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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 2 Hansard (27 February) . . Page.. 352 ..

MS FOLLETT (continuing):

The Government has now had this report before it for some weeks. It is quite disappointing to me that we do not have as yet a Government response to the report. I believe that, given the time that has elapsed, there was ample time for the Government to come up with some information for the Assembly, for the community, on how they propose to progress this matter. I am a little disappointed that we do not have that chapter and verse yet, because the fact of the matter is that it is now up to the Government to progress this matter. The consultative work has been done and the report has been prepared and presented, and very well done. There is only one way forward now, and that is for the Chief Minister to take this issue to the relevant national forums where decisions can be made about a national trial of heroin. Frankly, I am having some doubts as to whether Mrs Carnell will be able to take the matter forward with any great degree of confidence.

I ask: Why did the Government not particularly want to debate this issue today? Do they not feel confident about it? I ask also: Why have they not prepared a response to the report? Why have they not considered it as a government and said, "We adopt the report and here is how we are going to progress it."? That has not happened, and it is a matter for the Government to do. I ask also: Why has Mrs Carnell been unable to convince even her own Ministers of the merits of the trial? We have seen media reports - I presume that they are accurate - that at least two of Mrs Carnell's Ministers have grave reservations about the trial proceeding. The comments of her backbench are also on the record.

I am afraid that, in my cynical view, what we have seen from the Government so far is really no more than grandstanding on the issue, and I think that is regrettable. We need to see a great deal more than just the rhetoric. I believe that Mrs Carnell must now present to the community and to the Assembly her Government's plan of action on this matter. We need to know from the Government, first of all, whether they are going to proceed with the two-stage trial, as set out in the report; whether they are going to go a little further than the report. In fact, there is a bit of a gap in the report, in my view, in that it does not address sufficiently the question of what happens to people at the end of the trial. The Government must spell out, for instance, whether the methadone program would be expanded in order that every person on the trial would be accommodated at least on that program at the conclusion of the trial. The Government has a job to do in looking at the report and making those kinds of judgments. I also believe that we should have heard from Mrs Carnell her plans for putting this forward at the national level. When is the State Health Ministers Conference? When is the Drug Strategy Ministers Council meeting? What are the views of the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General and the Police Ministers Council? They will all need to be involved in this. What is the Government's plan of attack? Before we can accept that Mrs Carnell is doing anything more than grandstanding, I think we have a right to see that plan of attack.

To conclude, I again commend the report and the process that led to its production. I believe that there is good reason for proceeding with the trial cautiously and as a national issue, but I am not yet convinced that Mrs Carnell has the fortitude, the courage, to take her Government forward on the matter and to put her Government's view forcefully and with confidence at the national forums where I believe the matter can and must be addressed, if it is to proceed as the kind of trial that was set out by Dr Bammer and now by Mr Waller.

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