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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 13 Hansard (9 December) . . Page.. 4173 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

be right. We will fix it at some time in the future". How many times has the Opposition sat there and criticised the Government for saying, in terms of a law that was being considered, "You're asking us to trust you. Let us just pass this law today, and we have to trust you to get the detail into place at some future time".

Mr Stanhope has now reversed the roles. He is sitting there and he is saying to me, "Trust us. Just pass this law tonight and we will fix the detail later". Are we as legislators supposed to be happy with that on an issue like this - an issue where this place is divided; the Liberal Party is divided, although they have got a policy that says that they will reject this sort of a thing until there is a referendum? We know the community is divided. We do not even know yet who the members are going to be. We are expected to take on faith that these people, whoever they are, will introduce a supervisory regime under no guidelines issued by this place or the Minister or anybody else; that they are going to invent a regime that will satisfy all of us, let alone the community out there.

Mr Speaker, this is a travesty. The whole proposal is based on a sham. The legislation does nothing but allow the Minister to go out there tomorrow and set up a so-called supervised injecting place. He used to call it a "safe injecting place", but I notice he stopped doing that because some of us pointed out that it was in no way safe.

On this question of a scientific study, how on earth can you conduct a scientific study when you do not even know what these people are injecting into themselves. They could come in there and inject pure Lysol into their veins. And at the end of the two years, somebody says, "It was a great success. You know, only 10 people died, it could have been 500; so it was a great success", without even knowing what it is that these people are injecting. And they have got the effrontery to call this a scientific trial. I repeat, Mr Speaker, there is nothing scientific about it. It is a sham.

The legislation is not enough to satisfy even a 10-year-old child that this Government knows what it is doing, and knows how it is going to do it. Okay, a 15-year-old child could. The whole process, Mr Speaker, is so badly flawed. As I say, I had reached the point of saying to myself, "I do not agree with this". But I believed that my colleagues who are going to push this through the Assembly are reasonable enough people to make sure that this is a properly conducted trial. My faith is misplaced, because they cannot even make up their minds before they enact the legislation how the place is going to work. On what basis then are they going to make it work properly?

Much has been said about the role of the police. We are told, "No worries". Mr Moore and the Attorney-General tell us, "No worries, the police will act responsibly". Well, the police will do their best if they understand what the requirement is. When we try to find out what directions the DPP is going to give to the police we are again told, "No worries, it is all in the Act". Well, it is not. I do not know what directions the DPP are going to give the police. Yet I am supposed to take it on faith that his directions will be acceptable to me and to Ms Tucker and to Mr Stanhope. I do not think that is good enough.

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