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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 5 Hansard (8 May) . . Page.. 1375 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

approach, but its very lack of spectacular activity is in a sense the key to its success. There are a couple of essential conditions for this to work well.

First, it should not be seen as the repository of all knowledge on the subject or as the only way in which action can be taken. The issue of drug abuse in this community is too serious for government not to be able to make some decisions about in the meantime. I do not think that every question raised in this place or in the community about the issue of drugs should be met with the comment: "There is a task group on drugs. Wait until that comes up with an answer, and then you will see what we are going to do." Action by government is still necessary in this area because the buck stops with government.

Second, the breadth of membership typified by the poverty task group must be represented in this task group. I do not think that this body should consist of what I will kindly describe as the usual suspects. It must capture a broad range of community views. There was not as clearly delineated a group of vested interests that needed to be captured in the poverty task group. It is possible to construct a task group for this area consisting, for example, primarily of service providers or advocacy groups. I suggest that would be a mistake. The group needs to be broad enough to make sure that the community's views are represented by it. Nobody should be able to say that their view is not being heard.

Without being too prescriptive or getting too much into the personality of individuals, I would see a person like Mrs Rhonda Obad as being an appropriate person to include on this: an ordinary citizen who has become extraordinarily involved in working to fund drug resources and drug facilities in the ACT. She has done an enormous amount in this area in moving forward ideas, and I think that kind of person would be appropriate to have in a setting like this.

I emphasise again that I do not think the government can afford to let this process replace action or decision-making. It cannot afford to let this process be driven bureaucratically or by a limited number of key stakeholders or vested interests. It has to be a broad-based process, and it has to capture the community motivation for change and for improvement.

The Chief Minister made a couple of remarks that I want to respond to. He referred to the attempt he made earlier this year to activate the heroin trial, at which time he was very critical of the federal government for failing to provide support for a heroin trial. It needs to be observed that, when the call went out from the ACT government for support for this concept, it was met with as vigorously slammed a door from a number of state Labor governments as it met from the federal Liberal government. The New South Wales and Queensland governments certainly opposed it, and my recollection is that the Tasmanian and Western Australian governments did likewise-and there may have been others as well. So the lack of vision, if that is what it was, does not all belong to one area of politics in Australia.

Mr Stanhope also lamented the delay in the assessment of the New South Wales injecting place trial in relation to deciding what happens in the ACT. I also lament that fact, but my visit last week to the safe injecting place in Sydney suggested to me that there is a real

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