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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 13 Hansard (7 December) . . Page.. 3802 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

I have no doubt that the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs does allow the use and possession of illicit drugs for medical and scientific research purposes. It says that. It says quite explicitly that there is room for the use and possession of illicit drugs for medical and scientific research purposes, including controlled clinical trials. The establishment of the facility proposed here is simply for that purpose. It is a clinical trial.

Mr Osborne: What is controlled about it? What is going into the needle?

MR STANHOPE: It will be rigorously evaluated. It will be medically supervised. There is no doubt, when one looks at the legislation that is being contemplated here, that it is to be medically supervised. It is to be accompanied by rigorous and systematic monitoring and evaluation of the impacts of allowing the injection of illicit drugs within a controlled environment.

There is also no doubt that the 1961 Single Convention allows a departure from a total prohibition in situations where the prevailing conditions in a country render total prohibition not necessarily the most appropriate means of protecting the public health and welfare of the community. I do not think there is anybody in this community who thinks that the system that we currently have, or the non-system that we currently have, is an enhancement of the public health and welfare of the citizens of this city or of this country. For anybody to argue that the prevailing approach to drug abuse is in the interests - - -

MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Stanhope, please do not debate the Bill. To date the debate has been good.

MR STANHOPE: I take the point, Mr Speaker. I will conclude with that remark. I could continue. All I am saying in relation to this report is that I do not believe that the scrutiny of Bills committee has raised any issue that, on a first reading by me, indicates to me that we have a fundamental difficulty with this Bill.

I will await with interest the Government's response to each of the issues that are raised. I believe that each of the issues raised in the first part of the report of the scrutiny of Bills committee can be quite competently dealt with by the Office of Parliamentary Counsel. They are not beyond the wit of the Government. I hope that the Government will look positively at the suggestions or the issues raised and that it will respond in a constructive way so that we can deal with each of the five points made by the scrutiny of Bills committee.

As for the second part of the report of the scrutiny of Bills committee, to the extent that it says that there may be some international treaty or convention obligations that we need to address, there is nothing in the report that frightens me at all in relation to that. I am quite relaxed on my interpretations and I have looked at the matter closely. I have looked at our international conventions. I have no dread fear in my heart that by engaging in a scientific, controlled, medically supervised drug injecting trial we will in some way be breaching our international conventions. I simply do not believe it.

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