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Torsten

New federal import laws

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New legislation before the federal parliament will prohibit the importation of anything that has a psychoactive effect in any quantity by any person. This includes seeds and live plants , ie it will technically make criminals out of anyone importing Brugmansia seeds for example. In my experience they don't target seed importers, but sadly they often end up charged & convicted anyway [eg 3 years ago when they cracked down on poppy seed sellers on ebay and several ended up with federal drug convictions].

The bill has been referred to the senate committee on legal matters and submissions are possible till monday 4th of august. I am making a submission to have seeds excluded from the legislation. Submissions can be short and quite informal. Just sign up to 'my parliament' and it will tell you how to upload. Information on the bill is here: http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r5323

Update 24/11/2014:

WE WON!! The psychoactive substances import bill was today passed by the government after accepting the amendments, one of which is to exclude all plant material and plant extracts from the new laws. This is a big win for ethnobotanical collectors, herbalists, ethnic australians and plant enthusiasts. I am so relieved that all that effort paid off.

Big thanks to all those who also made submissions to the senate committee [esp Niall for fronting the committee via phone at 3am from overseas], Fiona Patten for the encouragement, Nick Wallis for keeping an eye out for legislative changes, and Tronica for putting me in touch with Senator di Natale.

This sets a great precedent for the states to follow.

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It´s getting more and more fucked up. Do you know if this includes Cacti? If so, it would be totally insane and a slap in the face for cactus growers in Australia. But even without cacti...it´s still fucked up. This affects so many types of plants and seeds it´s ridiculous. But i am sure it will be the typical hypocritical type of politics that will allow coffee and tobacco. I feel so sorry for you guys.

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their ideas have the strongest psychoactive effect ,

all you have to do is read them and they make ya fume

and want to hurt them a lot

they should be number one on the ban list

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Must be a Liberal affiliate wanting to go into the Ethno trade? Make import illegal, cut out 90% of the competition & force up the price "Ka-Ching"

I wish they would publish a list of things not to import because there are going to be lots and lots and lots of things that fall into that category that 99.999% of punters would not realized that 5 semi-tipper loads of their flower could get you stoned.

I wonder how that will affect things like hops going to the big brewers?

I guess its ok they will just turn a blind eye to one thing but not another.

As usual the laws are only for the honest or foolish.

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WHO is asking for decriminalization of all drugs and AU is criminalizing plants. Yep...

Excuse me but if you eat too much sweet basil, dill, nutmeg, cinnamon, chillies you might need to be exported from AU.

Edited by doxneed2c-me
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so when do we storm the castle and Bastille?

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so when do we storm the castle and Bastille?

They took our guns away, remember. What can an unarmed populace do during a revolution?

Next thing you know, hammers, nails and baseball bats will be outlawed and the police will be militarised.

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people in Libya and the Ukraine seemingly used fishing spear guns and slingshots and zip-guns to kill someone else for their weapon, I'd imagine if anything actually kicked off it would be similar here. where there's a will, there's a killing tool...

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Perhaps its time for the SAB party?

Or at very least a loose alliance of independents so that each supports the others & dont compete with one another?

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Sooooo does "ban the importation of all substances that have a psychoactive effect that are not otherwise regulated or banned"

mean that if a plant seed or substance is regulated by another commonwealth department for an entirely purpose could this be used as a defense? IE Daff lists Echinopsis pachanoi seed as a permissible import?

My instinct says no but i'm yet to find the legal instrument that states so.

​Not that i am overly concerned beyond that the AFP will likely keep their "most wanted list" a state secret which will discourage a few but will also encourage many otherwise law abiding gardeners to start using back doors and once that happens the control that the department thought it was going to have will evaporate faster than one can blink.

​I can see some small enterprises becoming quite profitable if one were so inclined.

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love the fact it does not apply to tobacco products....

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With the income management cards for everyone on centrelink I foresee a LOT of requests for tobacco seed.

Bootleg chop chop on every corner here we come.

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...chocolate?

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I was asked by the senate committee to appear as a witness at their hearing. The committee is 3 left, 3 right, so in controversial situations the chairman's casting vote is deciding. hence it is important to get the chairman on side, who in this case was conservative.

It wasn't actually all that difficult. The committee did not see any purpose in having seeds and plant products restricted. I stayed for the session with the reps from customs and attourney general's department and they got grilled quite severely on this issue for 20 minutes. Even they could not say what the point was of having seeds and plant materials included in the law and have been directed by the committee to contact me and to come to a resolution. The chairman indicated that otherwise the committee would recommend for the amendment I proposed. The bill itself does not need to actually be changed. We just need the minister to add a note into the memorandum that exempts seeds and plant products. The memorandum forms part of the interpretation of the law so is binding on judges.

So there are two possible positive outcomes. One is a change in the bill and the other is a change in the memorandum.
This is about as good an outcome as we could have hoped for at this stage and is good news for all plant collectors. We will know very soon how this unfolds and I'll update here.

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...chocolate?

how about reading the exemptions first rather than random suggestions?

chocolate is a food and hence covered by the food exemptions.

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people in Libya and the Ukraine seemingly used fishing spear guns and slingshots and zip-guns to kill someone else for their weapon, I'd imagine if anything actually kicked off it would be similar here. where there's a will, there's a killing tool...

exactly this everything is a weapon if you try hard enough, im not a psycho i think violence/anger/swearing should be the last resort to solve a problem, extremists of any kind hinder a cause more than anything.

but i still have a very legal machete and a few legal baseball bats and mre packs and other things just in case(im a bit of a natural disaster/social breakdown prepper its always good to be ready and prepared for anything cyclone season in broome will show you how fast things can break down,

^^^^^was a bit off topic but this is a great example of slowly chipping away at a peoples freedoms and liberty's until they have nothing....boiled frogs

Edited by spacemonkey
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The Federal Senate Committee handed down its report and I am very happy that they have taken on our suggestion to exempt plants and plant products. This is very encouraging, however the government is not bound by these recommendation, so we need to wait another week or two to see what amendments are actually made.
Here is the report: http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Legal_and_Constitutional_Affairs/Psychoactive_Substances_Bill/~/media/Committees/legcon_ctte/psychoactive_substances/report.pdf

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They took our guns away, remember. What can an unarmed populace do during a revolution?

With enough soap

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And they did not take our guns I am so sick of this shit if you want a semi auto there are ways to get them registered.

Whats wrong with a double barrel and a pocket full of shells .My idea of the right to bear arms (lol) is muskets every one

has a musket only one shot good for home defense great for a uprising .

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Thank you Torsten. If the prohibition of such a broad (and it would seem, loosely defined) range of plants went ahead, it would affect not just your business, but all of us. We appreciate all of your effort.

Fingers crossed that the government acts reasonably.

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SAB would have benefitted from the laws as we produce pretty much all our seeds & herbs locally. The import ban would have affected many of the smaller competitors who import in bulk and sell via ebay etc. So not only would be have been unaffected, we would have gotten more of the trade.

But the laws were wrong and I'll make an effort for plant liberties regardless of what effect they have on my business. Because of the precedent set by the recent NSW legislation I felt there was a real possibility to have an effect in this process - and it was fun.

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Ah OK, sorry. I was under the impression that a lot of the species that you carry were originally imported into the country by you and assumed that this legislation might make importing new genetics difficult. I guess new plant/seed sales would only be a minor part of your business compared with the golden oldies and herbs/extracts.

Anyway, good work.

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