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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 1 Hansard (17 February) . . Page.. 247 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (Treasurer, Attorney-General and Minister for Justice and Community Safety) (12.04): Mr Speaker, the Government opposes this motion. In the last five years the Government has been dealing with the very serious consequences in this community of widespread use of intravenously injected drugs. There would be very few members of our community who do not move around the community, particularly in major public such as in the heart of the city, Civic - without being aware that intravenous drug use has risen significantly in the last few years and that the problems caused by that use are multiplying throughout the community.

Those who propose such things as safe injecting places and heroin trials have done so as a response to that rising problem of drug use in the community. Whatever reaction we have to the problem, the important point is that we all have to have a reaction to the problem. We all have to have a response to the public safety issues, the community perception issues and, most importantly perhaps, the public health issues which are given rise to by that wider use.

There has been endless debate and discussion in this place about the hazard presented to the community by discarded needles and syringes. Those syringes are a significant public health problem. A large numbers of such needles are collected daily in our community.

Mr Rugendyke: How many in taverns?

MR HUMPHRIES: We do not collect needles in taverns. The owners and operators of the taverns collect the needles in the taverns. Mr Rugendyke called for something on the record about the presence of needles in taverns. I will come to that in a minute. In the public sense, there is no doubt that there is wide-scale use of needles and that they are a public health risk. A person in the vicinity, particularly a child who might be playing, runs a serious risk that, if they are stuck by one of those needles, blood-borne diseases on those needles could be transmitted to them. Literally, a death sentence could be transferred to a person in that circumstance by virtue of the fact that they have been exposed to that risk. It is incumbent on us in this community to minimise that risk as much as possible.

Mr Rugendyke has chosen to characterise that as encouraging, or taking steps which have the perception of encouraging, drug use. There are major venues all over this country today - in fact, all over the world, if you move around it - which are acknowledging the reality that people are using needles, and not necessarily just for intravenous drug use. A significant number of needles are being used all the time in the community by people suffering from particular diseases - diabetes, in particular - for which needles need to be used. Sometimes they use quite a few during a day and they have a need for disposal as well. But that is another issue.

We have a wide-scale understanding of that wide use and, therefore, a response on the part of a large number of public and semi-public institutions and private institutions to that problem by the installation of receptacles for those needles. We see them these days in bus stations.

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