Page 2757 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 20 October 1992
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expand the programs and make them more accessible. You cannot make them accessible by operating them through government shopfronts or government health centres only. You have to go beyond that. You have to go to the places that those people frequent or visit and normalise the relationship that they have with their community. You do that, Madam Speaker, by providing for the very things which I referred to in the debate on the Drugs of Dependence (Amendment) Bill which Mrs Carnell has tabled in the Assembly. That is the way of doing it. Indeed, the Minister for Health himself acknowledged that only last year.
Madam Speaker, I wonder whether Mr X has spoken to the community members who administer drug programs in this Territory at the present time. Has he spoken to the drug referral service about what he calls his dramatic change of heart? There is no answer. If he had, he would have been told that his new position is bunkum. He would have been told that the present position as articulated by Mrs Carnell's Bill, as articulated by our own Drugs Committee in this Assembly, as articulated by Wayne Berry a la 1991, is the best way of dealing with our serious problem with drugs in this community. That position is the way to bring our problem under control - not leaving the present circumstances and certainly not taking the present so-called Minister's half-hearted attempt to water down the original proposals.
Madam Speaker, I think we can do without the kind of backsliding and inconsistency which has been exhibited today in the Assembly. We can do with an approach which takes into account the real needs of addicts in this community. Unfortunately, what we have seen here today is the worst case so far in the Assembly of personality politics. The only thing that has changed between 1991, when Mr Berry supported this proposal, and 1992, when he does not, is that Mrs Kate Carnell - the head of the Pharmacy Guild in the ACT - is now a member of the ACT Assembly and now sits in the Assembly with the Liberal Party. That is the only difference. That is why Mr Berry today cannot summon the strength of character to say to the Assembly, "Yes, Mrs Carnell's Bill is the right way of dealing with this. It is the way that I myself would have put it last year if I had been able to get my act into gear, but because I have been gazumped I am going to have to back down and pretend I have some other point of view at this stage".
It is disgraceful for anybody in this place, whether in the Assembly proper or in a report of the Assembly, to say that community pharmacists have as their primary interest in this matter the making of profit. That is a disgraceful action. No community pharmacist takes on administration of methadone because he wants to make some money out of it. It is a question of making sure that the needs of this community, particularly with respect to the drug problem, are met. That is what it is all about. The real Mr Berry, in his heart of hearts, knows just that fact, Madam Speaker. Let us get serious about this. Let us acknowledge that we have to do something about this problem. Mrs Carnell's Bill is the best way of dealing with that problem. Madam Speaker, I commend the Bill to the house.
Mr Berry: What Bill? There is no Bill before the house.
MR HUMPHRIES: The Bill which has been the subject of all your comments so far, Mr X. Madam Speaker, we know that this matter has to be addressed. The Government's approach, as now articulated by that person opposite - Mr X - has changed dramatically. It is no longer consistent with commonsense, and it should be decisively rejected by this Assembly today in this debate.
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