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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 13 Hansard (9 December) . . Page.. 4167 ..

MR SPEAKER: Excuse me, Mr Hird. This is a very important piece of legislation. I expect it will be treated as such by all members. I do not want a lot of cheap interjections. Is that understood? Frankly, my friends, if you do that you denigrate the very comments that you make.

MR HIRD: I do not propose to debate alternative measures to a self-injecting place. That is a separate issue. Suffice it to say at this time, Mr Speaker, that I do not believe that so-called safe injecting places will provide any satisfactory solution to this city's drug problems, even if such places are supervised. In fact, it is quite likely that they will have the opposite effect. There are already serious concerns in the community about the threat the drug element pose to the safety of people visiting Civic. This problem will be exacerbated if we adopt this Bill and agree to the establishment of injecting rooms in the city centre as has been indicated in discussions with the Minister.

I submit that the city precinct will become an even greater haven for drug pushers, the very people we should be trying to eliminate from our streets. The message will quickly spread to dealers interstate that Canberra is the place where authorities sanction drug administration. If we let ourselves believe that these will be safe injecting rooms, we are living in a land of fairies. Mr Speaker, there will be nothing safe about them. They will remain but safe. We might as well kid ourselves that there are such things as safe aeroplane crashes. It will be a miracle, good luck, not good management, if the establishment of these rooms does not lead to a fatality, the very thing that they are supposed to avoid.

I would like someone to explain to me how the people running these proposed safe injecting rooms will be able to determine whether any of the users have not already had a shot before they enter the rooms. I believe, Mr Speaker, that no matter how careful we might be we would be exposing the ratepayers of this great Territory to the risk of serious and no doubt costly litigation in the event that someone dies on these premises as a result of an overdose or other complications associated with drug injection. No matter how well this Bill is prepared legally to exempt staff or the injecting place from criminal or civil proceedings, there is always a legal brain out there that will detect a flaw in the legislation and will open the door for a loophole action in the courts or for a legal precedent.

I note with interest, Mr Speaker, that the wording in the title of the Bill has been changed from "Safe" to "Supervised", but that does not ease my concerns about this Bill. The fact that this injecting place would be supervised as the Bill proposes is irrelevant. The important question is just what is going to be supervised - the injecting place itself or the activity that will go on in the place?

It is also interesting that the Bill refers to a trial. I have heard it indicated that the trial will be for 12 months and I have heard that it will be for two years. I have heard that a committee, a task force, will be set up that would go on and on ad infinitum. How long is the trial for? I have heard of the trial for safe needles. On all those sorts of things I wait to hear from the proponent of this Bill. Among the meanings I have found for the word "trial" on my Assembly office computer are "affliction", "curse", "calamity", "evil", "plague", "misery" and "grief". Need I say any more, Mr Speaker?

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