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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 7 Hansard (22 September) . . Page.. 2028 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

we will be setting it up at Watson Hostel. It is going to happen this way, Mr Stanhope, if the Liberal Government is returned and therefore Dr Wooldridge is Health Minister. Because this is already under way, I am sure that you would use your pull, your clout and your resources with Michael Lee if he is the Health Minister in a Labor government.

There are three sources of funding. They are the community partnerships initiative, the first round of the treatment grants funding program - the one that applications were in for, at arm's length from government - and another round in December.

Because of the scale of the problems in the ACT, Michael Wooldridge will allow funding from those three separate sources to be put together into one program. That will give us the wherewithal to support the application by ADD Inc. and the Ted Noffs Foundation for a youth treatment and rehabilitation facility in the ACT. We will be prepared to provide at least part of Watson Hostel for that rehabilitation program. Mr Stanhope, that is an announcement that Dr Wooldridge is happy to have made public and that he has agreed to.

Mr Stanhope: He has done this in the caretaker period.

MR MOORE: In other words, Mr Stanhope, we have used our resources - - -

Mr Stanhope: Dr Wooldridge announced this in the caretaker period.

Ms Carnell: I would be embarrassed.

MR MOORE: No, I do not think anybody needs to be embarrassed about this. I think it is good news for the ACT. I know that Mr Stanhope is genuinely concerned that it appeared for some weeks that we had missed out on a rehabilitation program for young people to fill a service gap that had been identified. We all agreed that we needed such a program in the ACT. Because of the way the system had been set up and because of the way the national illicit drug strategy money had been allocated, it looked like bad news for the ACT. It is now good news, thanks to the very thing Mr Stanhope was talking about - my resources, my clout, my pull and my efforts in writing to Michael Wooldridge and approaching him personally on a number of occasions. The first time I raised this with Dr Wooldridge I had been a Minister for less than a week. It was at a ministerial council and drug strategy meeting in Melbourne. Mr Humphries was sitting next to me. I raised the scale of the problem, and we continued to push it.

I said I would give a picture of the community partnerships initiative and the treatment grants funding program. The sum of $4.8m was allocated over three years towards the national illicit drug strategy community partnerships initiative. On 30 May 1998 advertisements were placed in the press calling for organisations to put in their submissions. An expert reference group established by the Commonwealth at national level recommended a number of projects for funding and others with potential for funding.

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