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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 1 Hansard (17 February) . . Page.. 250 ..
MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):
The argument that by installing needle bins we attract or encourage drug use to licensed premises is absolute nonsense. I ask: What drug user sitting at home in Ainslie, Braddon, Watson, McKellar or wherever is going to think, "I'm going to shoot up this evening, so I think I'll travel into the nightclub in Civic that I occasionally visit because there is a disposal bin there and I will be able to dispose of my needles safely; I will not go to the other nightclubs, because I cannot dispose of my needles safely there."? For goodness sake! Let us have a little bit of commonsense in this debate.
People who are using those drugs, in many cases, are quite likely to dispose of the needles wherever they happen to be. If a bin is provided, hopefully they will use the bin. If none is provided, particularly in the toilet of a licensed premises, it is most likely that they are going to put the needle behind the toilet bowl, not wishing to have it seen straightaway or for people to see that they have been using in a cubicle, or perhaps they will put it in the paper disposal bin, where some poor cleaner runs the risk of having a needlestick injury when they put their hand in to get the paper out. That is the sort of risk you are running when you do not take a basic precaution on public health grounds in these circumstances.
The argument was put that we are targeting pubs and taverns and not other licensed premises such as clubs. It is true that the Government has taken the decision to limit the coverage in the standards manual to licensed premises of the kind that we have referred to there - taverns, pubs, nightclubs - because of the demographic of the people who use them. The people who use them tend to be younger people. They tend to be people who are statistically more likely, because of their age, to use intravenous drugs. And of course you do not need to be a member to be able to enter those premises. Anybody can go in if they pay their entry fee. (Extension of time granted) Some people will be exceptions to that rule, but overall it is the Government's view that the older membership of licensed clubs in the ACT and the barrier - albeit not a very strong barrier, I concede, in some cases - that you need to be a member to be on the premises make it less likely that those premises will be premises on which intravenous drug use, on a significant scale, takes place. Remember, that was the test that I suggested we were imposing.
If we want to protect the public interest with these needle bins, if we are concerned about the fact that they are in licensed premises of the kind referred to in the manual and not in others, is the appropriate response not that we extend the operation of those bins, not that we take the bins out altogether? If I were to amend the manual right now with a motion that said that the premises we are referring to ought to be all licensed premises in the ACT, what would members say or do about that? You would say, presumably, "What is the evidence that there is intravenous drug use in licensed clubs in the ACT?". We can extend it to clubs right now. Are you going to support that?
Mr Stanhope: Wait until you listen to my very detailed speech, and you will understand what you should have done.
MR HUMPHRIES
: Okay, you have a non-committal position. I cannot imagine that the friends of the clubs over there, the people who have rigorously defended licensed clubs in the ACT in other circumstances from such things as some wider use of poker
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