Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) — My adjournment matter today is directed to the Minister for Police. The action I am seeking from the minister is to review the evidence base underpinning roadside testing and to look at the policy and practice that is used to develop that roadside testing. This is as a result of looking at the recent Transport Accident Commission advertising campaign that shows a young driver whose driving was clearly not impaired but who tested positive when stopped for a roadside drug test. The justification for this was that even though the person may not feel impaired they could unknowingly be impaired. This is about having trace amounts of certain substances.
This is where it all seems to unravel, because when you look at the information that is available around these trace amounts of illicit substances that can be detected by roadside testing, it is completely inconsistent. In New South Wales they say if you had some cannabis in the last 12 hours, you may still be affected, in the Northern Territory it is 5 hours, in Western Australia it is 4 hours and in Victoria it is 24 hours, so there is an incredible inconsistency. When I looked to see where this evidence for the Victoria Police and Victorian drug driving policy came from, I found a submission that related back to a 2004 study by Professor Olaf Drummer from the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine. Professor Drummer said that it did not matter how much trace element there was and that a person would be affected by tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). What he also went on to say, which I thought was quite extraordinary, was that there was no significant link between opiates and driving. So heroin and driving seemed fine, but trace elements of THC did not.
Anyway, the action I am seeking is that we currently review the Drummer study and that we look at all of the other information and research that has been done around drug driving and testing for drugs in drivers around the world.
The PRESIDENT — Order! Rather than all of us doing that, the minister will do that.
Ms PATTEN — Yes. Let us ask the minister. That was the royal we.
