Legalise Cannabis Victoria MPs have put the Labor Government on notice over key policy support following a large police deployment and dozens of arrests at a 4/20 gathering held at Melbourne's Flagstaff Gardens.
David Ettershank and Rachel Payne, whose votes play a critical role in getting bills and motions over the line for Jacinta Allan's government, said the decision to send a major police contingent to the event "crossed a rubicon".
Roughly 60 officers were deployed to what was essentially a picnic attended by approximately 300 people.
Nearly 40 people were arrested on possession offences.
Ettershank, who stopped short of criticising the police themselves, called the scale of the police operation a "staggering waste of resources".
"The police commissioner is correct in saying parliament makes the rules, and it's not for us to decide what laws are enforced or not," he said.
"So in terms of those 40 arrests we don't lay that at the feet of the police, we lay that at the feet of the government.
"The relationship between Legalise Cannabis and the government is reaching an all-time low. We are taking very personally the arrest of our people which is totally at odds with the supposed cannabis-friendly veneer that the government projects."
In comments published by the Herald Sun, he continued: "Here we are on a Saturday afternoon spending a tonne of money policing a few people enjoying a bit of weed in the park.
“We are genuinely pissed off at this government. We've reached a point where we don't know how to do business with this government anymore."
Ettershank noted there was "not a hint of agro" among those present at the pro-legalisation gathering, and offered praise for the general manner in which police conducted themselves.
"They were a lot more low key than last year and in part that was because we obtained a permit from the City of Melbourne for the event and we talked to the police beforehand," he said.
"Last year we saw medicinal cannabis patients being cable-tied as they were trying to explain they had a prescription. This year, if the cannabis was in a container with your name on it, and you had matching ID, you were sweet. The police respected that."
"We had agreements as to how they would treat medcan patients."
