Why I didn't change my mind

The Drug Summit was Bob Carr’s political tactic to remove the drug debate from the election campaign after The Sun Herald published a front page photograph of a 15-year-old boy injecting an illicit drug in a back lane in inner Sydney. The tactic worked, the media let the Premier off and drugs fell off the election agenda.

Yet despite hundreds of speeches, thousands of facts and innumerable assertions at last month’s Drug Summit, only one third of drug users seeking rehabilitation in NSW are able to find a place in a program.

We knew that before the election and it can be fixed within months through the allocation of at least $50 million in the upcoming State budget into the health budget and for related non-government providers.

So we will have to wait until later this month to see if the Carr Government is willing to match its rhetoric and reform agenda with money.

So what real benefits came from the Drug Summit?

For me, it was confirmation of a personal view that the imperatives in the drug debate are education; prevention then minimisation; a massive increase in funds for treatment; and a trial of a medically supervised injecting room.

Although I went into the summit with a genuinely open mind, I was not swayed from my position in support of present laws and penalties for possession and use of illicit drugs and my opposition to a heroin trial. In contrast the pre-determined Government agenda, whilst agreeing to the need for more resources, refused to discuss the detail of funding commitments but instead promoted legal liberalisation.

I was one of only six Liberal MPs to support the motion late on Thursday night to trial a medically supervised injecting room. But my final decision to exercise my free vote in support of this proposal came the week before the summit.

At my own instigation, and outside the glare of the summit media and focus, I visited the Kirkton Road Clinic (KRC) and met its Director, Dr Ingrid van Beek. The KRC operates two clinics in Kings Cross, one above the Kings Cross Fire Station and the other in the heart of the strip clubs and night life of the Cross - known as K2. At K2, through a clean needle program, needle packs are distributed every day. I find the picture of human tragedy surrounding the sheer number of needles numbing. Clean needle programs have proved their worth in successfully reducing deaths from drug overdose.

Later that night at the infamous "Wall" I met the KRC outreach van that works every night distributing needles to addicts on the streets. The health workers introduced me to a prostitute who had come to the van for a needle pack.

She willingly and openly talked to me of her life as a street prostitute and drug addict in Sydney. She articulated a life dependent on heroin, prostitution and food vans.

Just one week earlier she had accidentally overdosed and been revived in a lane in Kings Cross.

She spoke frankly about a world it is easier to ignore than confront. And although I had been there before with the Salvation Army coffee van, I asked her if she supported the concept of injecting rooms and whether she and other addicts she knew would use one. She argued that injecting rooms would be used by addicts and were necessary to limit deaths on the streets.

After more than twenty minutes talking, I asked her one more question. I asked her how old she was. She told me she had just turned 30. I told her I had too.

As I drove away and left her to continue working to gain more money to use the clean needle kit she had shown me I was overwhelmed by the conflict of our equal ages and unequal lives.

If I can enjoy the freedoms of life as a non-addict, I can at least afford an addict the opportunity of life itself.

And if medical experts in the field and users on the ground believe supervised injecting rooms will stop overdose deaths, as a Member of Parliament I am convinced of the need for a trial. If we supply needles on health grounds, then we must trial an injecting room on the same grounds.

Although the detail of any such trial is to be formulated in coming weeks by the bureaucracy, I advocate one twelve-month trial, in Kings Cross only, to be funded by the Department of Health and operated by the Kirkton Road Clinic. The trial must report to Parliament and be rigorously and independently assessed against a number of criteria including the reduction of overdose deaths in the local area and the number of users who opt for rehabilitation services available and their progress

The Premier has promised to review the Drug Summit resolutions over coming weeks. On Thursday night as the summit debated and voted on the controversial resolutions advocating injecting room trials, law reform and a heroin trial, the Premier left early. It was an unforgivable action that has received little if any public attention.

Be warned, Bob Carr. The summit may have moved the debate forward, but there is no room to go home early on the outcomes.