Widespread dissatisfaction with Australia's major political parties may work in the Legalise Cannabis party's favour at the coming federal election, with senate candidate Fiona Patten formally announcing plans to push for a new inquiry into medicinal cannabis should she win a seat.
Patten said that a decade after legalisation, "a full review of the entire medicinal cannabis ecosystem is needed".
"Australians spent close to A$1 billion on medicinal cannabis in 2024, which is a massive increase from the $230 million spent just two years earlier," she said. "Our medical cannabis industry is booming, yet patients pay exorbitant prices while the profits go to overseas growers.
"The last senate inquiry began in 2019, three years after legalisation. Given it has been five years and counting since that review, and we are currently in the thick of a cost of living crisis, I believe it's time for a broad senate inquiry that reviews the current regulatory scheme from top to bottom."
Patten said any such inquiry should also examine how Australian industry bodies could collaborate more effectively in the interests of medicinal cannabis patients.
The inquiry would additionally scrutinise "bad actors who prioritise their bottom line over the wellbeing of consumers", she said.
Whether the Legalise Cannabis party can secure its first senate MP will depend in part on how much support Clive Palmer's Trumpet of Patriots party draws away from minor party voters.
In 2021, Palmer took the final Victorian senate seat with just over 4% of the vote — a threshold Patten believes the Legalise Cannabis party can reach by May 3.
The former Reason Party leader said minor parties have been given fresh cause for optimism by voter "disengagement" from the major parties.
"Voters are tired of being ignored and they are turning away from traditional political parties as a result, but it doesn't appear that those parties are listening," she said.
"Werribee is Labor heartland and yet they saw a 16.5% slump in their primary vote."
Patten pointed to a record 31.7 per cent of votes at the 2022 federal election going to non-major parties, a pattern she expects to continue.
"Both majors are stuck in the 1950s when around 98% of votes went to them," she said. "That number was down to 68.3 per cent in 2022 and, as Bob Dylan famously sang, 'the times they are a changin'."
One significant obstacle for the Legalise Cannabis party is Palmer's enormous campaign war chest, which reached $123m in 2021, Patten acknowledged.
"We don't have anywhere near that kind of money, but we do have a track record of getting results. In just our first term at state level, the Legalise Cannabis party has successfully changed drug-driving laws in Victoria to protect medicinal cannabis script holders from automatic loss of licence, but there is a lot more to be done.
'That's why we're more than a protest vote. We're ready to get into the federal senate, get results, and most importantly, shake things up."
