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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (2 July) . . Page.. 2194 ..

MR MOORE: The issue of imaging was raised. There is an Australia-wide shortage of radiographers. There is no attempt to downgrade the Canberra Hospital. An illustration of the care with which the Canberra Hospital is working on this is the fact that, even while there was some concern here, somebody from the United Kingdom accepted a job at the Canberra Hospital. We had already been advertising and had found somebody there. There is interest from other people as well. There is an Australia-wide shortage of radiographers, and we are doing our best.

Mr Stanhope raised specific issues about oncology. If he has any particular issues, I have always said that I am prepared to look at them. I think Ms Tucker and Mr Stanhope would verify that any time you have raised issues with my office we have dealt with them very quickly, as quickly as we could, and got back to you and made sure you understood what was going on and what the issues were. That will continue.

Mr Stanhope also raised the issue of why we do not make a special appropriation for a safe injecting room. Mr Stanhope, if you look at the appropriation that we are talking about here, part 8, an appropriation of $361,450,000 for the Department of Health and Community Care, I think you will realise that we do not make specific appropriations. We appropriate a large sum of money. We then purchase from within that budget and distribute according to that budget.

That having been said, we would expect that a safe injecting facility would be purchased through our purchasing contracting system in the same way, for example, as we have just let a contract for Canberra Injectors Network, which you would be aware of. That was a contract of about $100,000, as I recall. That is how we would expect it to be done - in the normal purchasing of things, if we get to that stage. But we will not proceed to that stage, as we have mentioned to this Assembly, before we have a full drug strategy. As was requested by Ms Tucker and by others, and as I agreed, we will have a full strategy. It will not be just a health drug strategy. It will be a broad drug strategy which takes into account education, policing and a full range of issues and how they are integrated. I hope to be able to bring that to the Assembly at the next sitting, but certainly as soon as we can. It will be done in that broad context, as you requested and as Ms Tucker requested, so I believe we will be able to handle that issue.

Mr Stanhope: So you are funding the safe injecting place in this year's budget?

MR MOORE: No, I have not responded about how it is going to be funded at this stage, but I have said that there is a range of possibilities about how it will be funded, the same as there is a range of possibilities about how other things can be funded when an initiative starts at the beginning of the year. We have methods of doing that within an appropriation of this kind. It is possible and it is appropriate. The money is appropriated for us to use through the Department of Health and Community Care, and that is an entirely appropriate way to go. But I am happy to be guided by this Assembly if they would like to use a slightly different method.

Ms Tucker raised a series of issues. The one I would like to respond to mostly is the issue of dual diagnosis. I would be happy to provide you with an extra briefing on that issue. We have a new training program in response to work that has been done on dual

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