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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 5 Hansard (9 May) . . Page.. 1278 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

In that report the minister was referred to specifically. It was said that he assisted in his role as an MLA with a special interest in the illegal drug use and that Mr Moore arranged for the project to be covered by the ACT Epidemiological Studies (Confidentiality) Act. There's a mouthful for you, but Mr Moore was alleged to be personally involved in this study.

Minister, were the Epidemiological Studies (Confidentiality) Act 1992 and the regulations subsequent to this act which you signed off personally intended to cover the so-called Oswaldian study or other similar studies? Was this study considered to be a legitimate research project recognised by your government. If so, what were the overriding imperatives of this study that allowed for its details to be kept secret for 10 years from both the wider community and the members of this place?

MR MOORE: Thank you, Mr Kaine, for your first question ever of me.

Mr Kaine: I thought you would enjoy it.

MR MOORE: Thank you. And an interesting one it is, too. Let me say that there is no secrecy here. The PhD study was published and peer reviewed and there were all the normal things that go to a particular study. My role was simply with regard to the Epidemiological Studies (Confidentiality) Act 1992 when it was put before the Assembly. I just asked Mr Humphries to go and grab me a copy because my recollection is that this study was specifically named in the act itself. Mr Speaker, I think I am right. I will check that for Mr Kaine anyway and speak to him. Certainly, we were aware of that study at the time.

The real motivation behind that act, you may remember, was to do with the heroin trial being proposed, saying that if there was going to be a proper epidemiological study in terms of the act, what we would have to do would be to make sure that the information could not be used by police for prosecution purposes because as soon as that happened it would become impossible to do a study as people would refuse to give that information. That was supported, as I recall, by Mr Kaine. In fact, as I recall, it was unanimously supported by the Assembly, as indeed it would have been. As I recall, it actually named the Canberra study. The Canberra users study was its short name and I think it was actually named at the end of that act. The long name of it is "Scene Changes, Experienced Changes-a Longitudinal and Comparative Study of Canberrans who use Illegal Drugs".

Mr Kaine, one of the interesting notions that were around in 1992 was that it was possible that people could use heroin in the same way as they used alcohol. Many people use alcohol; some people become addicted. The Oswaldians and others like them argued that you could actually use heroin over a long period and not become addicted. Dr Dance's study for her PhD was to assess whether that was the case. Whilst you do not find it surprising because the media always say that it is the case that if you use heroin you become addicted immediately, it has turned out from her report that where people intend to use over a long time they are likely to become addicted, whereas we do know that there is a large number of people who use for a very short while and do not become addicted to heroin-in the order of 90 per cent of the people who try heroin do not become dependent. But the importance of the study that Dr Dance did was that it completely floored that notion. I am very pleased to say that it is quite clear-

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