On Wednesday 22 April 2026 I spoke on the LNP's Expanding Adult Crime, Adult Time and Taking a Strong Stance on Drugs and Anti-Social Behaviour Amendment Bill 2026, which scraps the successful three strikes drug diversion program and expands police move on and search powers.

You can read my full speech below or in the official Parliamentary record of proceedings (Hansard) here.

Mr BERKMAN (Maiwar—Grn) (4.59 pm): I rise to speak against the Expanding Adult Crime, Adult Time and Taking a Strong Stance on Drugs and Anti-Social Behaviour Amendment Bill. Yes, the title of the bill alone sounds absurd, but it has nothing on the actual contents of this bill. This bill and this government are a prison crisis in the making. This bill is complete insanity.

This government's policy is to lock up and disappear anyone who is inconvenient to them—anyone who reveals the abysmal policy failings that they now oversee. People battling with addiction who cannot access appropriate health care: should we expand AOD services? No, we will lock them up instead. Kids experiencing the whole constellation of disadvantage—lack of access to disability supports, violence at home, exposure to the child protection system: should we invest in frontline services and early intervention and supports for families? No, let's just lock them up instead. People experiencing homelessness and forced to hang out in public spaces because they literally have nowhere else to go: should we invest in universal public housing for them? No, we will just lock them up. That is the government's response to everything. People opposing a genocide supported by weapons parts manufactured right here in Queensland: should we end our government's complicity? No, we will just lock them up as well. First Nations people whose very existence reminds us of our own colonial violence, dispossession and illegal occupation: are we going to do anything meaningful about that? No, we will just keep locking them up, too.

It is utterly disgraceful. It is truly incredible policymaking, and that is before we get to consider the practical financial implications of this bill as well. For a government that claims to be fiscally responsible, I call bollocks. It is absolute rot that this bill is going to do anything but waste Queenslanders' money. The cost of incarcerating children, the cost of processing and prosecuting drug offences—it is just nuts!

I want to make some observations about the inquiry process which, for aspects of it—and this is no reflection on the secretariat; they always do their finest work—was just pathetic. There is no other word for it. This is a bill that proposes three completely distinct and very significant pieces of law reform. The time allowed for the hearings for this bill was completely inadequate and simply did not allow time for the committee to enjoy the benefit of evidence from countless very credible witnesses across all three of those policy issues.

Mr Hunt interjected.

Mr BERKMAN: I can hear the chair of the committee yapping away down there. Let's look at the program for the inquiry around just the Police Drug Diversion Program. We have here from 20 March 2023 almost five hours of hearings in Brisbane alone on a single element of this bill, yet this committee, under this government, allowed us less than three hours in Brisbane for the entirety of this bill.

Mr HUNT: Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise to a point of order. I think the member is straying into discussing private committee deliberations and the way the committee operated to set up hearings. He is going, I think, very close to disclosing committee deliberations. I draw your attention to that.

Mr BERKMAN: Might I respond on a point of order?

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Whiting): Yes, you may, member for Maiwar.

Mr BERKMAN: The program for the Brisbane hearings of this inquiry is a matter of public record. I suggest the chair perhaps jumps online and looks at the program that we as the committee, under his guidance, agreed to, published and then rolled out.

Mr Mickelberg: You agreed to it.

Mr BERKMAN: No, I certainly did not agree to it.

Mr Mickelberg interjected.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Members, order! Member for Buderim, direct your comments through the chair. I am ruling on this point of order.

Honourable members interjected.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, members! I am ruling on a point of order. What the member for Nicklin has said has some merit. We need to be careful that we do not stray into committee deliberations. However, the member for Maiwar is right in saying that the program has been published. Certainly some of the things he has talked about are included in his dissenting report. There is no point of order on that, but I would certainly caution the member on not revealing what has happened internally. Thank you. Continue.

Mr BERKMAN: Thank you, Deputy Speaker. There was less than three hours for the hearing in Brisbane on this bill. We did not hear from the AMA Queensland, the Alcohol and Drug Foundation or the Queensland Mental Health Commissioner. We did not have a single designated First Nations voice, despite what we know, and have known for decades, about the extraordinary over-representation in prisons and about the overpolicing of First Nations people in Queensland. We did not hear from submitters in the Queensland Aboriginal and Islander Health Council, ATSILS, Sisters Inside or the Office of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children's Commissioner.

We still did not hear anything from the so-called Expert Legal Panel. The minister promised in her introductory speech on this bill—she made a commitment to us—that the panel's advice would be released as part of the committee process. We have been provided nothing of the sort. What we have here is what the legal panel has called its final report. That was only made available essentially at the commencement of the public hearing in Brisbane, and this final report itself refers to the advice provided to the government, but none of that advice has been made available.

That should not be a surprise, I suppose, because this LNP government in Queensland is all about legislating ideology and culture wars. It has no regard for evidence or experts. It has shown that since the day it took office. We are used to counterproductive, junk legislation from the LNP, but it does feel like this time they have jumped the shark because this bill is just plain stupid on so many levels.

The expansion of Adult Crime, Adult Time includes 12 new offences, some of which will now attract a maximum penalty of life in prison. We received data from the department at the hearing which showed us that most of them—the vast majority—simply are not offences that are being committed by children with any kind of regularity. Five of these new offences have had zero proven finalised offences—that is, convictions—over the last 11 years. For two of these offences there has not even been a single charge, and for the other three of those five there is a total of four charges across the three of them. Even if you accept that higher penalties have a deterrent effect, who are we supposed to be deterring? These are not offences that kids commit.

If we look at the inclusion of riot as an offence, there was a grand total of 21 convictions of riot, 19 of which were in the year 2017. That just happens to coincide with a riot at the Brisbane Youth Detention Centre. Youth detention centres are consistently operating at overcapacity and detainees are subject to inhumane treatment as a result of separations. They are precisely the kinds of conditions that are going to lead to riots—where children feel they have no hope and no option. It is absurd. It is absurd that we would legislate higher penalties for these offences that we know kids generally do not go anywhere near.

The repeal of the drug diversion framework is where the blatant ideology is laid bare. No-one with a credible view on the issue of drug and alcohol misuse supports the repeal of this program. We would have had the benefit of a UQ evaluation of the existing Police Drug Diversion Program, which was showing really positive indications, but if it had have been completed, if we had seen it, it would have shown that it works, so of course we are not going to get to see that. The existing drug diversion program was supported by police at its introduction and there is absolutely no reason to believe that that has changed. QPS data makes clear that in the first 18 months of the PDDP operation the majority of people involved in a drug diversion warning had no further contact with the program. That is 83 per cent.

I want to turn to one of the almost laughable moments in the hearing, when the chair tried to get the police to indicate some dissatisfaction with the program. He had already praised Senior Sergeant Jackway for his presence and was saying that it was great to have operational experience on the panel. He asked him, ‘Tell me, what is wrong with the drug diversion program?’ The answer from Senior Sergeant Jackway was—

"It is working relatively well."

The chair went on—

"Do you have any examples of any frustrations police on the ground have had with it?"

Senior Sergeant Jackway said no. I would almost feel embarrassed for the guy if it was not such an incredibly laughable performance to try to demonstrate that this is not fully supported by police. They are repealing a program that saves police time, saves them money and allows them to direct their resources where they are really needed, and that is even if you put aside the very real health concerns. This is a crazy misallocation of resources.

We also heard from Senior Sergeant Jackway at the hearing that the drug diversion program takes up 30 minutes max. That was his estimate. How much more time are beat cops going to have to spend now issuing charges, putting together evidence, preparing for appearances at court and going to court? That is before we even get to the waste of court resources that Queenslanders are now going to be paying for because these guys want to run some ideological battle against drugs.

Let’s be clear: we are not talking about drug trafficking offences. Repealing the drug diversion program will mean that more police time will be wasted on charges for possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use and there will be less time for them to focus on trafficking offences and other more serious crime. The evidence on this could not be clearer. A health response to drug use and addiction is the only sensible response.

Addiction does not discriminate. It does not care about your postcode, your pay cheque or your means. Everyone knows someone who has struggled with addiction. If they say they do not, they either do not know anyone or they are just ignoring it. This is very real. It touches all corners of our community. We know that access to health care is the determinant of better health outcomes and overcoming addiction. If members have not read QNADA’s submission or are not convinced by it, they are not doing their job in here. It states that for every dollar invested in drug and alcohol supports there is ‘a seven-dollar return via improved health status, improved psychological wellbeing, and participation in the community’. This government is wasting Queenslanders’ money on failed policies that are taking us nowhere.

(Time expired)