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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 6 Hansard (24 May) . . Page.. 1641 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

to interfere with the science of the trial and I do not intend to interfere with the science of the trial. However, we can certainly inform on that and we will do what we can to ensure that we get the best scientific trial.

The criteria suggested under the legislation are the broad criteria given by the advisory committee. Of course, even the advisory committee recognised that in the letter that I tabled. Mr Kaine will realise that I did table the criteria, as required by the legislation. It will be the responsibility of the successful tenderer to develop detailed strategies for the collection of the above data where a source does not already exist. It talks about the style of the criteria.

I agree that the criteria that we have in front of us is very broad. That does not make it wrong. It means that it needs to be refined. Whomever is conducting the scientific arm of the trial, the scientific evaluation, should ensure that the details of that are filled out, and that work has already begun. At the beginning of this year when the legislation had already passed through the Assembly and it was clear that the work was going to occur, we established a process for getting baseline data to get a fundamental understanding of what was happening with regard to drug use in the city. The department commissioned Dr Gabriele Bammer, through the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, to do that. Mr Kaine has referred to Dr Bammer. That baseline data will be important.

The thrust of Mr Kaine's motion, as I read it, is to ensure that the Assembly is informed of the detail of that motion. I am quite comfortable with doing that. It is certainly a very reasonable request on such a controversial issue and something that I am very happy to do, Mr Kaine.

There is one issue on which it is worth ensuring that there is clear understanding so that we do not interfere with the science of the trial. First, it is not to be a KPMG-style evaluation. It is not to be an economic evaluation whereby somebody sits to the side and says, "Here it is; now we can draw conclusions." When an epidemiological trial like this one is conducted the scientific approach which sets the evaluation, as Dr Bammer has set out clearly in the article that Mr Kaine has quoted, is quite clear; the criteria are quite clear. But the scientists who are doing the trial have to be subject to peer review. It is that peer review process which separates a scientific evaluation from other evaluations.

We said that we would go to tender. We have gone through the first step of that. We have advertised for expressions of interest from people interested in doing that trial. If the expressions of interest are limited, it may be inappropriate to take the next step and go to a tender process. I may be better simply to appoint somebody under those circumstances. I do not know because we have not received expressions of interest, but the number of people within Australia capable of undertaking this sort of exercise is limited.

It will be somebody disinterested in and independent of government; there is no question about that. As to it being somebody who has proposed a trial or not proposed a trial, let me say that I would not interpret what Mr Kaine has put here as eliminating, for example, the person he was referring to, Dr Bammer, although she has given a scientific view on what you would achieve from a trial and what you would not achieve from a trial.

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