Why I didn't change my mind

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.