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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (10 July) . . Page.. 2421 ..

MR SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired.

MR RUGENDYKE (3.49): I shall say a few words. My position on this issue has been known quite clearly for four or five weeks. The day the budget was put on the table, my position was declared and my position has not changed throughout the subsequent weeks and throughout the various machinations that have occurred over the last few weeks. I do believe that the compromise that has been reached over this issue is an appropriate one. It is a good compromise. It is a compromise that will give the community the opportunity to have a voice on this issue, something that has not occurred to date.

I support the amendment to the Supervised Injecting Place Trial Bill. I think it is important that funding not be provided for the shooting gallery until 2002, and that in the meantime that funding be directed to appropriate drug education, as the majority of the health committee suggested in the first place. Mr Speaker, I congratulate the government on coming to a compromise position. I for one certainly will not be gloating over any perceived deal, backdown or anything else. Suffice it to say that the compromise is a good one from two totally different positions prior to the budget. I support the amendment.

MR HUMPHRIES (Treasurer, Attorney-General and Minister for Justice and Community Safety) (3.51), in reply: I think it is fair to say of this debate in terms of the position of the parties as opposed to people outside the Assembly that the one party that clearly has come out of this debate with nothing whatsoever is the Australian Labor Party. It took the position of wanting to block the ACT budget. I dare say that what the Assembly will do today is pass the budget.

The Labor Party took the position of wanting to support a supervised injecting place. I dare say that today the Assembly will vote to defer for 18 months or so the start of a supervised injecting place. In particular, over the years Labor has supported the principle that the Assembly should not have the power to amend a government's budget. That principle also has been severely shaken, if not destroyed, by the events of the last 10 days or so.

There has been much debate about what actually happened in the last 10 days, in what order it happened, who was responsible for the backdown, et cetera. There has been much talk about the government's backdown in this place on SIPs, but not so much talk about the fact that the opposition has backed down on its position of not supporting the government's budget, having said that it was prepared to support the government's budget as of Monday of last week.

I think that Liz Armitage of the Canberra Times accurately summarised what happened when she said:

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