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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 13 Hansard (9 December) . . Page.. 4178 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

Mr Kaine seems to be really concerned that we are not taking these sorts of concerns into account. I reject that notion. I think it is on the record quite clearly. Mr Moore has acknowledged it and supported, as other supporters have in this place, that it has to be accompanied by those messages and those other mechanisms for support.

This is about health and wellbeing. Studies of addiction regularly make the point that it usually takes several attempts to become free of heroin or other addictive drugs. We have to send a signal that if you are drug dependent we will support your attempts to get clean; that the use of these prohibited substances is dangerous and unhealthy. The supervised injecting place will not provide the solution to all health and social problems that are part and parcel of drug consumption in our society - neither for the community at large, nor for drug injecting individuals. We need to move faster and further if we want to address these wider issues.

Research identifies links between poverty, poor and unfinished education, homelessness and other indicators of disadvantage and drugs of dependence, and substance abuse more generally. In addition to the trial of the supervised injecting place, we need strategies: Enhanced parenting programs; harm minimisation in terms of public policy and awareness; enhanced child-to-adult and school-to-work transition programs; peer support programs and networks, to name a few. Also, we need educational and community development programs that improve social connectedness; the trial of prescribed supply of heroin to registered addicts; targeted employment and employment related training; and supply of clean syringes to prisoners.

Mr Kaine once again seemed to be suggesting that none of these things have been dealt with. I am not usually a great defender of the Government here, but I have to say that we are seeing particular initiatives in this place on these matters. We have seen the announcement of a rehabilitation program for young people addicted to drugs. We have seen a project of dual diagnosis from Mr Moore. We are seeing a trial right now in a primary school of a program called FAST, Family and Schools Together, about identifying children at risk in our school system. These are the sorts of essential preventative programs that are necessary if we are to have a broad approach to social health.

I will continue to try to keep the Government honest on this. I have continually done that. I will probably continue to be a critic. But I will also say they are taking on initiatives in this area. It is our responsibility as an Assembly to encourage the Government to keep doing that and improving it, because, after all, that is clearly the necessary approach. The response to these issues is about possibilities. It is possible to trial a number of strategies and to stringently evaluate the trials. It is possible to test a range of approaches and then pursue strategies that have proven most effective. It is not possible to sit on the sidelines saying no to drugs if we care about the wellbeing of the whole community and if we accept our responsibility to do something about it. We have to say more than no to drugs.

Global advertising programs that emphasise the harm of drugs and a prohibitionary approach simply do not work on their own. A supervised injecting place in the context of a wider harm minimisation policy may be one effective strategy to limit the harm drugs of dependence inflict on drug users and the wider community. That is all. The trial

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