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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 13 Hansard (7 December) . . Page.. 3799 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

many of the issues raised under the two headings used here by the scrutiny of Bills committee, namely "Dispensing with the law" and "Civil liberties and treaty obligations", have been considered by those of us who have been working on the legislation to establish a drug injecting place. It may be, however, that the scrutiny of Bills committee has raised some interesting issues in relation to the approach. I agree with Mr Moore, in relation to most of the points raised by the scrutiny of Bills committee, that there is almost certainly scope for a little bit of movement at the edges if the Government, in its response to the committee, believes that to be necessary.

The scrutiny of Bills committee does raise some questions about the directions that the Attorney-General will be required, under the legislation, to give to the DPP. I see some strength in some of the suggestions made by the committee, but it seems to me that each of them can be quite easily and adequately dealt with. It seems to me that there is a quite obvious response to many of the points raised by the committee about the nature of the directions that the Attorney-General will be required to give to the DPP. I see nothing in the report that leads me to think that we cannot find some way of clarifying the provisions in the Bill to deal with those issues.

The definition of "drug dependent person" raised questions in the minds of members of the scrutiny of Bills committee, but, when one looks at the report, this is simply a question being raised as to how we deal, as a matter of policy, with first time users. The issue is not so much that we have a problem with the definition of "drug dependent person". There is a policy issue there. The policy issue is: What do we do, in the management of the drug injecting place, about first time users? I raised the same issue in relation to: What do we do, as a community, in relation to under age users? There is a policy issue there which does require some further consideration.

There are some hard questions to be answered in relation to the operation of the drug injecting place. There is no doubt about that. There are some hard policy questions that have to be answered. One of them is: Do we allow first time users to use the drug injecting place, or are we going to insist that only drug dependent people use it? That is a difficult policy issue, as is the question of whether or not a person under the age of 18 is to be permitted to use the drug injecting place and what protocols will apply to that. Those are difficult issues.

Under the amendments which the Labor Party is proposing, a drug injecting place advisory committee, a very broadly based community committee, will advise on the operation of the drug injecting place. Who will use it? Will first time drug users be able to enter the place? How will we deal with children who are drug addicts who seek to use the drug injecting place? Do we exclude people under the age of 18 from the drug injecting place, or do we allow them to use it? Do we consign children to the toilets? These are hard questions and we have proposed establishing a broad-based community advisory committee as a way of dealing with these difficult issues. Really, all that the scrutiny of Bills committee has done in relation to that aspect in its report is say, "Here is an issue that needs to be dealt with", and we can deal with it.

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