Page 2764 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 20 October 1992
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made by the Select Committee on Drugs. For example, we commented that appropriate training was required, and the amendment that has been foreshadowed and distributed by the Minister includes the notion that anybody who supplied or administered methadone would have completed, to the satisfaction of the Board of Health, a course of instruction approved by the board. As I see it, that would not necessarily be a course of instruction centred in Canberra, but could, for example, tie in with the courses of instruction that have been part and parcel of the system in New South Wales.
Having presented a report on this and having spoken to those Bills on a number of occasions already, it is appropriate for me to wind up by saying that we have the opportunity now to expand the methadone program to reach as many people as possible. It is important because we are recognising that people who not so long ago had very few rights in our society now have not only a right to access methadone but also a right to choose. That is part and parcel of the whole notion of modern concepts of population help - the sort of thing Mr Berry needs to read about, such as in the Ottawa charter that I mentioned earlier.
MRS CARNELL (8.07): In the Drugs of Dependence (Amendment) Bill (No. 3) Mr Berry rightly acknowledges the very dramatic need for an expanded methadone program. Recently I was reading some information detailing statistics that were gathered by Dr John Sherman on behalf of a couple of organisations in Victoria on the cost savings of methadone to the community. On his calculations, a program of 300 patients, which is what it is anticipated will be implemented in the ACT, has the potential saving for a community of $9,651,490 over a 12-month period. Looking at the intricate nature of his calculations, I cannot but believe him. This shows the very dramatic need for an expanded methadone program in the ACT.
However, as was indicated earlier today, it would appear that Mr Berry changes his mind quite often on just how that expansion should occur. We have already heard of the newspaper article of August last year, about which Mr Humphries spoke so eloquently. By 1 September 1992, according to a Canberra Times article, there had been a real turnabout by Mr Berry. The article states:
Mr Berry said that after receiving more information and considering all the options he had changed his mind on allowing pharmacies to be involved in distributing methadone.
That I found very interesting. In all the reading I had done and the select committee looking at methadone had done, and in all the 12 submissions that had been put to the select committee and that the people who had come to the select committee had presented - - -
Mr De Domenico: Any reasonable person.
MRS CARNELL: That is right - I had not seen any of this sort of information. I chose to ask for this information under FOI, and the advice I got back was that, unfortunately, no such information existed in the Minister's office. That leaves me doubting what that information could possibly have been. Perhaps Mr Berry will enlighten us later this evening about what this information that he changed his mind on actually was.
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