Talk:Australia

Talk

Discussion for: Australia • View • Links • Related changes

Use this page for verification notes, disputes, and action items. Keep narrative content on the article.

Page scope

Australia is the Country page for Australia. It covers where cannabis is naturalised and grown; the communities in Arnhem Land and the Northern Rivers whose relationship with the plant is documented; colonial hemp and the modern hemp industry; the state and Commonwealth controls from the 1920s; the spread of use from the late 1960s; the royal commissions of 1977 to 1979; the move from prosecution to cautions and fines from 1975 and 1987; the medicinal licensing scheme of 2016; the Australian Capital Territory's law of 2019; use, prices and seizures; the law of each jurisdiction; and the herbarium specimens. The longer history named in the History hatnote is planned as a separate article. The tables of growing regions, growing areas, accessions and news fill from pages that name Australia as their country.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Sources and how they were read

Commonwealth legislation. The Narcotic Drugs Act 1967 (Compilation No. 16), the Narcotic Drugs Amendment Act 2016 as made, the Criminal Code Regulations 2019 (Compilation No. 6) and the Customs (Prohibited Imports) Regulations 1956 (Compilation No. 147) were read in the authorised PDFs of the Federal Register of Legislation. Assent and commencement dates of the 1967 Act are from its Endnote 3; those of the 2016 Act from its own commencement table. The cannabis row of Schedule 1 to the Criminal Code Regulations (item 50) was matched to its column headings (commercial in kilograms, marketable and trafficable in grams) on the printed page. The bill's progress (passed 24 February 2016) is from its page on the Parliament of Australia website.
State and territory legislation. South Australia's Controlled Substances Act 1984 (version 1.7.2026), Queensland's Drugs Misuse Act 1986 (reprint current as at 3 May 2024) and Drugs Misuse Regulation 1987 (current as at 10 September 2026), Victoria's Drugs, Poisons and Controlled Substances Act 1981 (authorised version 146), Western Australia's Cannabis Control Act 2003 (compilation as at 28 October 2010), Cannabis Law Reform Act 2010 and the compilation table of its Misuse of Drugs Act 1981, the Northern Territory's Misuse of Drugs Act as in force at 1 May 2016 and the Australian Capital Territory's register entries for its Acts of 2019 and 2022 were read on the official legislation sites. Dates of insertion are from each Act's legislative history or endnotes. The New South Wales register could not be read; the state's hemp scheme is described from its agriculture department's licence manual (September 2026) and web page; its cautioning scheme from a release of the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (7 June 2023).
Reviews and reports. The ACT Government's review of the 2019 Act (August 2024) was read in full; the article cites pp. 7, 9–10 and 19. O'Reilly and Ritter (Drug Policy Modelling Program Bulletin No. 31, June 2024) gives the table of responses to possession as of May 2024. The Senate committee reports on the Legalising Cannabis Bill 2023 and on the Improving Access to Medicinal Cannabis Bill 2023 were read in their HTML chapters and are cited by paragraph. The Parliamentary Library's FlagPost of 23 February 2021 (Matthew Thomas) is cited for the background to the 2016 amendment. The Penington Institute's Cannabis in Australia 2022 technical report is cited by printed page for figures it reproduces from the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission and the National Drug Strategy Household Survey of 2019. The UNODC study Drug Policy and Results in Australia (October 2008) and Robin MacKay's paper for the Canadian Senate (2001) are cited by printed page for the controls of the 1920s to 1950s; the UNODC study says of itself that it is not an official document of the United Nations. The Law Library of Congress report Regulation of Hemp (November 2022, Australia chapter pp. 5–16) is cited for the years in which each jurisdiction allowed industrial hemp.
Journal articles. Hall, Dawson, Johnson and Yimer (2026), Swift and others (2013), Zhou and others (2025), Dawson and others (2025), Wilson and others (2026) and Hallinan and Bonomo (2022) were read in full in Europe PMC. Clough and others (2002, 2004), Lee and others (2008), Reilly and others (1998) and Hall and Swift (2000) are cited for their published abstracts only. Bibliographic fields of each were checked against Crossref.
Drug trends surveys. The national reports of the Illicit Drug Reporting System and of the Ecstasy and Related Drugs Reporting System for 2026 (National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, published 25 September 2026) are cited by printed page. Both say that their samples (people who regularly inject drugs; people who regularly use ecstasy or other stimulants, in the capital cities) are not representative of the general population; the article says so.
History. The 1809 return of cultivation is in the second edition of The History of New South Wales published under George Barrington's name, read in the Project Gutenberg Australia transcription, whose notes say the book relies heavily on David Collins's Account of the English Colony. John Jiggens's argument is cited from the transcript of his talk on ABC Radio National (9 September 2012). The Woodward Royal Commission is described from the NSW State Archives agency record (AGY-2125), which cites the commission's report; the report itself was not read.
News. ABC News (2015, 2021, 2023) and SBS News (2014) are cited only for the Nimbin festival, the MardiGrass, the settlement of the Northern Rivers in the late 1960s and early 1970s and what named people said.
Botany and specimens. The Australian Plant Census entry for Cannabis sativa (its distribution note dates from 2005) and the PlantNET flora of New South Wales were read on their sites. Herbarium sheets were read in the GBIF occurrence data (130 preserved specimens of the genus from Australia, queried 14 October 2026); the earliest (MEL 2210742A) and the Bellevue Hill and Kogarah sheets are cited by occurrence number.

Where the sources differ

Victoria's first control. UNODC (2008) names the Poisons Act 1927; MacKay (2001) gives 1928 without naming an Act; the Penington Institute (2022) names the Poisons Act 1928. None of the three cites the Victorian statute, which was not read. The article says "1927 or 1928".
The Commonwealth's prohibition of 1926. UNODC (2008) says importation was prohibited in 1926; the Penington Institute says import and export from 1926; MacKay says importation and use for non-medical purposes in the 1920s. The instrument was not read.
The 1988 Convention. The timeline in Hall and others (2026) puts Australia's ratification in 1990; the UN Treaty Collection gives 16 November 1992 (signature 14 February 1989). The article uses the Treaty Collection.
The Northern Territory scheme. Hall and others (2026) say the Territory passed its legislation in 1995; the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Act 1996 (No. 4 of 1996), which inserted Part IIB, received assent on 20 March 1996 and commenced on 1 July 1996.
Western Australia. Hall and others (2026) say the scheme was reversed in 2008, after a change of government. The repealing Act, the Cannabis Law Reform Act 2010, received assent on 28 October 2010; the compilation of the 2003 Act as at that date lists the repeal as "To be proclaimed". Part 3 of the 2010 Act commenced on 1 August 2011. The date the repeal itself commenced was not found. The article gives the Act and its assent, not a year of reversal.
South Australia's Royal Commission. UNODC (2008) says the commission's report of 1979 recommended that minor use not be treated as a criminal offence. Hall and others (2026) say that a discussion paper of 1977 recommended removing criminal penalties for adults, while the final report proposed referring people arrested for possession to Drug Assessment and Aid Panels. The article reports the discussion paper.
The first decriminalisation. Hall and others (2026) date a $100 fine for possession of under 25 grams in the Australian Capital Territory to 1975 and call South Australia the first state to decriminalise, in 1987; the Penington Institute says the removal of criminal penalties did not occur in Australia until 1987; the ACT Government's review calls the ACT's scheme of 1992 the second civil penalty in Australia. The article states the 1975 change and South Australia as the first state.
Donald Mackay and the Woodward Commission. The NSW State Archives record speaks of Mackay's disappearance on 15 July 1977 and dates the commission from 5 August 1977 to its final report of 31 October 1979; UNODC (2008) speaks of his murder in 1977 and of the commission's establishment in 1979. The article follows the Archives. The Archives record spells Coleambally "Colleambally".
Plants allowed in the ACT. The ACT Government's review: one or two plants for an adult, with a limit of four per premises; Zhou and others (2025): two plants per person, four per household; the Australian Medical Association, in evidence quoted by the Senate committee (para. 2.100): two plants per household.
When medicinal cannabis became legal. Hallinan and Bonomo (2022) say November 2016; the licensing provisions of the Narcotic Drugs Amendment Act 2016 commenced on 29 October 2016.
Queensland's hemp Act. The Law Library of Congress names a "Drugs Misuse Act 1998"; its own footnote cites the Drugs Misuse Act 1986, whose Part 5B was inserted in 1998 and substituted in 2002.
National use in 2022–23. The ACT Government's review gives 11.5 per cent for Australia as a whole from the National Drug Strategy Household Survey of 2022–23; Wilson and others (2026) cite the same figure without naming the survey year; Dawson and others (2025) report that 88.5 per cent of respondents did not use cannabis in the previous twelve months. The National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing (6.7 per cent in 2020–22) uses a stricter definition and a different age range.

Not used, and why

A statement that cannabis arrived with the First Fleet in 1787, in the Penington Institute report: it carries no source there; no primary account of hemp seed on the First Fleet was found.
Governor Phillip's Instructions of 25 April 1787: they look to the flax plant of the nearby islands for clothing and naval use, not to hemp; the flax of Norfolk Island and New Zealand is a different plant. The History of New South Wales likewise contrasts "the European hemp" with that flax.
A letter of Governor King of 1802 on sowing "Indian hemp" seed: quoted only on an advocacy site and in blog posts; the State Library of New South Wales transcript of King's letter of 5 June 1802 in the Banks Papers does not mention hemp, flax or Indian seed. The letter that holds the passage, if it exists, was not identified.
Burnett (2026) on Marcus Clarke's piece "Cannabis Indica" (Journal of Australian Studies 50(2)): only the bibliographic record could be read.
A germplasm panel of 84 cultivated accessions (Gloerfelt-Tarp and others, 2023): it does not sample Australian naturalised populations.
Two letters and a paper whose text could not be read: Clough and others (2002, Medical Journal of Australia) and Lee, Clough and Conigrave (2007), both letters without abstracts; also Clough and others (2005, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry), whose abstract was not available.
Patient numbers reported by the Australian Medicinal Cannabis Association in the Senate report on the 2023 medicinal cannabis bill: an industry body's figures, not checked against the Therapeutic Goods Administration's data.
An Australian Bureau of Statistics figure of 24 per cent for use by Indigenous people, quoted in a police submission to the Senate committee: the earlier survey year is misprinted in the report and the survey was not read.
The name "Mullumbimby Madness": no published or news source found uses it of cannabis; the ABC (2021) uses "Mullumbimby's Madness" only as the title of a local-history film series.
An advocacy timeline of Australian hemp history on the Nimbin MardiGrass website and the Wikipedia article on cannabis in Australia: neither is a source for this page.

Open questions

National survey and agency reports. The report of the National Drug Strategy Household Survey 2022–2023 itself, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission's Illicit Drug Data Reports, the Therapeutic Goods Administration's dashboard of approvals and the Office of Drug Control's licence counts were not read; the figures used are as other reports reproduce them.
Early controls. The Commonwealth instrument of 1926, Victoria's first Act and the later state Acts of 1934 to 1959 were not read. Jennifer Norberry's Parliamentary Library background paper (1996–97), on which UNODC relies, was not reached.
Colonial hemp. The Historical Records of New South Wales and Historical Records of Australia were not read; how much hemp the colony grew and from what seed is open.
The royal commissions. The reports of the Woodward (1979) and Williams inquiries were not read; what they found about where cannabis was grown is known here only through the State Archives record and later reviews.
Western Australia's repeal. The proclamation that brought Part 2 of the Cannabis Law Reform Act 2010 into force was not found.
The Northern Territory today. The Misuse of Drugs Act was read as in force at 1 May 2016; later amendments to Part IIB were not checked.
Naturalised populations. The Australian Plant Census note of 2005 lists no status for Tasmania or the Australian Capital Territory, though herbarium sheets come from both. No genetic or chemical study of naturalised Australian populations was found.