The Senate Has Spoken on Hemp. We Were in the Room.
Hemp Collective · August 2026
In July 2026, the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee released its report, Opportunities for the development of a hemp industry in Australia. It runs to 147 pages, draws on 71 public submissions and three public hearings, and lands on 14 recommendations for how Australia should build hemp into a properly functioning national industry.
We didn’t just read this report from the sidelines. Our founder, Maxine, has represented the industry through her work with iHemp NSW and presented evidence at Parliament House in Canberra as part of this inquiry. So when we say this report matters, it’s not a general industry comment, it’s personal. We spent time in that room arguing that Australian hemp businesses deserve to be treated like the legal, legitimate businesses they are.
Maxine presenting evidence to the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee, Parliament House, Canberra.
What the report actually recommends
The 14 recommendations sort into five broad areas:
Coordinated regulation
A clearer, more consistent national approach instead of a confusing state-by-state patchwork.
Demand and procurement
Government projects actively considering Australian hemp materials.
Building standards
Formal fire testing, carbon measurement, and a pathway toward hempcrete recognition in the National Construction Code.
Research and processing
A new AgriFutures research and development plan covering plant breeding and processing infrastructure.
Fair market access
Legal hemp businesses treated fairly by payment providers, advertisers, and online platforms.
A report isn’t reform. None of these recommendations change a law by themselves, they’re a roadmap, not the destination. Government departments still need to respond, some changes will need legislation or intergovernmental agreement, and industry (us included) has real work to do too. But having these problems formally on the national record, in a Senate committee’s own words, is a genuine step forward.
The recommendation that hits closest to home
Of the 14, Recommendation 14 is the one we feel every day running a small hemp business:
“The committee recommends that all payment providers, advertisers, and online platforms review their protocols and procedures to ensure that in their interactions with the hemp industry, hemp businesses are recognised and dealt with as legitimate and legal businesses.”
Hemp seeds are sold on supermarket shelves across Australia. They’re a legal, regulated, everyday food. And yet the platforms our customers use to find us, and the payment systems that let us actually take their money, still routinely treat the word “hemp” as if it were something to hide. Ad rejections. Shadow-banning. Flagged accounts. Template replies that never actually address the substance of the appeal.
This isn’t an abstract policy point for us. We’ve had our own products flagged simply for using an accurate, legal ingredient name. Recommendation 14 puts a Senate committee’s weight behind something we’ve been saying for years: that stigma isn’t a policy, and platforms shouldn’t be enforcing one by default.
Why we don’t hide the word “hemp”
Some businesses in this category have been advised to soften their language, to swap “hemp” for something vaguer on ad platforms to avoid getting flagged. We understand why that advice exists. We’ve had the same conversation ourselves.
But we’ve built nine years of trust around this word. Championing hemp, not routing around it, is the whole point of what we do. Recommendation 14 is exactly the kind of change that would let small Australian hemp businesses stop having that conversation altogether.
Parliament House, Canberra. Photo: Alex Proimos, licensed under CC BY 2.0.
What happens next
The report is a map, not the reform itself. The real test is whether:
- The Australian Government formally responds to the 14 recommendations
- A national hemp framework and cross-jurisdiction licence recognition actually progress
- Procurement rules start creating real, dependable demand for Australian hemp materials
- Fire, carbon, and product testing genuinely leads to construction standards
- The next AgriFutures research plan invests beyond agronomy into processing and market development
- Online platforms and payment providers actually change how they treat legal hemp businesses
We’ll keep advocating for all of it, through iHemp NSW, through submissions like the one that helped shape this report, and through simply continuing to run an honest, hemp-forward Australian business. If you want to see fair treatment for legal Australian hemp businesses, following how government and industry respond to this report over the coming months is worth doing, and so is telling your own platform and payment providers that Recommendation 14 matters to you too.
References
- Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee, Opportunities for the development of a hemp industry in Australia, Parliament of Australia, July 2026.
- Ibid., “List of recommendations,” pp. xii–xv.
- Ibid., para. 1.3–1.4 (71 public submissions accepted; three public hearings held, including Longford, Tasmania).
- Ibid., Recommendation 14, para. 7.85.
