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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (10 July) . . Page.. 2412 ..

MR HIRD (continuing):

In closing, I paraphrase the words of a great Australian and former Labor Prime Minister of this great country in 1975 when Labor was objecting to the denial of supply. Well may we say, "God Save the Queen," because nothing will save Jon Stanhope.

MR WOOD (3.11): Members, the debate has resumed. It has been going on for some time. The last instalment was less than a fortnight ago. It might end today. I expect that members noticed during the budget debate two men, among others, sitting in the gallery. Those two men sat through the tedious debate because they had a passionate interest in one aspect of the budget, and that was the proposal for a supervised injecting room. They sat on that side over there. They needed to be passionate in their interest to sit through that debate.

They had a shared interest. I do not know whether they acknowledged each other or nodded to each other. I do not know whether they even knew each other. Perhaps they did; perhaps they did not. But they had one tragic circumstance in common. Each had lost a child to a drug overdose. Each lives with that tragedy and the ongoing agony. Yet, in their response to this supervised injecting room proposal, they had nothing in common, not a bit. They were quite opposed. One was a staunch advocate of the supervised injecting room and fiercely fought for it over quite a period. The other was totally opposed. If those two men with the same interest brought upon them could not agree on the way to proceed, it is no surprise that in this Assembly we should also be divided on what is the best to handle this problem. It is no wonder we are having this debate.

Those two men are not here today. Certainly, they will know the outcome. Because of the deal the government has made, the supervised injecting room is off the agenda. One man lost his cause; the other won. I am sorry that the cause has been lost. Although I did not believe in the cause in the first instance, I came to believe that that was the best way to go. I believed the supervised injecting room was worth a try. It will not get that trial, it seems.

The issue of drugs is a very emotional issue. I believe that the emotion that is always brought into this debate is clouding the discussion we have. In fact, the supervised injecting room was just-I use the word advisedly-a further step. The major step was taken over a decade ago when governments around Australia allowed for needle exchange programs to happen. The next one was not such a large step. My colleagues today have already pointed out that we have injecting places all around Canberra.

We now need to focus on other measures to deal with the illicit drugs problem. It is not going to go away. As I indicated, I came to this issue rather late in the piece, but I have attended to it. Members will know that I went to a conference in the UK a short time ago. Attendees at that conference came from 51 nations. They are getting drowned in the problem. They cannot handle it. They cannot stop it. There would not be one person from those countries who wants the drug issue in front of them and not one person who could say that we can stop it.

The drug problem is not going to go away. Perhaps the message from today is that we need to reinvigorate the debate and focus the debate on other measures we can introduce to deal with it. By all means, let us resist the flow of drugs. Yes, we all agree with that.

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