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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 7 Hansard (22 September) . . Page.. 2024 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

Commonwealth funding for drug treatment initiatives under the Commonwealth Government's much heralded Tough on Drugs program ignores the needs of the people of the ACT. This program, much lauded at the Commonwealth level for the treatment of drug offenders, actually passes as the Commonwealth's drug strategy. On 28 August, coincidentally the day before the caretaker period started for the Federal election, the Commonwealth Government announced $30m in grants to States and community organisations for the funding of drug programs. Not a single cent of those funds came to the ACT.

The Commonwealth found itself able to provide to New South Wales approximately $10m for the funding of drug programs in New South Wales. The Commonwealth found itself able to provide to the Northern Territory approximately $1.5m in funding for the drug treatment programs in the Northern Territory. The Commonwealth Government found itself able to provide about $1.5m to the Tasmanian Government and Tasmanian community organisations for the treatment of drug abuse in Tasmania. But the Commonwealth Government - Mr Howard and Dr Wooldridge - could not find a single cent for the people of the ACT, for the drug abusers of the ACT, for the drug addicts of the ACT. Not a single cent was made available to alleviate the concerns of all those families in the ACT that suffer as a result of the drug addiction of their children or other family members.

One asks why the Federal Liberal Government did not recognise the need to fund drug programs in the ACT. Is it that we do not have a problem with drug abuse in the ACT? Is it that we in the ACT are so lucky that we do not need to be funded; that there is no drug abuse program in the ACT? Is it that we do not need the Federal Liberals to give us any funding, because we do not have a drug problem? Is that the answer, Mr Speaker?

We need to look at that. We need to rebut it absolutely and firmly and forever. The ACT has a most significant drug abuse problem. We are not talking here about the abuse of alcohol and tobacco or other issues. We are talking about the abuse of heroin and other illicit substances. It is very difficult to determine the extent of the drug abuse problem in the ACT but ADD Inc., to the extent that they keep records in relation to the activities of the needle and syringe exchange program, are able to reveal that in the last 12 months in the ACT 3,391 different people presented to the needle and syringe exchange outlets in the ACT to take possession of needles and syringes. We do not have particularly detailed statistics on the people within the ACT who abuse heroin. We do not know how many drug addicts we have. We do not really know how many people with a serious substance abuse problem there are in the ACT.

Some of the statistics are interesting, though. They give us some understanding of the extent of the problem that we are facing here in the ACT. In the last 12 months the needle exchange service distributed over 540,000 syringes to a total of 3,391 different individuals. The needle exchange program can tell us that in the last year there was a 13 per cent increase in the number of needles distributed. The number of visits to needle exchange centres increased by 32 per cent. There was an increase of 29 per cent in males accessing needle exchange outlets. There was an increase of 42 per cent in females accessing needle exchange outlets.

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