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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 3 Hansard (23 March) . . Page.. 675 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

guide to drug abuse is a "positive" move and "not likely" to encourage young people to use illegal, not to mention life-threatening, drugs, or do you believe that it is also irresponsible, a threat to public safety and a clear incitement to break the law?

Mr Stanhope: Good question.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, with great respect, I am not sure that it was a good question. First of all, you asked me to comment on a publication of a Sydney university which you say is available in the ACT. I suspect that it is available because someone has brought it in here. I am sure that it is not usually sold or distributed in the ACT. I am not really sure of the connection. I am the Attorney-General for the ACT. I am commenting on a student newspaper in Sydney about drug injecting. I am not really sure what the connection is with the ACT here or with my job; but, suspending that belief for one instant, Mr Speaker, I do not believe that it is appropriate to encourage people to do unsafe things. That is my view. I do not believe that it is appropriate to encourage people to do unsafe things.

I do believe, though, that, if they are going to do something which is wrong in some moral or legal sense, they should do it safely, that they should minimise the loss or risk to human life or human welfare. My position on the Woroni article about drinking and driving is consistent with those principles. I said that a person should not provide succour or encouragement to people who choose to get behind the wheel of their car after they have had too much to drink and drive on the roads so as to threaten the welfare of other people as well as themselves.

Just on a slight tangent, Mr Kaine spoke about disclaimers. Mr Speaker, I do not believe that anyone can seriously regard disclaimers as somehow exculpating the content of the rest of the article. If I were to write an article about how to pick up small children for sexual satisfaction and I put disclaimers at either end saying, "Of course, you should not pick up small children for sexual satisfaction", it would hardly exonerate what I was doing in the rest of the article. I am sure that Mr Kaine would agree with that point of view, and anybody else who thinks about it would also agree with that point of view.

Mr Speaker, I do not approve of people injecting themselves with drugs either. It is an idea which is horrifying and which I would be devastated to think that anybody in my family was engaging in. However, we have to acknowledge the fact that people are still doing that, and measures that might be taken - and I have not seen the article, so I cannot comment on it - to minimise the harm that flows to people from doing those sorts of things are an appropriate exercise in public education if done properly. I have not seen the article Mr Kaine is referring to. If someone wants to show me a copy, I am happy to have a look at it at my leisure and give him some views about it. But, Mr Speaker, I believe in, as much as possible, saving lives and minimising the loss of life and the loss of wellbeing to human beings. My position on both those matters is, I think, perfectly consistent in that respect.

MR SPEAKER: Do you have a supplementary question, Mr Kaine?

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