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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 9 Hansard (21 August) . . Page.. 3063 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

marginalised people, to give them back a life in the community and to avoid at all costs their isolation.

Having a supervised injecting place and free prescription heroin will keep people alive so that this ultimate goal of reintegration can be pursued. Leadership is a precious thing and, clearly, this government would rather not have to offer it. It is doing everything it can to avoid this issue. The Liberals would rather not face the real problems in this country and, indeed, across the world. They stand, as Pontius Pilate, again and again washing their hands of any responsibility and now hide under the cover of small "d" democracy.

There is no point in this referendum. It is not about issues of the Constitution or about how we should do government or about the rights and entitlements of all citizens. It is not something that reaches beyond the responsibilities of elected members, the Chief Minister and the ACT government and so ought to be dealt with through a democratic vote. Governments are elected to govern.

Mr Humphries himself seemed to look askance at the notion of asking the community to put us in government and trust us to make the right decision. But I thought that was what Gary Humphries has said during every election campaign: "Put us in the Assembly to govern. Trust us; we know what is in the best interests of the community."

This referendum is simply a test of public support for the trial of two policy initiatives the government does not want to make a decision on. While proponents argue that the people of Canberra are sophisticated in their understanding of the issue, such a referendum forces the decisions to be made at too simplistic a level. It is not the people of Canberra who are simplistic; it is the framing of this debate. That is the point.

The argument put by the Chief Minister and the Attorney-General is that we face problems of drug use and abuse and a yes vote to the referendum would provide the confirmation of new strategies. Interestingly, that does not appear to be the basis on which the Liberal Party first proposed this referendum; rather it was because people wanted to have drugs "out of their faces". The idea apparently came from some market research or polling conducted by the Liberal Party and the family policy group. A follow-up poll for City News included the terms "shooting galleries" and "free heroin" despite protestations to the contrary, which will have corrupted the process to some extent already. One can only imagine what questions the Liberal Party asked and how pointed they were.

So we have a party of government campaigning at cross purposes. The ministers say they will accept the outcomes; it appears the rest of the Liberal Party may not. We also have the extraordinary situation where the Independents are likely to support the referendum-as a kind of public consultation on initiatives they remain committed to opposing. It is not to assist them in forming a view; it is because they believe it is to their electoral advantage, perhaps. They would like the question to be put so they can argue the point.

If the Referendum Bill had received support today-it does not look as though it has-we could have looked forward to an intense debate on heroin use. The bill would have ensured that the yes and no cases, which would undoubtedly have emerged with some

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