had broken every bone in my body. I was so winded I could not lift my head off the ground, but dad rushed up to me and said, 'Get up, get back on, show that horse who's boss.' So I got back on and with my dad on his horse he took me out to some steep country only accessible by fire trails. We rode in through a gully, got to the bottom of a steep hill, and dad just took off on his horse headed straight for the top. Champ took off right behind him. I held on to the front of the saddle for dear life screaming for my dad to stop, but dad was ahead and all I could hear was the sound of horses' hooves thundering up the hill.

The hill seemed to go on forever and, bouncing from side to side, I managed to lose both my stirrups, but, to my surprise, I stayed on and somehow actually started to like it. Horses became my sanctuary. Soon I wanted to go to pony club. My dad said, 'Sure; you can go, if you can get there yourself.' So my sister and I found a way across the mountains and rode together the eight kilometres to pony club, jumping every fallen log in sight, spending the full day riding and then riding home the eight kilometres in the evening, sometimes arriving home after dark.

From pony clubs to shows and then eventing, horseriding took up every bit of spare time and energy. It also gave me my first business opportunity. By the time I was 14 I had started a business taking on other people's horses to train and show, earning myself some decent money in the process.

My dad became increasingly erratic, and with his mental health deteriorating he began self-medicating with a variety of non-prescription substances. By the time I had started year 10, my dad had been running further off the rails. Later that year, after my school swimming carnival, I caught the train home. My mum and my uncle were waiting to pick me up from the station. As soon as I saw them, I could tell something was terribly wrong. I got in the back of the car and my mum got in beside me and told me that my dad had died earlier that day. He was 37 years old.

The experience of knowing and losing this complex and contradictory man, my father, has made me more aware than I otherwise might have been of the importance of mental health as an area of public policy. It is a complex area, and its challenges are not restricted to our state or our nation—it is a global issue. I know that, untreated, mental health can create a raft of other social problems in families and communities.

I now understand that my father was also very likely neurodivergent. Sadly, throughout his childhood he was treated like a naughty little boy, and I am sure that that was formative to the person he became. Had he the opportunity in life for a diagnosis, and for early intervention, I think both his life and mine may have been a lot different. I am so intensely proud that the Malinauskas Labor government created a world-first Assistant Minister for Autism, and of the incredible work Assistant Minister Emily Bourke is doing in this critical area of policy and of the human experience.

What my lived experience has done for me is to make me look beyond the surface to what lies beneath. I look to resolve issues by addressing their causes, whether it is across systems, amongst community or within an individual's life. There is no point in focusing on surface problems without addressing the underlying causes. I have brought this understanding to all of my work, and I will continue to do so as the member for Dunstan.

Would you believe that my first career was initially with horses, and then in the business of cattle sales and breeding? After I finished year 10, I moved to western New South Wales to further my own training as a horserider, where I continued schooling horses and working as a riding instructor. My first husband was a young man from a big farming family who I had known for several years. By the age of 19 I had moved with him to his large and isolated family farm where I continued schooling horses and began working cattle. I loved and threw myself into farming life.

My father-in-law, a successful businessman and beef and cereal crop farmer, took me under his wing and taught me the business of cattle sales and breeding. By the time I was 21, I was in charge of cattle sales and purchases, and talking bulldust with other farmers at the saleyards. It was a steep learning curve, but I held my own. It taught me I had a head for numbers and good negotiating skills. By the age of 22, I had my first baby.

In time, my then husband and I bought a small farm for ourselves. It was covered in a barley crop, and we planned to use the proceeds of that crop to continue farming and, of course, meet our loan repayments. Within weeks of delivering our barley to the New South Wales Grains Board, however, it collapsed, owing millions of dollars. We ended up getting back about 20¢ in the dollar, and the future suddenly looked more challenging than we could have anticipated.

We overcame that challenge, only to be hit by another. The long on, off, and on again Millennium Drought hit the farming community hard, and we were no exception. I had had my second baby, a son we called Noah, genuinely in the hope it might break the drought. It worked and the drought broke with an almighty flood, but after the flood we went straight back into drought and that was the finish of us. My husband and I left the farm somewhat broken-hearted and separated.

I moved back to Sydney to my grandparents to regroup and reflect. I had learned a lot about business and about myself in the 11 years I had been on the farm. I had skill sets both innate and learned in communication and small business and I was keen to put them to use.

My grandfather, wanting to establish an arts foundation, put me to work in my second career. As my grandpa aged, we became close and through our conversations I was able to understand so clearly the ideas he had painted about for longer than I had been alive—about, in his words, 'man's inhumanity to man' and the idea that we should judge ourselves as a society by the way we treat the least fortunate amongst us.

Apart from the Boyds being a family of artists spanning five generations, my grandfather's generation were also part of an important period in Australian art history that included his brother, Arthur Boyd; brothers-in-law, Sidney Nolan and John Percival; and contemporaries and friends such as Charles Blackman, Robert Dickerson and the South Australian Jeffrey Smart. They were all insistent that the importance of art was both its beauty and that it illustrated the human condition.

In spite of my grandfather and his brother's and brothers-in-law's commercial success, it was the importance of the deeply political stories and ideas about human frailty that their work conveyed that, to them, gave their works their value—and they were deeply political. My grandfather's work, for example, was highly critical of the treatment of Australian Aboriginal people at a time when it created a great deal of controversy to do so. He also criticised the death penalty, still in use in Australia at the time, and how the application of the law ignored potentially contributing factors such as poverty or destitution. This is the value I place on art, and I know it is the value many artists place on their work, whichever form it takes.

After several years, while continuing to work for my grandfather I moved to Newcastle, a smaller, less frenetic city that allowed me the time to focus on my children as they began their secondary education. I also started studying law remotely, a long-held ambition. It was manageable as long as I was able to go to the tutes and exams only held in Sydney.

One weekend I went to a local cafe to sip coffee and read the papers. The papers were laid out on a table and I stood beside a man selecting a paper to read. There was only one copy of the weekend paper left with all its weekend sections, and the man and I agreed to share it by swapping sections after we had read them. After several sections of newspaper had been exchanged, the man and I got into an easy conversation, talking about all manner of things from war to books to motorbikes.

After hours of sitting there chatting we both needed to get going, and as we were leaving he said to me, 'Shall we share the newspaper again?' We swapped names and numbers and as I walked away I thought, 'Wow, James—he seems like a lovely guy.' And he was, and he is. James and I were married exactly one year later and he brought elements into my life I had rarely experienced before. He was reliable and kind and quickly became my biggest champion and my rock. I have never admired anyone more. He also made me a defence spouse, something that would change my life and my outlook permanently.

The Australian defence forces and their families deserve special mention—serving members who have an understanding of service to country none of us civilians can truly understand, who put their lives on the line in defence of our country and our way of life. Let's be clear, we are not just talking abstract ideas here, we are talking about the defence of democracy, human rights and free and open trade. Whether it is peacekeeping in Rwanda, protecting the emergence of fledging democracies like East Timor, or being shot at in open combat in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, our defence personnel demonstrate a love of country in a way few of us see or could truly comprehend.

Australian defence families also play a unique role. With husbands, wives and partners away on deployment for six to nine months at a time, you learn to be resilient and self-reliant. But the most profound lesson was the importance of connection with people with shared experiences and to always be prepared to advocate for the community around you.

In 2013, James was posted to 7RAR here in Adelaide as a rifle company commander. I remember the day we arrived here so well with our preschool son and two-week-old baby. It was extremely hot, a typical Adelaide heatwave, and I was wondering what sort of hellhole my husband had just brought me to. An old Adelaide friend suggested we take a drive to a place called Norwood. We took Cy to Coke Park, strolled around some streets and afterwards had lunch at Cibo at Norwood Place where we sat under the red umbrellas and fell in love.

We had been seduced by the beautiful houses, the gracious trees and the unrivalled shopping strip of The Parade, dotted generously with cafes and restaurants in every direction. We knew in that moment that this place was home, the place we wanted to raise our family and the place we would go on to start our businesses. After a lifetime of often having no clear sense of what place was home, I had suddenly arrived in a place I had never heard of before only to feel like I had come home.

James and I had come to Adelaide for what we thought would be a two-year defence posting, but suddenly and unexpectedly we knew we had found our forever home, not a house but the streets and the suburbs of what I now know as Dunstan and our state. Soon after, we found a house nearby and Norwood and St Peters and Marden and Kensington and all the suburbs in-between became our community. James left full-time service and we built a life here: the place we shop, the place I met with the mums from my mums' group and the place where my family and I have grown and thrived. This community welcomed us unreservedly.

Sadly unable to continue with my studies in law due to having young children, a husband in the Army who was frequently away and my course being run exclusively out of Sydney, I decided to focus on alternative dispute resolution, which had interested me greatly when I covered it as part of my law studies. I undertook training and became a mediator focusing initially on family law mediation.

I then expanded into workplace and general dispute resolution, with a focus on small and family business, which I had always loved having worked in small family businesses almost my entire working life. I built a small but successful business that allowed me the flexibility to manage a young family with a husband whose very successful business meant longer hours and frequent interstate and international travel.

Having been a member as a young farmer in country New South Wales, in 2018 I joined the Australian Labor Party. I let Aemon Bourke know from day one that I wanted to get involved in a policy capacity. Within days, Aemon introduced me to Emily Bourke. One afternoon Emily called me and asked me if I would be interested in running as a candidate in our federal seat of Sturt. I laughed and said, 'No thanks. I'm not a front of house kind of person. I wouldn't be any good at that.' Emily believed something different and so I said I would think about it over the weekend. I did think about it and I thought: don't regret what you didn't do. I agreed to give it a go and to my great surprise I loved it.

I loved knocking on doors and finding out ways I could help people. Of course, I did not win in 2019, although I did get the sixth biggest first-preference swing to Labor in the country. Afterwards I thought: what do I want to do now? In the time I had lived in my community, I had seen it changing. Our residential streets were becoming less peaceful, historic houses and buildings were being demolished and large trees were being destroyed.

My community, both unique and extraordinary, is 20 different suburbs that all have their own wonderful character, from our quiet, tree-lined streets and grand houses to our smaller streets and workers' cottages, from our parks and gardens to our bars and restaurants, our mighty Redlegs and so much more, its offerings vary from street to street and suburb to suburb, but it is an equally wonderful place to live all across it.

I knew that if we did not protect the attributes that tied us together, we were and remain at risk of being separated and overrun and losing much of what we value about this place we so love. This community that had given me so much needed someone to step up and act before it was too late. I knew about advocacy, and I knew that person could be me. I knew that the issues I cared about most were issues dealt with at state level, so I let my party know I wanted to be the candidate for Dunstan at the 2022 state election.

Once I was preselected, I set about knocking on as many doors as I could to hear from people locally where they lived. Our community is not homogenous, but the issues that drove me to want to represent it are almost universal. We want sensible urban infill, we want our historic buildings protected from demolition, we want peace to return to our residential streets and we want to protect and expand our local tree canopy. Of course, there are many other important issues and to my community of Dunstan I say: be assured, I have heard you loud and clear. I share your desires and I will advocate fiercely for them, too.

Being a good member of our community is something I think about every day. My life has taught me that communities prosper when people's lives are meaningful, when people have opportunity and when they have the means for connection. Building great communities means understanding how people thrive in their work and their life and what their hopes are for the future. That is what drives me.

To the voters of Dunstan: thank you. This community has welcomed us unreservedly. Getting to know you over the years has been one of my life's greatest privileges. I cannot thank you enough for opening your doors and your hearts to me. You have been kind and generous and it has been an incredible honour being your community advocate and fighting for the issues that matter to you. Now I hope to prove to you that I am the right person to do that job for many years to come.

I want to wish the former member for Dunstan, Steven Marshall, all the best for his future endeavours, and I thank him for his 14 years of service to our community, and to our state. And I acknowledge the presence and service of two other former members of this seat, formerly known as Norwood, the Hon. Greg Crafter and Vini Ciccarello.

To every single volunteer who supported my campaign, who stood at a booth on election day, who wobble boarded, letterboxed, joined me doorknocking, stood for hours at the pre-poll booth, and hit the phones—you are the reason we are the great Australian Labor Party, and such a formidable and united team. I cannot express how grateful I am to each and every one of you. Thank you.

Thank you to my extraordinary campaign manager, David Griffiths. David, you are a remarkable young man. I want to thank you for your incredible hard work and support. To Ben Anchor: thank you! Your loyalty, support and dedication mean so much to me. And to my new office team of Elena, Patrick and Ellie, you matter to me and I thank you for the trust you have already engendered in me. I look forward to our future working together.

To the Hon. Emily Bourke: from the bottom of my heart, thank you. You have changed me as a person. You extended friendship from the moment you met me. You taught me that to have faith in oneself is to have faith in the people around you who believe in you. I will never forget the faith you placed in me and I would not be standing here today if it were not for Emily Bourke. Thank you also to our party secretary, Aemon Bourke. You have always been prepared to listen, to engage with me and I have always felt supported by you.

To our Premier, Peter Malinauskas: thank you for always being so warm and supportive of me. You lead by example with your incredible work ethic, sincerity and humbleness. It is an honour to represent the people of Dunstan under your leadership. I am here because I believe in the values and the traditions of the great Australian Labor Party. I know the best way to serve my community and my state is as part of this strong, united Malinauskas Labor government.

To my mate Lucy Hood: thank you for your friendship over the years, your support and kindness to me. We have shared injury, heartache and celebration together and all of it with lots of laughs at the absurdities of life. To Marielle Smith, Nimfa Farrell, Victoria Brown, Sonia Romeo, Jayne Stinson, Olivia Savvas, Katrine Hildyard, Susan Close and all my other Labor women friends in the caucus and in the party, there are so many of you, thank you. I am truly grateful for the support, guidance and advice you have given me. We are a sisterhood and I know I can turn to you all when the going gets tough.

The entire Labor caucus has shown me incredible support and made me feel a valued part of the team from the very beginning. Thank you to Don Farrell and Reggie Martin for your long-term support and encouragement, to Tom Koutsantonis, Nick Champion, Stephen Mullighan and Chris Picton for always having my back, and thank you to Lee Odenwalder and Justin Hanson for joining me at the doors.

Thank you to Josh Peak and the incredible SDA. We all see how well you represent the interests of South Australian workers, often some of the lowest paid and the most essential. I am so proud to be an SDA member. Thank you also to the TWU and the AWU. To my dear friend, the long-serving member for Norwood, Greg Crafter, thank you for your enduring friendship, mentorship and support. Your knowledge, wisdom and guidance have always been something I hold dearly and it is a great comfort to me to know I can continue to seek your counsel as the new member for Dunstan.

To my excellent sub-branch: I will always be grateful for your incredible hard work and the support you have shown me and your stoicism through years of opposition. To the Hagars: thank you for your wisdom, for your years of support and your belief in me. To anyone else I have not had the chance to thank personally, I will always be grateful for the help you have given me. In an election, and most particularly in a by-election, every single bit of support counts.

To my husband, James: you are my best friend and the love of my life. You give me strength, you are the one support I could not live without and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the love, support and sacrifice you have made to enable me the privilege of standing for and now sitting in this place.

To my beautiful children: you are each of you the apple of my eye. You all have such character, strength, determination and intellect. Remy, you are the social justice warrior. You are settled and happy and I am so proud of your achievements. Noah, your goodness, kindness and love of people mean you are loved by all who meet you, and your joy and success in life are testament to that.

Cy—my Cy-pie—we have been through so much together. You have always known how to make me laugh. I am so proud of your considered thought, determination and strength of character. I know you will make people happy wherever you go. Pheebs, my baby girl, you have made me a better person. I am astounded by you on a daily basis. With your brain the size of an iceberg and your love of animals and nature, happiness is just watching you grow in intellect, in kindness and thoughtfulness.

To my mother, Lucinda: it was the realisation that you were the tower of strength in our family that taught me that no-one and nothing should cause you to lose your grace. To my sister, Jesamine: thank you for a lifetime of friendship, ideas shared and always being there at the end of the phone line.

My husband and I have been so lucky to have called our community home for the last 11 years. Our children have grown up here, we have started our businesses here, I volunteer here and I have become part of so many communities. I want to thank the beautiful multicultural communities within the Dunstan community, represented by their churches and community organisations who have been so warm and welcoming of me.

To Dominic Reppucci and everyone at the Altavilla Irpina Sports and Social Club, to Lina at the San Giorgio La Molara Community Centre, and to Vicki Antoniou, George Morias, Father John and the Greek Orthodox Parish and Community of Prophete Elias: thank you for your support and friendship. I am not going anywhere. To Pauline and Marg and everyone else at Meals on Wheels in Norwood: thank you. To my friend Bill and the Norwood, Payneham & St Peters community bus: thank you.

From the moment I sat under the red umbrellas of Cibo, I felt like I had come home. I found the place I had always longed for. It is this community that gave me the sense of belonging and place that I have sought my entire life. To the community of Dunstan: your generosity of spirit has filled me with energy. I am humbled by the trust you have placed in me to help solve longstanding issues and concerns. I have a deep sense of responsibility to do all that I can for you and for all of us. I will work hard. I will fight for our community. I will be available to listen to your concerns and act on them. In me, you have a warrior for the causes that matter most to us. This community has allowed me to be my best self, and I have never been better. Thank you.

Honourable members: Hear, hear!

The SPEAKER: I congratulate the member for Dunstan on her first speech and call the house to order now as we continue with the session. The member for Heysen.

Mr TEAGUE (Heysen) (11:35): I rise to indicate that I am the opposition's lead speaker, and I indicate from the outset that the opposition supports the passage of the bill. It has been brought to my attention just in recent days that the bill has been given priority this morning, with a view to achieving the practical purpose that emerges on the face of the document, and that is to work to ensure that police resources are freed up, as I think will emerge from the minister's contribution in this place just now—although incorporated in Hansard, I can anticipate it will emerge on the record in due course, and certainly from what we heard from the Attorney in another place when the bill was debated there earlier this year.

At the core, the objective of the bill is to free up police resources—and I am sure we will see that emerge on the record of what has been incorporated by the Deputy Premier in her contribution earlier this morning—so that police are not finding themselves in a situation where they have necessarily gone ahead and seized what can be in many cases very substantially bulky equipment, with not only the logistics associated with the necessary seizure of that equipment but then, for reasons that are not necessary for evidential or other purposes, finding themselves holding on to this very bulky equipment, which takes up space and also takes up resources, while the responsible management of those items is being retained, sometimes for years on end.

I understand, anecdotally, from those engaged in this work that at times up to three years could be spent, after having trucked a whole load of equipment from a location, and then you have to go ahead and store the equipment and then there are years to wait until there is an eventual trial.

I have just jumped straight to the core of what is involved here because the subject matter has been addressed. As has been often the case in this parliament, the bill has been the subject of debate in another place before coming here, and I anticipate that the details of the provisions in respect of this particular equipment will be on the Hansard of this place, preceding this contribution, in due course.

I do want to highlight that, addressing as it does prescribed hydroponics equipment, the bill, to the extent that it is permitting an earlier than present destruction of that particular equipment, is concerned with the equipment. Put it this way: it refers to equipment that is already prescribed under the relevant regulations—Controlled Substances (Controlled Drugs, Precursors and Plants) Regulations 2014—as equipment that may at some stage have been capable of being used for hydroponic cannabis cultivations, as we were talking about.

But relevantly, in terms of the seizure and removal from relevant premises of that equipment, the possession of which is then capable of being the subject of a charge, the equipment will often be seized as evidence of the more serious offence of trafficking the relevant substances. Importantly, the equipment itself is not required routinely as evidence in the proceedings that are the subject of those more serious offences.

We have long had a practice of courts using video footage and other secondary evidence. Again, this has been the subject of the debate, such as it has been here already, as will emerge in another place. We are not therefore talking about circumstances in which there may be some prejudice to the prosecution of the offence that is hinged upon a decision to order the destruction of the equipment. As I say, it has long been practice for photographs and video recordings and the like to be used in the course of the prosecution for these offences.

In terms of understanding the practical effect, it is not just some theoretical benefit that has been dreamed up by people far removed from the practical day-to-day challenges. This is something that is very much felt by police. I think that the anecdotal feedback that I have shared in some brief way might serve as some further grounds for that proposition. We have also, on the opposition's side, heard about the day-to-day practicalities. I think that it is very much in the nature of having important practical consequences, so the sooner the better in terms of passage.

I understand that there is a particular pressing aspect to the passage of the bill, and I would be interested in case it is appropriate for there to be any further indication of just exactly where we are at and what consequences flow immediately from the passage of the bill in terms of what police will be able to get on and do. Suffice to say for the moment that it is clear that there is a practical benefit that will flow from being able to go ahead and take advantage of the provisions for destruction.

To be clear, prior to the enactment of this legislation the act is requiring that seized prescribed hydroponics equipment is required to be held pending the proceedings for an offence. I have already addressed the point about how long that can take, how much time that can take, and that it may only be destroyed when a court has ordered that it be forfeited to the Crown. The bill is going to be enabling the Commissioner of Police to authorise the destruction and to do so prior to the finalisation of proceedings and without the need for the court order, so that is the change to the regime.

Secondly, as we see on the face of the bill, there is a provision for the Commissioner of Police to go ahead and to seek a court order for costs in circumstances where recovery of the costs of the destruction is going to be sought. Again, in terms of practical circumstances, it is understood that the seizure, the recovery, the transportation, the storage—the whole rigmarole associated with the taking of this equipment and the storage of it—comes at a significant cost, and so all of those elements, including dismantling of the equipment and so on, will constitute reasonable costs that might be the subject of a recovery order that the commissioner might seek a court order for that is the subject of the bill.

Broadly, those two elements are welcomed by this side of the house. The opposition supports the priority that the bill has and supports its passage. I just flag those areas of particular interest about the timing. There might be just one or two other items to raise in due course, possibly in committee, in relation to the process of cost recovery, how that is anticipated to work in practice and whether or not there is some indication of routines that, from an operational point of view, might be able to be immediately applied or whether that is still a work in progress.

I turn then to deal with the present context for a moment because the government has highlighted that not only is this a desired improvement—it will provide a practical improvement in terms of the way in which this prescribed hydroponics equipment is dealt with by police—but a key objective of the government that has been stated in the course of the debate is the desire to free up police resources and, for the purpose of pursuing the objective, that police are able to be out on the beat, fighting crime, protecting our community. I think the Attorney in another place put it precisely in those terms in terms of the short objective.

The government, in moving the passage of this bill, has undertaken to do all it can to be effecting improvements so that SAPOL is able to operate in the service of all South Australians and to do so as effectively as it can. In that context, it would be remiss of me not to highlight that those challenges are real and those are challenges and responsibilities that are very much at the feet of government as we stand here now two years into the period of Malinauskas Labor in this state.

We know that, presently, we have a shortfall in police personnel of around 200, and we know that we have an attrition rate that currently sits at a rate of over 5 per cent. Those are matters of core concern for the opposition. They are clearly matters of serious indication of challenge in terms of police personnel in the state as we debate this bill and as we seek to achieve that stated objective of the government. We want to ensure absolutely that police can be out on the beat. We want to ensure that police are applying those scarce resources to the fighting of crime and the protecting of community, and this bill, to the extent that it assists that, is important.

As I have highlighted in recent days and weeks, we are, sadly, in the midst of a time at which we are seeing crime really quite startlingly on the rise, and we will need to see, as a matter of commitment and priority from this government, a plan to address those issues from a SAPOL point of view, and particularly from a SAPOL resourcing point of view.

Just to put that into some sort of context, we see ABS statistics from the bureau that are giving us a picture of how crime data has progressed in the period from 2021-22 to 2022-23, and it is of particular concern to see the statistics in respect of youth crime over that period and the extent to which we have seen the increase in crime across the board.

Just to highlight that in a number of ways, we have seen abduction and harassment offences increase by 109 per cent through that period, according to the ABS data. Public order offences are up by 59 per cent. Robbery and extortion offences are reportedly up by 49 per cent. Sexual assault and related offences are up by 42 per cent. Weapons and explosives offences are up by 26 per cent. Illicit drug offences have increased by 16 per cent.

Another aspect of this concerning data that lends particular weight to the need to apply a priority response to this is that, sadly, younger and younger people are featuring in the data. As many as 52 children aged between 10 and 11 have been apprehended in committing crimes in the 2022-23 period. That rises to 397 children in the 12 to 13 age group. Then, really quite dramatically, in the age range of 14 to 17 it rises to 1,745 children who have been apprehended.

So much has been the extent of the increase in crime—the prevalence of those serious crime statistics and those that particularly apply in terms of the increase in youth crime—that we are seeing, both anecdotally and on the face of the record, far too much of a situation in which there are lower level (one might describe them as less serious) offences that are not even the subject of a report, let alone a police response.

In this house we all know that, anecdotally, shopkeepers and those running retail premises, and particularly our supermarket operators, have long since adopted a practice of not even reporting shop thefts because they know that at present there is such a strain on police resourcing that there is a kind of building it into the financial and cost model of the relevant retail store. That is an entirely unacceptable state of affairs. It is extraordinary that that should be regarded as even remotely acceptable.

In that respect, it is a particularly galling matter that, of the range of offences of which shop theft is one, even without the non-reporting aspect we have seen a more than 30 per cent increase in those offences being reported.

Top of the list in terms of the overall crime crisis that we find ourselves in in the state, among those 11,000 and more additional offences that have been reported over the past 12 months, police officer assault tops the list with a 40 per cent increase. So while receiving and handling the proceeds of crime, shop theft, aggravated robbery, family and domestic violence, threatening behaviour, home invasions and serious assault resulting in injury are all up significantly, police officer assault tops the list with a 40 per cent increase.

Again, this is unacceptable and we need to see a reversal. We need to see at least an indication that there are steps that the government will be taking to address the need for more police officers and, in turn, to address these particularly concerning crime statistics, both as it affects youth in particular and across the board.

That startling data that I share in the context of that particular responsibility of the government, let alone its undertaking, ought to characterise the broader challenge that South Australians will be looking at the government to address. To the extent that this is a bill that will provide for practical operational improvements that will free up police resources, as I say, it is welcome, as is its being given priority in terms of the debate today.

The opposition welcomes the bill and the improvement that it will bring and will in turn look to the government to address those fundamental aspects of police resource support and those startling crime statistics that we are currently navigating. With those words, I commend the bill to the house.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Minister for Climate, Environment and Water, Minister for Workforce and Population Strategy) (12:02): I am very pleased to close the debate. It is good that we have unanimity of support for this legislation. There was a question in the second reading offering by the honourable member and the lead speaker for the opposition about what would happen immediately on the passing and commencement of this piece of legislation.

I am informed that what the police will be able to do is employ somebody to dispose of the existing material that is no longer required to be stored, and its destruction of course, and then they will go through a tender process in order to have a continuous management of that as this kind of material is seized in the course of criminal prosecutions. I hope that answers the question, but I suspect the honourable member would still prefer to go into committee to ask a few other questions—

Mr Teague interjecting:

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: —maybe? Not certain. There was a degree of emphasis from the honourable member on the question of the way in which police resources are dedicated and the way in which this might help free them up, which of course is one of the very commonsense reasons for having this piece of legislation—that there is no point in wasting resources storing material that is not required, is not used, is not looked at and therefore is just eating up public resources.

It is, of course, appropriate that we use all of the resources we have in the most efficient and effective way. I am sure we can rely upon the police to direct their resources in a way that is the most effective. With that, I commend the bill to the house and seek its second reading.

Bill read a second time.

Committee Stage

In committee.

Clause 1.

Mr TEAGUE: It might be possible to deal with the areas of my interest entirely subject to clause 1. I say that because it might be that the minister could reflect on the work that the transitional provisions in the schedule might have to do but, if it is appropriate, we can get to it and deal with it in the schedule.

I understand the minister has indicated that, on the passage of the bill, there will be the opportunity to clear the equipment that is in storage, so there would be a process of disposal. I understand that it is possible—it may be the practice of SAPOL—to engage an external operator in the seizure of these items and that there is a bit of specialised work involved. I am interested in who might undertake that initial disposal work and would that process then be in accord with the process by which SAPOL will then go forward in the new regime.

In terms of the disposal—and here is where the schedule might be kicking in—is there, so far as cost recovery is concerned, the possibility to seek an order now for costs including the seizure and the holding, and the subsequent disposal or, in relation to the equipment that is presently held, is there any particular special limit that applies to the cost-recovery side?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: If I may, there are a few parts to this question and I will endeavour to answer each of them. The question initially was about the disposal process for the currently held and then the future held and whether the process will be the same or if one will inform the other. Of course, this is the Attorney-General's Department undertaking this legislative reform as opposed to the police department, but we have sought advice from them, and the police have advised that their initial intention is to have two fairly low-level staff, ASO3-level staff, supervised by a police security officer, who will go through the process of disposing of all of the currently held material. There will then be a procurement process that will go to a private contractor to manage ongoing material that is seized after that date.

One of the reasons for the big distinction, not least that there is currently quite a backlog, is that there will not be a location where that material has been brought to and stored. It will be disposed of from the site where it has been seized, so taking over all of that is a different task to that of going through an existing warehouse. That is to the best of our knowledge and the advice that we have received. I imagine that the police reserve the right to modify their approach if they discover anything that they had not previously thought of.

On the question of cost recovery for the material that is presently held, the transitional provision, the second clause, explicitly prevents that from occurring, so there will be no cost recovery for the existing. The transitional clauses in effect say that the material that is currently held can be disposed of, so there is retrospectivity in the sense that the material that is currently held no longer needs to be held but explicitly that the financial side of that, which starts from the date of the commencement, does not include the material that is currently held. I hope that answers each of the questions.

Mr TEAGUE: I might say that it was not intended to be a trick question, and it will emerge when the explanation of clauses that has been incorporated in Hansard is there on the record in due course. That certainly addresses that point about recovery of costs of destruction in relation to equipment seized after commencement.

I think what is interesting, if I am understanding it correctly, is that the passage of the bill will facilitate a new process for both storage to the extent that it is stored and then destruction such that police, should they choose to undertake that procurement process, will not be directly involved in those practical steps that are involved in the transportation and so on in circumstances where the equipment that is warehoused presently—and is the subject of the current regime requiring a court order at the end of proceedings—is warehoused in a way which means there is police oversight of that particular equipment. That will change as a result of the passage of the bill. Is all of that a fair series of observations?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: Operating on the best information that we have, largely as the member has stated is what we understand will occur. Just to be clear, though, there will be, potentially under some probably rare circumstances, occasions where the material that is seized after the commencement of this piece of legislation will need to be retained by the police, and quite how they will manage that in terms of who has custody of it, transport and so on is a matter for the police to determine. It is possible that a piece of evidence will be seized that is being used for a prosecution where they want to keep it, so that presumably will be handled separately, but otherwise, broadly, the way that the member has articulated it is the best of our understanding.

Clause passed.

Remaining clause (2), schedule and title passed.

Bill reported without amendment.

Third Reading

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Minister for Climate, Environment and Water, Minister for Workforce and Population Strategy) (12:15): I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Bill read a third time and passed.

PARLIAMENTARY BUSINESS
MEMBERS
GET INVOLVED
ABOUT PARLIAMENT
VISIT
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
CONTACT