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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 11 Hansard (19 October) . . Page.. 3251 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

I have listened intently to the debate today. A number of points have been made drawing attention to some aspects of the strategy with which I agree. Ms Tucker, for instance, indicated how important and necessary it is that in a broad range of strategies such as this, we have - and my colleague John Hargreaves also drew attention to this - definitive evaluation criteria and mechanisms for allocation of resources and priorities. As Ms Tucker said, a credible auditing process allows us, through implementation of different strategies on drug abuse, to determine whether or not a particular strategy is working, how it has worked and whether all identified target groups have benefited.

The document, as I have said, which the Labor Party supports, is in some parts quite strong on rhetoric. The challenge always is for governments to ensure that rhetoric is matched by action. A further challenge for governments is to ensure that the action they claim to follow from the strategy is appropriately audited and evaluated so that we can determine whether or not the initiatives do have the impact we would hope for on drug abuse.

Perhaps at this point it is not appropriate or possible to go through each of the initiatives. It is a comprehensive report to the extent that it does seek to detail the whole raft of initiatives that a community might pursue in relation to the range of used drugs. We could possibly, Mr Speaker, generate, support and sustain a debate on each and every one of the initiatives and a whole range of assumptions in the report; for instance, about particular target groups and particular needs of all target groups.

These are issues that are raised in the Assembly from time to time. We do identify target groups. We do identify indigenous people and people addicted to alcohol. We do identify a whole range of other people deserving of specific initiatives. Not only do we specify women, and women with children, as a group of people with special needs, but in this particular strategy, for instance, men are identified as a class of people with special needs. We do need some analysis of how assumptions on each of those classes of people were made; how they are going to be monitored and assessed and the emphasis we give to injecting drug users over other drug abusers.

To that extent there are some deficiencies in the document, those identified or touched on by the speakers in relation to assessment of needs, setting priorities and unspoken aspects of any drug strategy. That is the extent to which resources will be applied to each of the so-called identified priorities or identified target groups.

They are issues we could debate in this place. To some extent opposition has been expressed by three speakers here today to those more controversial strategies. Two picked out this morning were the proposed drug injecting place and the possibility of a heroin trial. I regret the focus given to controversial initiatives on aspects that, as in all areas of politics, tend to distract us from the major issue.

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