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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 10 Hansard (24 November) . . Page.. 2824 ..

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

That the Assembly do now adjourn.

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

Question resolved in the negative.

Debate resumed.

MR MOORE: Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, Major Watters had raised the issue of safe injecting disposal units in Ansett aircraft and criticised them, along with his previous comment criticising the methadone program at the time I launched it. At the Ministerial Council on Drug Strategy, after he reported on behalf of the National Council on Drugs, I expressed to him my concern that his statements were not consistent with the policy that had been adopted only minutes before by all Ministers of police and health from around Australia, that they were not consistent with his own secretariat, and they were not consistent with the previous drug strategy. I requested that he take more care in the future - I did not want to dwell on the past - to make sure that his statements were consistent with the policies that all Ministers in Australia had just adopted. He replied something to the effect that he had made these particular comments not as head of the tough on drugs committee but on a personal basis. The Federal Police Commissioner, Mick Palmer, reinforced that he had been at a press conference when Major Watters had separated what he was saying personally and what he was saying as head of that committee.

I have to say, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, that I think Major Watters is in a position where he is going to have to make a decision that he is one thing or the other on that issue. I drew attention some time ago to the fact that I have exactly the same issue to face. As a Minister for Health I cannot have a personal opinion on health matters. I have to present it from the Government's point of view. For me to say, "On this health matter I have this view but the Government's view is something else", would be impossible. It was one of the trade-offs I made in accepting this Health ministry. It seems to me that Major Watters, with whom, by the way, I have had quite a number of discussions and for whom I have quite a bit of respect, really does need to resolve that issue. Mr Wood will be pleased to know that his committee had a different view from Major Watters on that. Indeed, I believe that the Ministerial Council on Drug Strategy, as a whole, saw that as a sensible harm minimisation measure.

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