A Border MP has vowed to launch a renewed push for tougher drug-driving penalties.
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A Wodonga magistrate despaired during a case last year at how minimum licence suspensions for drug matters were often half that for drink-driving.
The issue will be taken up shortly with the Victorian government’s Law Reform, Road and Community Safety Committee.
Benambra MP Bill Tilley is deputy chairman of the bipartisan investigative committee.
“The penalties have got to be appropriate to the offence and it’s simply not like that at this stage,” he said.
“I will certainly be raising this with the committee. I’m going to ask my all-party colleagues to see what the tenet of the government is to review this.
“There is a significant difference between prescribed concentration of alcohol fines and suspensions and what it is for drug offences.”
Mr Tilley said the penalties for drug-driving needed to meet the community’s expectations, “because they’re not at the moment”.
Now-retired Wodonga magistrate John Murphy complained about the discrepancy in mid-July, 2014.
He had wanted to hand a defendant a disqualification longer than the six-month maximum after the man pleaded guilty to driving with methamphetamine in his system five months earlier in Pearce Street, Wodonga.
The detection rate for drug-drivers has grown considerably in Wodonga and other North East towns in the past couple of years.
But Mr Tilley did not believe that was caused by increased drug use.
“It’s just that our local police are very good at catching them,” he said.
“And the problem is that time-after-time we’re getting repeat offenders where the penalties just aren’t getting them off the road.”
Mr Tilley said that while the amount of drugs in a person’s system could be quantified in the same way as a blood alcohol test, “it costs the taxpayers a significant amount of money to do so”.
“The urine analysis regime for the defence force is quite specific and gives you an exact reading, but it’s quite expensive,” he said.
“We’ve got to find the right balance in the cost to the taxpayer and minimising those who choose to do the wrong thing by driving drug-impaired.”
Mr Tilley said the government knew there was a problem, but “it’s having that political will do something about it”.