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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 4 Hansard (22 April) . . Page.. 1208 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

It may be that we can never all agree, but at least government should seriously try to find where there is common ground and build on that. It is in everyone's interest to do so. If there is one thing for sure that we can all agree on it is that there is no simple answer to the problem. The concerns and fears expressed by the community are legitimate and need to be respected and addressed.

The other important element of this discussion and this discussion paper is priorities. Where and how do we decide where scarce funding should be put? I noticed in the evaluation a comment that there had been no implementation program. This is something Mr Wood has picked up. I hope Mr Moore is listening to this bit. As the evaluation mentioned in respect of the last strategy, there was no implementation program. I hope we are going to see one this time because it is really important. Mrs Carnell yesterday told us of increased Federal funding and we are, of course, pleased to see this money. However, it is obviously not enough to cover all the areas of need.

Substance abuse is both a result and a cause of problems in individuals and in society. Obviously there is a continuum of responses within the harm minimisation approach. The least harm will occur if people do not use drugs at all, and, at the other end, we need to try to minimise the impact on the broader community and help people who use drugs to do it as safely as possible. The different service responses to that continuum of need are listed in the draft drug strategy, although, of course, the police issue and reduction of supply and so on were not part of this strategy, which has already been raised by Mr Wood.

It is clear that there are a number of priority areas needing funding. Areas which are listed as priorities include a dual diagnosis response, availability of mental health services, training of service providers, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people - they must be well and truly fed up with being yet again a dot point in a strategy or a report but not considered a priority and therefore not singled out for realistic funding - and diversion of drug-dependent people away from the criminal justice system. I noted what Mr Wood said about the prison and how there needs to be really best practice there if we are expecting 80 per cent of the residents to be there for drug-related crime. This point of the strategy is actually about trying to change that situation and diverting people away from the criminal justice system. (Extension of time granted) If this strategy was successful a lot less than 80 per cent of its residents would be related to drug crime.

Other priority areas are support for victims of trauma and sexual violence, data collection, research and development, best practice and drug education. I would also add that a holistic harm minimisation approach would include support for children at risk in the education system, family support services, appropriate and safe housing options and, as Mr Wood mentioned, an economic policy from government which produced employment.

The Social Policy Committee of the last Assembly produced a number of reports which are entirely relevant to this debate. They include the violence in schools report in which we dealt with issues related to mental illness in young people and people not being successful in the school system, and violent behaviour resulting from abuse in families.

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