Page 4691 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 19 October 2011
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He cited safety concerns and he also, disturbingly, raised the issue that having spent time in New South Wales jails as well as in Canberra’s jail, he felt safer in New South Wales jails.
What are the solutions? Firstly, let us recognise that the hep C transmission rates are very low—in fact, zero at the AMC. This is not a problem that is out of control. Secondly, we need to address the shortcomings identified in the Burnet Institute report, to ensure that drug and other programs are run properly. Thirdly, we need to enhance current programs with proven strategies from other jurisdictions. Fourthly, we need to increase the number of treatment places for hep C and, lastly, we need to review the Corrections Management Act and the way it is implemented, to ensure that the focus is on safety, security, treatment and rehabilitation and effective measures to limit illegal drugs entering the jail in the first place.
No other state or territory in Australia has a needle exchange, and for good reason. The welfare, the health, the safety and the human rights of prisoners, staff and the broader community are best served by providing an environment with fewer drugs and better access to effective rehabilitation programs at the ACT prison and not a needle exchange.
When people go to jail, often it is for drug-related crime. Seventy per cent of people at the AMC are there for drug-related crimes. The aim must be to rehabilitate those prisoners, to get them off the drugs that got them there in the first place, and simply maintaining their habit by providing prisoners with a quasi-legalisation of drugs will not achieve that aim.
I call on Katy Gallagher to stop the push for a needle and syringe program at the jail and to today rule out any further posturing by the ACT Labor Party to implement such a program at the AMC.
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Chief Minister, Minister for Health and Minister for Industrial Relations) (4.22): The government will not be supporting this motion. I note the different approach that the opposition take the minute there is something that they find difficult or do not accept: they seek to demand that the government stop doing anything about it, which is completely different from the approach they would take if it was something they were interested in.
The reality is that when you are in government—which is something that you have no idea about, Mr Hanson, and will never have any idea about—you find that difficult issues come across the desks of ministers, and they require a considered and mature response. It is not a matter of standing up and saying, “Some people do not think this is a good idea and it may have consequences on work practice; therefore, we do not do it.”
What Mr Hanson does not go to is that needle and syringe exchange programs are standard and accepted practice in the community. They exist across our community. The reason they exist is that we accept as part of any drug strategy—and even the most conservative policies in relation to comprehensive drug strategies have them—three components, none of which Mr Hanson mentioned today. Harm minimisation is
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