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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 9 Hansard (2 September) . . Page.. 2769 ..

Mr Berry: No, she is a Johnny-come-lately. We decided earlier.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I heard Mr Berry's remarks - - -

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Hird): Order, Mr Berry!

MR HUMPHRIES: So we have this situation where Mr Berry decides, "When Mrs Carnell takes this side I am going to take this issue on. I am going to address this problem". When that happened, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I saw a person out on a limb; a person who was confronting considerable social stereotypes about this sort of issue and was saying that we need to do something about this, but was also putting herself at a great distance from many people in the community, particularly those who traditionally support the Liberal Party, because very often those people have reacted very badly to the concept of a heroin trial. What did Mr Berry see? He saw an opportunity - an opportunity to exploit the position the Government was in and to saw off the limb while Mrs Carnell was out on that limb. (Quorum formed)

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, let me state for the benefit of those members who are now in the chamber that what we are seeing in this whole debate is a tawdry, pathetic attempt by a man who is desperate to win office in this place; a man, sitting on his own over there, who is desperate to secure some advantage at the expense of a Chief Minister who has taken a courageous step. As I said, I have seen in this debate a person who has gone out on a limb and risked considerable unpopularity, both with her colleagues and with the community, by taking an unpopular stand because she believes - a view shared by a number of people - this is the right thing to do to adjust the social policy parameters in this country. What Mr Berry saw was an opportunity to saw off that limb while she was out on the end of it.

Mr Moore: Even though he agreed with it.

MR HUMPHRIES: Of course, this is his problem. The problem is that he could not go out and attack her for taking a position supportive of the heroin trial, because he actually agreed with it, and so did his party. So what did he do? He said, "I cannot attack the heroin trial, but I can attack her on drugs generally and create the impression that her views and my views are different; that she is a dangerous radical when it comes to drugs and I believe in protecting the kiddies of our community when they go out there and are offered drugs by these nasty drug dealers. So, if you want to have a strong arm on drugs, if you want to enforce the law - the sort of language we saw in the Daily Telegraph; we want to crack down on those evil people dealing with drugs - then support me, Wayne Berry and the Labor Party, and do not vote for that nasty Mrs Carnell". That was the exercise, and it was cynical in the extreme, particularly given his own supposed support for this concept, for the idea of harm minimisation.

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, this is, in a sense, a moral issue. It is a moral issue about dealing with those increasing thousands of people in this community every year who are falling off the end of the truck, who are not being affected appropriately, who are not being helped by the drug policies we have been using for a long time, and who will continue to fall off the back of the truck unless we change the parameters of drug policy in this country. Nobody in this place who has seen what has gone on in this community

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