Wednesday, 13 November 2024

Hemp industry

Rachel PAYNE (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:27): (1279) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Planning. Earlier this year Legalise Cannabis Victoria tabled a bill calling for a standalone hemp act in Victoria. We were happy to see that following this the government responded to the inquiry into the industrial hemp industry in Victoria and supported almost all of its recommendations. In their response they acknowledged the need to develop the hemp industry in Victoria, the barriers that exist in the planning system and an openness to reform.

In the months since we have continued to hear from hemp growers about their difficulties with getting their projects off the ground. This can come in many forms, but often it occurs at the planning level when neighbours and others object to an application, forcing it through an appeals process. In some instances this is undeniably a kind of lawfare: that is, the use of the legal system to damage hemp growers and stifle the hemp industry. In one such example in my region a person is seeking to process industrial hemp grown on their farm to make a sustainable hemp-based version of a mud brick to sell to the building industry. Despite council support for their plans and the well-understood importance of these kinds of efficient and sustainable building materials, their plans have been stopped in their tracks. A victim of lawfare against the hemp industry, their project has been the subject of numerous objections from their neighbours, who have now appealed to VCAT. This series of objections has blown out the expected timeline for their project. They now estimate these objections will cause an 18-month delay.

People in the agricultural sector and those wanting to get into hemp inadvertently hear about all of these kinds of delays and decide that hemp is all too hard. Despite this government’s commitment to better supporting the hemp industry of Victoria, I remain concerned that this kind of lawfare will only grow unless the government protects growers and works to dismantle the stigma surrounding hemp. So I ask: will the minister help ensure that hemp growers are not unfairly subject to this kind of lawfare?