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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 9 Hansard (21 August) . . Page.. 3006 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

The objective of the Supervised Injecting Place Trial Bill in 1999 was to allow for a scientific study over a fixed two-year period of the effects of providing such a facility. Six-monthly evaluations were to be produced on the incidence of drug-related deaths, on the success or otherwise of referrals for treatment, detoxification, counselling, rehabilitation and help with problems, and on the attitudes and perceptions of the wider Canberra community to the facility in operation. We are now asking the wider Canberra community to form these attitudes and perceptions in advance of the trial. We are saying, "If you are prejudiced against this trial before you know the results, then we won't do it."

For the 1999 debate on the Supervised Injecting Place Trial Bill, a wide range of views from community and health experts was canvassed. For example, the Criminal Law Committee of the ACT Law Society considered that the likely outcome of the trial could be, and I quote the Law Society, a reduction in the number of intravenous drug overdose deaths; a reduction in the number and cost of ambulance calls to intravenous drug overdoses; a decrease in the transmission of blood-borne viruses; an increase in the contact between intravenous drug users and counselling, treatment and rehabilitation services; a reduction in the dangers arising from discarded used syringes in public places; and a reduction in the nuisance of intravenous drug users injecting and overdosing in public.

These are opinions. These were the views of the Law Society. These were the views that the Law Society said that an injecting room trial could test, and they still remain to be tested by the trial. But, if these were to be the results of the trial, how tragic it would be to decide never to conduct it on the basis of a simplistic referendum question and a 2,000-word argument which can never hope to convey all the considerations and complexities? How tragic that would be.

To put that in context, a trial is currently under way in New South Wales. It is a trial that will be scientifically tested. It is a trial which will test each of these positions that has been put by proponents, by those that are prepared to say, "Let's look at the evidence. Let's do a trial. Let's gather the evidence. Let's be guided by what the evidence reveals to us." New South Wales is doing that. They are conducting a trial and the results will be available before the end of next year. Here we are in the ACT pushing ahead with a referendum which could preclude us forever from taking advantage of the information, the advice, and the scientific evidence which a trial, which is currently under way in New South Wales, will provide to us.

Why would you have a referendum now in the ACT in advance of the provision of the results of a scientific trial on this very matter that is being undertaken 200 kilometres away? Why, for goodness sake, would you do something as absurd as that? Why would you possibly wish to deny yourself access to the information that will be provided through the reports of a scientifically conducted trial in Sydney?

Similarly, how can a person judge, for example, the effect on such things as drug-related crime in the ACT or on the drug trade of a program of controlled provision of heroin, under medical supervision, to registered addicts and those dependent on heroin? We cannot judge until we have a trial.

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