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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 11 Hansard (5 November) . . Page.. 3600 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

Rehabilitation programs in the ACT, on my last advice, can cost as little as $42 a day, compared to $140 a day for a drug user in gaol, and around $600 a day for a hospital bed, aside from the social impact of inappropriate drug use. It is clearly better value to help people get off drugs than it is to drag them through the court system or burden the health system, and more money is needed for rehabilitation as a matter of urgency. Some of that money will come from the John Howard approach; but I doubt whether it will be sufficient to deal with the Territory's problem, and again I mention the ability of the Chief Minister, if she wanted to do so, to draw on funds already available to her. It is ludicrous, and a sign of the Government's inappropriate priorities, that there is a waiting list for the services which I have mentioned.

This motion also recognises the need for a multifaceted and innovative approach to drugs. While I am disappointed that the heroin trial was buried by John Howard, it does not mean that we as an Assembly abandon an innovative approach to curbing drug use in Canberra and assisting dependent people. We do not have to accept John Howard's limited and fundamentalist approach. We need a strategy that includes a flexible and innovative use of education, treatment and rehabilitation, harm minimisation programs that will reach the maximum number of drug users in our community, and law enforcement for drug dealers.

We must also recognise that not all drugs are the same, and that many people will use more than one. One program will not assist all drug users. The heroin trial, for example, will not reach cocaine users, or 14-year-olds who prostitute themselves for heroin. We must be able to assist them in ways that will be successful for them. Unfortunately, I think some in our community have lost the focus of our goal, which must always be to lower the incidence of drug abuse in our community. It is not to legalise hard drugs, nor is it to turn addicts into criminals.

Despite ridicule from the Liberals, my concern over the growing use of illicit drugs in the ACT is genuine, very genuine. It is not a newly found concern, but is one that has been expressed on the record many times in past years. As I said, as Health Minister I was the first ACT politician to raise at the Ministerial Council on Drug Strategy the issue of a possible heroin trial to test the efficacy of the legal supply of heroin, consistent with the Labor Party's commitment to drug law reform. I also moved to quadruple the number of people on the methadone program. But I never believed that these programs would provide all the solutions to dealing with illicit drugs and drug abuse in our community.

We must abandon the single-minded pursuit by the Liberals and we must not abandon preventative and other rehabilitative measures. Neither Liberal approach will solve our drug problem. "Just say no" and "just say `heroin trial' " will both allow drug abuse to grow in our community. I urge the Assembly to support this motion and activate a broad-based and multifaceted response to drug abuse in the Territory. We have got to the stage where there is a waiting list for people trying to get onto programs to get off their habit. These sorts of things should not prevail any longer. I urge members to support the motion.

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