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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 13 Hansard (9 December) . . Page.. 4210 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

It seems to me that most of the people who argued against the supervised injecting room have missed one fundamental point. People will be using, whether there is an injecting room or not. The only question is: Where will they be using and under what conditions? Will they be sanitary? Will they be safe? The Chief Minister talked about the saving of life. Just as important is stopping the spread of HIV and hepatitis C, particularly hepatitis C, which we know is much more vigorous and spreads more easily than HIV. Stopping the spread of hepatitis C requires not just clean needles but clean surfaces and a vigorous approach to ensuring antiseptic conditions.

Mr Rugendyke suggested to us that we were rushing in. Nothing could be further from the truth. The great frustration for me over the last 18 months has been how long it has taken us to get to this point. In the ACT over the last two or three years, we have had in the order of one death a month on average. I understood where people were coming from when they said, "You must have other things in place". It is critical that we do those things. However, from my point of view, we could have been getting those other things in place and doing this at the same time. To suggest, Mr Rugendyke, that we are rushing is complete nonsense. We are talking about a raft of legal opinions, for heaven's sake. We are talking about a huge number of public consultations. We are talking about different forms of legislation being discussed between members at length.

Mr Rugendyke also asked why people have to wait for methadone. The good news is that people have not had to wait for methadone for some months now. We have been able to meet the demand, and we will continue to meet that challenge as best we can in a range of different ways that I do not wish to go into at the moment.

Mr Rugendyke also said that the scrutiny of Bills committee raised five major issues. Those issues were relatively easy to answer because we had been through so much discussion. That is why when the report was tabled on Tuesday morning I was able to circulate the completed government response by Tuesday. That response was about six or seven times longer than the report of the scrutiny in Bills committee. We were able to deal with each of the issues the committee raised because we already had the information. We had considered each of those issues previously.

Mr Berry raised a very important issue. He said that we must not rely on just the supervised injecting room. It could not have been said in a more effective way. The supervised injecting room is a only a very small part of a very broad strategy. The reason that it is so difficult is that it is so controversial. We have to continue to get every part of our program going - education, rehabilitation and all the other things that Mr Berry mentioned. I accept that.

I would like to thank Jon Stanhope and his office, who have worked with us to ensure that we can get as bipartisan an approach as possible. He has been working very effectively with the Government, especially when we were having difficult arguments about other issues. We still stayed on track with this matter.

Mr Hird had some doubts about how long the scientific trial will go on. It is a two-year trial. Clause 11 of the legislation before you is a sunset clause that makes it very clear.

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