Page 2924 - Week 10 - Thursday, 15 August 1991
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her team who have worked so hard and who have managed to divorce themselves from any particular direction in this matter. They have sat back and looked at it from an academic perspective, looking to the positive side and to the negative side and presenting both. One of the great benefits of this inquiry is the existence of these two volumes, because they set out so carefully and thoroughly the difficulties that we have in dealing with illegal drugs. That on its own is a major contribution to Australian society.
The most important thing that I urge members to do now is to allow this debate to continue. It does not matter whether a person takes a prohibitionist view. It does not matter whether a person takes a legalisation view. The important thing is that when the debate continues we have some hard data upon which to base our arguments, instead of the emotive arguments that we have heard over many years. Let us get the hard data, support this notion and support a next step only; that a feasibility study be undertaken. That is all we are asking at this stage and that is all our report does. Our report recommends that we go to the next stage, that of having a feasibility study undertaken to determine whether there is any advantage in running such a trial.
MRS NOLAN (4.42): Mr Speaker, today, as Mr Moore has already stated, the Select Committee on HIV, Illegal Drugs and Prostitution is handing down its second interim report on a feasibility study of the controlled availability of opioids. I would like, at the outset, to thank the other members of the committee, the committee secretary and others involved in the production of this report - a report very much smaller, but not necessarily in detail, than our first interim report. Much work was done in this area by the NCEPH, and I would like to place on record my thanks to Professor Douglas, Gabriele Bammer and other members of the working party for producing such a detailed report as that which Mr Moore has tabled in the chamber this afternoon.
One matter that has caused me great concern is the misunderstanding in relation to this subject that has been displayed within the media and also within the community, certainly in relation to the sorts of recommendations that this committee was likely to hand down. The report produced by the NCEPH was about a feasibility study. The report that the committee is handing down today is about the same thing, a feasibility study.
At this point in time I would like to read into the record the recommendations of the committee and then add my additional comments, because I think it is important that those particular recommendations - and there are only five - be actually read into the record so that they are available in the Hansard. The committee's recommendations are:
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