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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 11 Hansard (5 November) . . Page.. 3618 ..

MR BERRY: The Prime Minister, I am talking about. The Prime Minister is the one who counts here. Your preferred Prime Minister has let us down. It has nothing to do with anybody else. He was the one who made the decision.

This move by the Chief Minister to include me alongside John Howard in this motion is merely spiteful and resentful of the fact that I drew attention to the failure of the Carnell Government to deal with the drug issue appropriately. It is a personal attack on me for the wrong reasons. There is no parallel between my policies on drugs and John Howard's. John Howard would never have agreed to increase the methadone program fourfold. John Howard never supported the heroin trial in the ACT. The ACT Labor Party and I in particular would support a heroin trial if there was national support. I said that there was no point in going it alone, and that was the position of many people in this place. It could not go ahead without national support, and everybody knew that. For my part, with national support, we would have supported it. It is quite wrong to try to associate my policies with those of John Howard. There are no similarities.

The difference between me and John Howard is that I pointed to the failures of the Carnell Government in dealing with the drug issues in the ACT. I think I did that appropriately in the lead-up to this point. This amendment is just a hysterical, spiteful reaction to my drawing attention to the failure of the Government to address properly the drug issues here in the ACT. If the Greens and others swallow it, it will show that they are not prepared to look at the facts and the issues which relate to the Labor Party's policy and particularly my own utterances in relation to the matter. It will show you up to be spiteful, hysterical and personal if you support this silly amendment. Mr Osborne described me as a joke. One thing that is true about my position on this is it has been consistent from the word go. We supported the heroin trial where the opportunity arose and we have continued to support progressive drug policies. That is why this motion has been moved today. I am sorry that I beat you to the punch.

MRS CARNELL (Chief Minister and Minister for Health and Community Care) (12.12), by leave: Mr Berry may like to withdraw the motion and move the one he had on the notice paper. Mr Berry said that this motion was about the failure of my Government to deal with drugs appropriately.

Mr Berry: No, he did not. You were not listening.

MRS CARNELL: That is exactly what you said, but it is not in the motion anywhere. If that is what it is about, then unfortunately Mr Berry has got the words wrong. This is very simple. With the amendments in place, this is about this Assembly attempting to take a constructive approach to the Howard paper.

We have to get back to the sensible debate on drugs that we have had before in this place. Mr Berry is taking a double-standards approach by getting stuck into Mr Moore and me in the media and everywhere else for a "say no to drugs" approach, which was the approach you were taking, Mr Berry. I do not believe that anyone in this Assembly will wear that. If this was just supposed to be a go at my Government in this area, why did he not just do it that way and not try to be clever.

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