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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 9 Hansard (28 August) . . Page.. 2724 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

more difficulty in single-member electorates than they do in proportional representation systems like ours and Tasmania's, so it is to be expected that there would be some nervous politicians around the country. Again I say that I think the issue was debated far too much in the media and not enough at politician to politician level to try to resolve it. It seems that, on the face of it, that is the last we will see of that issue for a while. I am not a great adherent of the philosophy that prohibition does not work. I think prohibition does work, and that has been proven.

Mrs Carnell: No, it has not been proven.

MR BERRY: Mrs Carnell says that it does not work. For most of the people, prohibition works.

Mr Humphries: How do you know?

MR BERRY: Have a look at the figures.

Mr Humphries: That does not mean it is prohibition; it could be education that has done that.

MR BERRY: Let me put it to you that the doctrine that for most of the people prohibition works is far more solid than the doctrine that prohibition does not work, otherwise as law-makers we are wasting our time.

Mr Moore: You are talking about rednecks.

MR BERRY: The fact of the matter is that there will always be people who slip through the safety net of prohibition, and you have to have some way of dealing with that. I think, along with many other people, that the way we deal with heroin is not the way forward, but I am not convinced that you should discard prohibition as a weapon. If you took the perfect approach of discarding prohibition, I think you would get yourself into more trouble than Speed Gordon. We now have to face a situation where that issue will be pushed aside by most and seen as pretty much a lost cause for the immediate future.

From my point of view, there are other things to concentrate on. If you could just get the Northern Territory, for example, to establish a methadone program, that would be a good start. I heard Mr Moore interject, indicating that there was some sort of redneck attitude in what I said when I was talking about prohibition being an important part of law-making.

Mr Moore: That is not what I said.

MR BERRY: The fact of the matter is that it is an important part of society in many respects, and it is wrong to continue to chant the mantra, because it sends the wrong message to the community and in many ways can be a negative thing to do.

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