Wednesday, 18 February 2026

 David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan) (09:54): Members may recall that some two years ago the government abandoned its public commitment to reform driving laws for medicinal cannabis patients and instead announced that they would conduct a world-first closed-track driving trial to evaluate the impact of THC on driver impairment and, secondly, to assess various technologies that would measure impairment. We were profoundly unimpressed at this government backflip. There has already been a truckload of such trials, pardon the pun, and we felt the government was just trying to kick the can down the road into the next Parliament. We did, however, feel that the evaluation of impairment testing technologies would be really useful. The government assured us that the trial would be completed by mid-2026 – plenty of time to resolve this question in the current Parliament.

Last week we got a briefing from the minister’s office. Surprise, surprise, it turns out the trial is taking longer than expected and Swinburne will not even have the report to government until 2027. Even worse, it was confirmed that due to budget issues there will be no evaluation of impairment-testing technologies. Once again it is all too apparent that this government does not give a damn about the thousands of Victorians on medicinal cannabis who need to be able to drive their cars responsibly. The government keeps talking about new solutions. Well, here is a suggestion: start telling the truth, and stop treating the large and growing medicinal cannabis community like dirt.