Page 3153 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 22 August 2017
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
I think it is important that we should be having an evidence-driven discussion about this policy. The evidence shows that, when people have the opportunity to avail themselves of these services, a significant number of users discard their drugs and leave with a greater understanding of how to reduce the risk of serious harm to themselves and their peers. That is what this is about. It is not about condoning drug taking; it is not about encouraging drug taking or all the other silly comments we have heard in this debate. It is actually about taking a serious, considered and evidence-based approach to ensure that young people do not die or have serious health consequences from the sort of experimentation that young people do.
Let me turn to comments that Mrs Dunne made about the estimates process. I am pleased that Mrs Dunne brought this up today because it gives me an opportunity to respond to the constant chipping away the Liberal Party is doing about the fact that I was not available to appear in estimates on the day that they requested. For the record, let me be very clear that I wrote to Mr Wall on 22 March this year and indicated to him at that time that I would be travelling during the period that the hearings were scheduled and that I would like to canvass with him some options to ensure that the committee was best able to examine the areas for which I had ministerial responsibility. I had two suggestions, and I was open to others he might have had. One of the suggestions was that I appear before the committee immediately on my return from overseas. That would have been Monday, 10 July.
Mrs Dunne just made the comment this was several weeks late. As it happens, estimates was scheduled to run till Friday, 30 June, although my advice is that they undertook a recall day on 3 July. So my availability was a mere four to five working days after the estimates committee in fact finished their work. You would think that, with around 3½ months notice, given that I wrote to Mr Wall on 22 March, we might have been able to accommodate something here.
I indicated to Mr Wall, in my letter to him, my enthusiasm to attend on a date that was mutually agreeable. This place has a pretty strong history of being flexible to accommodate individuals’ various diary requirements and the like. We seek to be a parent-friendly Assembly; we seek to accommodate people’s travel desires to attend conferences overseas, as Mrs Dunne, I believe, is doing later this week. We seek to accommodate various needs that people have, in recognition that being a flexible workplace is a modern thing, a thing that we should all aspire to.
I do note the churlish comments that the Liberal Party continue with on this matter, but I think it is worth reflecting on the fact that, with 3½ months warning, we were not able to find a suitable accommodation that would have required about four working days difference for my availability. So I ask members to simply reflect on their contribution to this discussion and perhaps just be a little more accommodating, and reflect on the fact that Mr Wall never officially wrote back to me, despite the fact that I wrote to him in March about this matter. If this is where they want to put their focus arising from the estimates process, I think it really reflects very poorly on the members of the opposition.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video