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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 2 Hansard (2 March) . . Page.. 546 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

The community attitude survey aims to provide essential information to map current community attitudes towards addictive drugs, injecting rooms and related issues; assess changes over time; and establish a baseline from which the impact of the establishment of an injecting room on these attitudes could be assessed.

In addition, the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health is developing a draft evaluation plan for the advisory committee's consideration. This will provide the foundation for the advisory committee to consider appropriate criteria for conducting a full-scale scientific evaluation of the supervised injecting place trial. The plan will consider areas of potential impact that a supervised injecting place may have on injecting drug users and the wider ACT community. The plan will also specify areas against which data could be collected and evaluated throughout the life of the trial. The majority of the pre-trial evaluation work will be available to the advisory committee at its next meeting.

The advisory committee also considered a wide range of issues concerning the selection of a service provider for the trial as well as the operational issues that will need to be resolved. The Department of Health and Community Care is currently inviting organisations in the ACT to indicate an interest in having a role in the trial. Given the complex and controversial nature of the trial, it is possible that a single service provider will be difficult to identify. Another option is that the service provider be a consortium-based or partnership arrangement, possibly a combination of non-government agencies or government and non-government agencies. The department has also contracted with KPMG to develop a range of operational policies and protocols for the committee's consideration.

The lead consultant will work with government and stakeholders, including the advisory committee, to develop a workable, innovative service provision model and to produce a comprehensive package of organisational policies and procedures for the use of the service provider selected to operate this trial. The range of operational policies and tools to be developed will include registration intake and assessment protocols; staffing policy; staffing selection criteria, training, qualifications and competencies; access protocols, including under-18s' access, and opening hours; plans for linkages to other services, including client referral policy; media liaison policy; data collection and reporting mechanisms.

The committee also considered a number of potential sites at which to locate a supervised injecting trial. It is likely that the final location will be within the city/inner-North Canberra area, close to health and other social services and close to public transport.

As members will be aware, law enforcement issues concerning the supervised injection place will be managed through a direction from the Attorney-General to the Director of Public Prosecutions. This direction will describe certain circumstances under which persons using the supervised injection place will not be prosecuted under law for an offence against the Drugs for Dependence Act. The direction to the Director of Public Prosecutions will be very specific in its terms to enable traffic in heroin to continue to be addressed by the AFP. It will clarify, for example, how a user of the supervised injecting place will be defined and the quantities of impure heroin that a client will be able to possess.

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