The Victorian Law Reform Commission has released an issues paper on Medicinal Cannabis. The paper notes that the “terms of reference do not invite the Commission’s views on [the merits of] this policy”; instead, the Attorney-General asked it to consider how the policy could be implemented, and to ensure the expert advice of medical practitioners was taken into account. The two main questions it seeks to answer are “Who should be eligible to use cannabis for medicinal purposes?” and “How extensive should any Victorian medicinal cannabis scheme be?” The VLRC has asked the public for submissions in response by 30 April 2015, as it must report by 31 August. Meanwhile, the NSW government is scaling back their Law Reform Commission. It has not referred an issue for more than two years, and legal journalist Richard Ackland reports, “The position of chairman of the LRC has not been filled since James Wood retired over a year ago. No full-time commissioners have been appointed for over 12 months.” Furthermore, “All five of the existing LRC staff are seeking jobs elsewhere, and have been advised to do so by the department”; the Justice Department will instead take over the day-to-day administration of the LRC and allocate departmental staff when needed. Ackland suggests this may be an attempt by the executive to effectively abolish the NSWLRC as an independent body without parliament repealing the Law Reform Commission Act 1967 (NSW): “The commission, as a self-contained functioning entity, dedicated to independent investigation into legal policy issues, is finished.” (This approach has been taken before: when the Abbott Government’s attempt to abolish the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner was blocked in the Senate, it nevertheless redistributed staff to other agencies and closed the office, leaving the Commissioner to oversee the Freedom of Information system by himself, working on a laptop at home.)
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