Federal Coalition attempt to overturn ACT decriminalisation drug laws fails

Senator Cash's controversial private senators' bill designed to overturn the ACT laws failed to pass the Senate on Thursday morning, with the vote going down 33 votes to 27, with Senator David Pocock and the Greens voting with the government.

Earlier the Senate heard the Albanese's government's view that Senator Cash's attempt at territory intervention will have a "chilling effect" on ACT governance and "corrupts the governance of how laws are made." The Greens also slammed the attempt as part of the "Trumpian rise" within the federal Coalition and goes against the will of the ACT Liberals branch.

But Senator Cash, the shadow attorney-general, pressed on, telling the Senate the ACT laws were rushed through as a private members' bill to avoid scrutiny.

She raised how the laws could apply to coastal waters due to the coastal Jervis Bay territory, where the laws of the ACT apply.

"So the question has therefore been raised as a result of these ACT laws, can Australian citizens now carry ice on ships in international waters facing nothing more any threat of a $100 fine?" Senator Cash told the Senate.

"Well, I would have thought before you decriminalise you actually want to know the answer to that. Have Andrew Barr and Rachel Stephen-Smith now unwittingly created a cruise ship drug charter?

"I guess I would have thought you wanted the answer to that before you went down this path. What an absolutely absurd situation."

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Under the laws introduced as a harm-reduction measure, people found with amounts of common illicit recreational drugs such as cocaine, ecstasy (MDMA), ice, heroin, LSD, and amphetamines considered to be personal possession would be subject to fines rather than criminal charges.

Senator Cash has described the laws, which are due to come into effect in just over a week, as a "national issue".

"I don't want these ridiculous outcomes to distract from the very real harms of this badly thought out law," she said.

"Three groups will pay for the ACT government's cavalier approach to drug policy. The first group will be the people who travelled down the Hume Highway hoping to experience the ACT's party lifestyle. For many, it will end in addiction and heartache. And for some, even in death.

"The second group who will pay are first responders, emergency workers and bystanders who will now find themselves facing a person in an ice induced psychosis and the final group who will pay are the families."

Labor Senator Tim Ayres has slammed the federal Coalition's attempt to overturn territory law as an attack on territory rights.

"The effective cancellation of legislation in the territory does have a chilling effect on the territories capacity to make laws," he said. "It is the bluntest possible intervention into territory rights."

"And the people of the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory have been very clear about this principle that self-government in the Australian Capital Territory means that they get to determine their own affairs within the limits of what is provided for in state, territory and Commonwealth relations."

Senator Ayres said states and territories will make good laws, bad laws and are capable of criticism.

"It is the responsibility of territorians and people of the ACT to argue and contest those propositions," he said.

"And indeed if Senator Cash or Senator [Ross] Cadell or anybody else feels sufficiently moved, they should they should move to the ACT and perhaps run for the perhaps run for the territory assembly.

"I'm told it's a very fine assembly and they'd probably enjoy their participation in that in that assembly.

Greens senator David Shoebridge said the opposition's attempt on territory rights pointed to "Trumpian style, evidence free" politics growing in Australia.