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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 5 Hansard (8 May) . . Page.. 1363 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

people when they lose a loved one, in one way or another, to drugs and addiction. All these things we need to address.

It is facile to draw a hard line between illicit drugs and other substances. There is a complex set of issues linked to the problematic use of a wide range of drugs and other substances. There are the direct issues, such as illness, crime, depression, poor educational outcomes and family dysfunction. However, there is a range of underlying causes and ongoing consequences, such as mental illness, poverty, family violence, homelessness, racism, trauma and chronic illness that need to be factored into the equation.

The biggest challenge lies in finding ways to work across agencies and services to support people. It is not as if we are starting from the beginning. There are many effective government and community programs that deal with substance abuse. There are many well-informed committees and working parties to draw on. I expect people who work in the ACT government will have more possibilities in mind.

There have been a number of Legislative Assembly reports that would inform such a project. The Health Committee, of which I am chair, is just beginning an inquiry into the health of school-aged children. There is also a substantial body of research, and many innovative schemes around Australia and overseas, that we can draw on.

The main task is about pulling together the information as to what is going on in Canberra-who is doing what-and on building some agreement on what we can do now. Partly, it is about getting out of the limits of the purchaser/provider paradigm and thinking in terms of community development, education, employment, law and the administration of justice, health, community services and housing.

The idea implicit in this motion is a fairly open process, using the kind of staged research and analysis that was undertaken by the poverty task group which the last government-to its credit-set up. The poverty task force was successful both in the way it worked and in the results. A similar approach here would ensure some degree of mapping what is going on with people and substances, what is being done at present in and around Canberra, what kinds of links we can establish quickly, and what we can aim for.

One of the very interesting things in the poverty task group report was the potency of people's stories-for example, what growing up with so little in a world where so many people have so much, really means. Poverty is partly about exclusion, and so is mental illness. Race can be about exclusion and, sadly, beliefs are, more and more, about exclusion.

If this substance project is to work, we must include in it the stories of people's lives and the small solutions, as well as the big picture. That is why the process has to be built on negotiation. We will not manage effective social planning if it does not fundamentally involve the people it is affecting-the people involved in substance abuse and drugs-and the people dealing with those people. This substance task group would thus make

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