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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 11 Hansard (5 November) . . Page.. 3613 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

I will speak briefly to the amendments. I am supporting Mrs Carnell's amendments. I have been very disappointed in Mr Berry's response. I was very disappointed about him not turning up to the round table on safe injecting rooms. I heard him interject a minute ago, "I am not a member of the coalition". Therein lies the problem. This is not an issue which needs to be politicised to that degree. This is a very difficult issue for the community to address. If you are not going to allow us to work cooperatively on issues such as safe injecting rooms, then we are not going to make any progress and more young people are going to die. More young people are going to get hepatitis C and HIV/AIDS. In my work in the Social Policy Committee I have had close contact with a number of young people in our community who use hard drugs. I am listening to what they say. It is extremely offensive for Mr Berry to say in this very serious debate that he is not a member of the coalition.

I am prepared to support Mrs Carnell's amendments. I am also prepared to support the amendment regarding past resourcing by Federal governments. I was also concerned about that phrase that Mr Moore's amendment deletes. We must be careful not to be connected with the "zero tolerance", "tough on drugs", ill-informed line of Mr Howard's. However, I also want to make it clear that by deleting the words "deter from" we emphasise harm minimisation. Use ranges from not using at all right through to how you use drugs and which drugs you use. The risk acceptability of various drugs is also different. There is also problematic use of drugs versus non-problematic use such as you see with alcohol use. We have to look at a wide spectrum when we are looking at drug education. I hope that we see a more cooperative and less political line on this from the Labor Party in future.

MS REILLY (11.51): After listening to the press reports at the weekend, one cannot help feeling sorry for John Howard. It is really sad to see a man who has obviously failed to understand drug use in Australia, who fails to understand the complexities of the matter and who thinks the problem can be resolved with some quick fix program of throwing a bit of money at it and introducing more punitive measures. One cannot help feeling sorry for the whole of Australia being led by a man with such a narrow understanding of the very important social issue facing Australia.

It is good to see Mrs Carnell concerned about John Howard, considering that she supported his becoming Prime Minister. It is extremely difficult for Australia to be led by a man who does not understand, who fails to support young people and who thinks that just punitive and prohibition measures will address such a complex issue and an industry that I do not think appears in his industry policy but is bigger than nearly any other industry in Australia. In world terms, it is bigger than the arms trade, but we are just going to put up a few dollars against it.

Mr Howard and those who support him have not listened to the experts and practitioners in this field, who have had quite a lot to say over many months about what should be done to address drug use in the community. They have been quite vocal in saying that using such outdated methods as saying no are not going to work, but Mr Howard has ignored

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