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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 6 Hansard (17 June) . . Page.. 1682 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

One of the great failings of the Labor members over the years when they were in government was that they refused to do that. They wanted to run a no-change government, in so many ways. There were some notable exceptions to that. To my mind comes the work of Mr Wood on the Commissioner for the Environment. But in the vast majority of cases their view was, "If we can possibly avoid change, that is what we want to do". The conservative Mr Berry sits there interjecting such nonsense as "open slather". There was never any suggestion of an open slather, other than in the propaganda put out by the Labor Party, when we dealt with this issue last time. It was propaganda and lies, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker. When the dust had settled over that and people looked at what happened over the medicinal cannabis debate last time, they realised that, in the final conclusion, we had provided for some people hope that they would be able to use medicinal cannabis without penalty, to use it as a medicine for a short while, where other medicines had failed, and at the end of the day we had then denied them.

Mr Berry's definition of "open slather" was provided by a medical practitioner who was involved in research. A medical practitioner, not under research, can provide a prescription for cocaine and morphine - drugs that clearly have far wider implications than a drug like cannabis. We know that from studying the work that Mr Berry talks of, the work of experts. Mr Berry may not understand that it is not experts who are elected to this Assembly. Ordinary people are elected, ordinary members of society who are expected to read the work of experts and then make up their minds about such decisions. That is how we are elected. If experts want to stand they may well be elected, or ordinary people may say, "No, we do not want such narrow expertise in the Assembly", as the case may be, and that applies right across the whole range of issues that we deal with.

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, Mr Berry continues to use this notion that prohibition does work. Yes, it does work in certain circumstances. It works when there is a sensible alternative. It worked particularly well even for barbiturates. Barbiturates were a particularly harmful drug. They were prohibited because there was a sensible alternative, and the demand was satisfied by the sensible alternative. Where there are no sensible alternatives in the drugs area, prohibition simply does not work, and it creates so many other problems. Mr Berry wants to take a simple interpretation and see whether he can turn this into a posturing style of debate. Then this same Mr Berry can go on ABC radio and say about the drugs issue that we ought not be posturing on this. The trouble is that too many people are posturing on this issue. What we should do is sit around a table and discuss this, because people should not be posturing.

Having taken this on board just recently, I raised with other members of the Assembly the issue of safe injecting rooms. I went to Mr Berry's office and I invited him to a meeting organised at very short notice to deal with this issue. I said to Mr Berry, "Can you come along yourself? If you cannot, can you send your adviser?". In the morning, as I was going to the meeting, I went into Mr Berry's office and he said, "Oh, no; I have to go down to the Estimates Committee. I cannot come. I cannot send my adviser because I might need her as well". What was before the Estimates Committee at the time?

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