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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 1 Hansard (16 February) . . Page.. 177 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

funding is guaranteed at a particular level into the foreseeable future. Services must be accountable for the way in which they spend public money. They must be accountable, and I make no - - -

Mr Corbell: Are you saying they are not?

MR HUMPHRIES: I heard you in silence, Mr Corbell. I would ask you to give me the same courtesy. Mr Speaker, we need to be able to do that, and I do not make any apology for doing that. It does not connote, though, that the Government does not care about things that go on in youth centres or believes that we can, somehow, get away from youth centres; that they do not matter anymore or that they are not an important part of the process. Of course they are, but they have to be accountable.

Mr Speaker, I think I see one very clear reason why there are so many more problems associated with young people in the community at the moment, and that is very largely to do with the much greater pervasiveness of drug use and drug abuse in this community. There are many factors, but this is one particularly important one. The ACT Drug Referral and Information Centre has reported that, while the majority of drug types has remained fairly static over the last couple of years, clients with heroin problems have increased by 12 per cent in the space of the last two years. That is partly reflected by the enormous increase in the number of people using the needle exchange program. One hundred thousand needles were handed out in 1991-92, 500,000 in 1997-98.

Drug agencies working with youth, in particular, have reported a change in the client profile of young intravenous drug users. The injectors they are now seeing are younger, take greater risks, have multiple problems, are more likely to be hepatitis infected, and present as depressed, anxious and stressed. They are also likely to be injecting a broader range of substances, including amphetamines and steroids. I am not saying that we can attribute any particular problem to drug-affected youth in our community. There is certainly a connection of sorts, but I do not lay the blame in its entirety at the foot of drug-affected youth for a number of the problems which have been raised here today, and I say that we need to be more sophisticated about our response to those issues.

Mr Speaker, Quamby has been mentioned. I do not rise in this place to pretend that the Government has got it anything near right as far as Quamby is concerned. Quamby is a matter of significant concern to the Government at the present time, and we will work very hard to make sure that Quamby remains high on the profile of the Government in the next few years. I think Mr Corbell needs to be clear that Quamby is not the entire youth justice system, however. It is only one part of it, and a relatively small part. There are other parts of the youth justice system where some very good things are happening, very exciting things. Mr Rugendyke mentioned, for example, the diversionary conferencing which impacts very heavily on young people. It is diverting many of them away from the criminal justice system altogether, and that is something which I think we should all be proud about because it is acting in a positive way.

We do need to work to contribute to a lower population of people in our gaols. That is absolutely true. I believe that having control of the part of our criminal justice system which includes gaols and remand centres is part of that process. We need to take a proactive attitude towards it. We need to be able to manage people as individuals with

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