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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Wednesday, 11 February 2004) . . Page.. 223 ..

It is most unfortunate that there have been Chinese whispers in this case. Many people have been incredibly hurt by this. I do not believe that it was ever the intention of this government to do so. It was not our intention to hurt people and we are trying to fix up the process.

MS DUNDAS (4.18): I state my support for more drug rehabilitation beds. The Democrats fundamentally believe that drug abuse is a health issue, not a criminal issue, and that rehabilitation rather than incarceration should be the preferred form of treatment for drug abuse. I also accept that the Karralika drug rehabilitation centre is in need of refurbishment. I am genuinely concerned that some people are desperately trying to access rehabilitation but are missing out on programs and treatments, and that these problems will continue while we have such uncertainty.

Having said that, I believe that, for a residential drug rehabilitation program to be successful, it needs to be supported by the community that surrounds it. In the case of the Karralika centre, it is unfortunate that, due to the recent decisions—as one Macarthur resident put it to me yesterday—the residents surrounding Karralika have been forced into a situation where they can no longer support a community they have supported for 25 years. That comment put to me by a resident is most distressing. We now have a situation where a community is so upset by a process that they are starting to turn against a facility that has been part of their community for 25 years and, as we continually hear, with very little mishap.

We need to remind ourselves of this issue. We have had a lot of talk about the health issue and the planning issue. The way those two things come together is through the community and the community support for what is happening. We cannot base our drugs policy on our planning policy, and our planning policy on our drugs policy. We cannot justify planning decisions by a simple health need. It is unarguable that we need more drug rehabilitation beds, and I was supportive of the moves that were put down in the budget to have more money put into drug rehabilitation. We generally need to look at the provision of health facilities across the territory. But a bad planning process cannot be used to justify the construction of such facilities.

This is not a decision I have taken lightly. There have been some quite eloquent and rational arguments put on both sides of the debate. Sometimes I would gladly like to pick up a wand and just move the laws and fix every problem that we have. But we do have processes in place for a reason. I can understand the Minister for Health and Minister for Planning trying to come up with the perfect solution to the issue of how to get more drug rehabilitation beds into the community. But I do not think the processes resulted in the answer that he was looking for, and I do not think that we should then use call-in powers to try to fix that.

The ACT Democrats sought to have call-in powers removed when we set up the new land act in 2002. We are quite supportive of the moves of Ms Tucker to bring back into the Assembly debate about the use of call-in powers. All members of this Assembly might reconsider their approach to call-in powers in the future.

Community consultation is a fundamental part of the planning process. It is unfortunate that it appears to have been disregarded in so many different ways. We have had a lot of

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