Mr Speaker

Members will be aware that the Advisory Committee established by this Assembly under the Supervised Injecting Place Trial Act 1999, met on Monday and made a number of recommendations. One of these recommendations concerns the criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of the Supervised Injecting Place Trial.

Section 10 of this legislation provides that I, as Minister for Health and Community Care, approve the criteria and that the I present a copy of the approved criteria to this Assembly within three sitting days after the approval

I am happy to be able to announce that I have approved the criteria recommended by the committee, and accordingly, present them today in line with the requirements of the legislation.

Members will observe that the criteria are fairly broad and cover public health impacts and other impacts that can reasonably be measured in the two-year period of the trial.

In addition to data collected under these broad criteria, the Advisory Committee has noted some pieces of baseline research that are already in train for the trial, including a community attitudes survey and a project to map the current visible drug scene and public amenity issues.

The committee is aware that detailed strategies need to be developed for the collection of data measuring the approved criteria.

They propose that the approved criteria be incorporated into a procurement plan consistent with ACT Purchasing Policy, to determine a suitable organisation to undertake the evaluation.

An evaluation panel with relevant external expertise would be convened by my Department, to develop an assessment plan for the procurement process. The external expert, and any organisation they represent, would be excluded from the tender process.

Organisations with relevant expertise and capability would be invited to submit proposals outlining how they would go about the specific process of measuring the approved criteria, within the budget allowed for this purpose.

It will be the responsibility of the successful tenderer to develop detailed strategies for the collection of data to measure the approved criteria, where a source does not already exist.