Page 2756 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 20 October 1992
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MR HUMPHRIES: No, there was no moustache at that stage. The article continues:
The scheme had been devised under the Alliance Government and developed later under Labor with input from the Drug Referral Centre and the Australian Pharmacy Guild.
They were working hand in hand in those days, Madam Speaker. They are not any more, apparently. It goes on:
The Labor and Liberal parties, with an Independent, Michael Moore, would have the numbers to get the scheme through the ACT Legislative Assembly.
Then details of this wonderful new scheme are set out in this newspaper article. That is what the real Mr Berry said last year. But what is Mr X saying now? Now he is saying, "We do not want any part of having community pharmacies dispensing methadone. That is giving profit to the community pharmacists. That is creating the chance for unqualified, unprofessional people to be administering methadone. They might do it wrongly. They might cause deaths". Apparently these considerations were not important to the real Mr Berry last year.
There is more evidence that the man opposite is not the Wayne Berry we heard from last year. I have in front of me a document that I understand was prepared by the Alcohol and Drug Service of the ACT Board of Health in September of last year. Paragraph 3 of that report says:
The Board of Health and the Minister have endorsed - - -
Mr De Domenico: Who was Minister in September last year?
MR HUMPHRIES: Who was it in September of last year? Let us think. Was it me? No. Who else could it have been? It was Wayne Berry, Madam Speaker. Wayne Berry said:
The Board of Health and the Minister have endorsed a proposal to expand the ACT Methadone Program by establishing additional methadone places with the assistance of approved community pharmacies.
Mr Berry: A sensible turnaround.
MR HUMPHRIES: Perhaps he endorsed only the cover. Madam Speaker, we have an imposter here. Mr X is purporting to be the real Wayne Berry. There is some cupboard up on the fifth floor where the real Wayne Berry, bound and gagged, is trying to get out to say, "Yes, yes, we want our community pharmacies to be administering methadone". Unfortunately, he cannot get out. In the meantime we have this imposter down here fooling his colleagues, pretending that now there has been some change of heart by this Government and that there is now no sympathy with community pharmacies administering methadone.
The fact of life, Madam Speaker, is that there is a very good case, a very sound case, a very strong case, for having community pharmacies administer methadone in this town. It is a case which the Minister for Health himself acknowledged last year. It is based on the belief that if we are going to make people who need methadone, addicts, take part in these programs we have to
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