Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 9 Hansard (2 September) . . Page.. 2773 ..

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! It being 5.00 pm, I propose the question:

That the Assembly do now adjourn.

Mr Humphries: I require the question to be put forthwith without debate.

Question resolved in the negative.

Debate resumed.

MRS CARNELL: In July 1995 I established the heroin pilot task force chaired by Mr Kevin Waller. The task force was asked to consult with the community and make recommendations about whether or not the trial should proceed and how the feasibility research might best be implemented. Members will also recall that the task force reported in January 1996 and took the view that, on balance, the potential benefits of a heroin trial outweighed the potential hazards and that the trial should go ahead. As Dr Alex Wodak, the Director of the Alcohol and Drug Service at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney, said:

... the ACT Heroin Trial ... grew out of the realisation that pharmacological treatments for drug dependent heroin users are one of the few interventions which can accurately be described as astonishingly successful in the drug field.

More recently, the heroin trial received the support of the Ministerial Council on Drug Strategy. The ministerial council agreed at its 31 July 1997 meeting, as we all know, that the ACT proposal should proceed with the first stage of the heroin trial in the ACT along with a trial of buprenorphine. The ministerial council, after a large amount of debate, not just over one year but over a number of years, recommended that there needed to be a strategic approach to illicit drugs which encompassed alternative treatment options, preventative education campaigns and effective law enforcement. For Mr Berry to assume that somehow the Ministerial Council on Drug Strategy was looking at only the heroin trial, or for that matter other pharmacological treatments, is simply wrong.

Mr Moore: Hear, hear! Another time that he gets it wrong, deliberately.

MRS CARNELL: Yes, that is certainly true. The ministerial council is also looking at, and has also been very proactive in, areas such as preventative education campaigns and effective law enforcement as well. So, it is very much part of a package. There was tremendous support for the trial from a wide range of sources, including Australia's

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .