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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 13 Hansard (9 December) . . Page.. 4176 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

Social science has come a long way since 1961 when this treaty was signed. On the basis of the trial proposed in this legislation, comparative studies of fatalities, incidence of blood-borne diseases and other medical and public health outcomes will be evaluated. Most important to the effectiveness of this trial is that the evaluation will be conducted independently and that the indicators will be determined and publicly known prior to opening the place. Forty years of research and analysis around the world has continually demonstrated the failure of a strategy which simply says no to drugs, condemns all drug addicts, and locks up all perpetrators of drug-related crime. This is a failure in terms of public health, a failure in terms of controlling drug use, a failure in terms of limiting drug-related crime.

Perhaps another scientific and independent evaluation of the evidence of the past 40 years may finally shift a few of the anti-drug crusaders from their zealous and morally panicked approach towards looking at how we can address the issues. On ABC Radio on Friday, November 19, I heard Mr Osborne suggest this supervised injecting place might save one life but attract 50 to 100 young people to start injecting drugs. I was very concerned to hear Mr Osborne say that, because unless he has some kind of evidence to support that I believe it provocative to say the least.

Mr Kaine: Have you got evidence that it won't?

MS TUCKER: We need to see we do take this step at this point, which will allow us to address what we do know. Mr Kaine just interjected, "Do I know that it will not?". What we know is that there is an increase in blood-borne disease and overdose from drugs. That is what this is about.

There is also, of course, the question of the police and the position of the police. A police association spokesman, I understand, with the support it seems of Mr Rugendyke and Mr Osborne, has said the police will fearlessly uphold the law as they should, enter any supervised injecting place and charge everyone in it. Well, I guess this is a possible course of action. If no charges were pursued through the courts, it is unlikely that such drug-busting officers would be doing their professional standing much good. I would expect the force to behave professionally, as usual, in response to the will of this Assembly and their superior, the Executive.

But I raise this issue for another reason. Police officers are always called on to exercise discretion. Anyone who has spent time in Garema Place, and has seen the number of users and the number of small deals going on in the open, day after day, can see that police do exercise discretion. I can see no reason why they could not continue that discretion.

Much has also been made of the cost of this trial. Perhaps we also should talk about the cost of not pursuing a trial. The seventh annual symposium on hepatitis B and C in Melbourne on 19 and 20 October this year warned us that Australia was facing a massive hepatitis C epidemic. Dr Wodak, director of the Alcohol and Drug Service at Sydney's St Vincents Hospital, pointed out that hepatitis C is costing Australia more than $150m a year already. He also pointed out that since The Netherlands introduced injecting rooms the number of injecting drug users had halved and the rate of new users had declined.

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