Page 4361 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 22 September 2010
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seeing the normal redneck scaremongering that could actually whip up a frenzy in the community. They are saying that we have got a massive drug culture here and the only way to fix it is to belt the daylights out of people. Sorry, that does not work. That is just a hard on crime re-election program. It does not actually have any reality about it. It does not actually address the underlying issue, which is that people are dying from the transfer of blood-borne infections.
You have got to understand that there are two issues here. One is drug use and drug addiction, and that is pretty serious and everybody is concerned about that. The other issue is the transfer of blood-borne disease. Now, I do not know about the rest of you, but I would rather keep these people alive while I address their addiction to drugs. I would rather have a regime in there which keeps people alive so that we can say to them, “Here is an alternative to that. Let us help you get off your drug addiction and then go forward.”
If we want to restore people back into our community, then we want to get them clear of their drug addiction and give them all sorts of life skills and things like that and put them back into the community, but you have got to keep them alive to do that. Denying people clean syringes in a controlled environment will guarantee that some of them are going to die from a blood-borne disease, whether it is before or after they are in the jail.
From where I am sitting, what we are seeing here is a politicisation of other people’s misery, and I do not find that at all acceptable. We are seeing people in that prison who have no way of helping themselves. They are looking to us for assistance, and what do we do? Do we turn our back on them? I applaud the work of Brian and Marian O’Connell. In their work, they have been badgering people for a generation, and I consider them to be some of our society’s most persistent heroes in this particular area. I think they are brilliant. And I also need to mention Bill Bush’s work too, because he is absolutely sensational.
In the past, when we did not have a prison—it was in Goulburn—this was not possible. We had no control over this. It is now possible. We do now have control over this. We would be remiss in our responsibilities to the lives of people in Canberra not to proceed with this. It is not a case of a luxury item. It is not a case of, “Will we do it because we feel like it is a good idea?” We do not have any choice; we have to do it.
The problem, of course, is that, as with any kind of regime like this, the community is not necessarily ready for it, so we have to take the community with us. That is where I think the beauty of Ms Bresnan’s discussion paper lies. That is where I was at when I ceased to be the minister, but I was also of the view that it was not the correction minister’s responsibility. My view was that it was the health minister’s responsibility, in conjunction with the corrections minister. It was the sort of thing that the community advisory panel or CAP—call it what you will—to the prison would have an input into and then that would take us forward.
But we need to negate the redneck scaremongering that goes on because of political expediency. I know; I have been there and I have done it, and I am not proud of it. I
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