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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (10 July) . . Page.. 2400 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

It is no secret that I have not been the most ardent supporter of a supervised injecting place, but I am, and remain, an absolute adherent and advocate of a trial. If it works somewhere else, why don't we trial it here, see if it works here, and save 20 lives in the process? If the trial fails, do you know what we have done, Mr Deputy Speaker? We have saved 20 lives. It is as simple as that.

You have to take note of Mr Quinlan's point. Just remember that there are unsupervised injecting places. When I first got here and I discovered some syringes up on City Hill, I made it my business to go up on that hill once a month, just as a bit of a walk and an amble to satisfy my curiosity. It was over 21/2 years before I went up on City Hill and there was not a used syringe to be found. It was 21/2 years before I had one trip when there was not one.

Ms Carnell: Then we are improving.

MR HARGREAVES: We are not improving at all, Chief Minister. That is a dreadful thing to say. I sincerely hope that that comment was made in jest. If it was I take it with the spirit it was said. If it wasn't, then you should be appalled with yourself. Those are unsupervised places. When I talked to the guys who went along and picked these things up they told me of some of the other places that they go to, and I went around and had a look at them. I would really like to get a caravan and take every member here around and see them.

It is like those people who pontificate about how we should behave in prisons but who have not been there. I doubt that Mr Humphries has ever been to a place that is sitting there in the hollows. You go across the road here and there are some public toilets over there. How would you like to sit down there and inject yourself if that is the only place you could do it, and you found that we could have had one just around the corner? It is pretty ordinary, Mr Speaker.

Picking up a point that was made earlier on, the government is succumbing to a couple of crossbenchers. Well, that is not quite true, because I know that you oppose this act, Mr Speaker. I respect that because you made your views known and you have not waivered from that. That is fine. So have Mr Hird and Mr Kaine. But two members of the cabinet did support this act, and two other members of the Liberal Party's backbench have knocked it off too.

What we are seeing here, Mr Speaker, is a backbench revolt. The conservative Liberal Party/Michael Moore/crossbench coalition has raised its head and said, "No, no," and we have just seen a double-twister backflip with pike. All that sort of political twisting and turning, and breaking the surface without a murmur, is messing around with other people's lives. People ought to be ashamed of themselves for that.

In regard to the budget, Mr Speaker, we said we are not satisfied with the government's performance to date. We do not believe that they have any integrity to continue in the following 12 months because we do not trust them, and what we are seeing with this bill, Mr Speaker, is living proof that that mistrust was well placed.

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