David Fawcett (Wakefield, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank members opposite for their consideration in changing the order of speakers today. I would like to speak to this report because it is such an important issue in the community of Wakefield and in fact across Australia. I would like to make a few opening remarks dealing with the sentiments that have been raised by various witnesses throughout the progress of the inquiry but also the responses from some people looking at the recommendations from the inquiry.

First and foremost, I would like to say that the tone that came through consistently, from most witnesses and certainly the people that we talked to who have been affected by drugs, is that this is about being tough on drugs and not tough on users. It is about being tough on the dealers, the people who are pushing drugs, tough on the smugglers and tough on the people who, for whatever reason, would actually promote the use of drugs in some manner. But it is about dealing with great compassion for the people who are trapped in drug use and for those who are affected by drug use and all of the associated issues in our society.

This inquiry very clearly highlighted the fact that the effects of drug use touch so many people—first and foremost the users themselves. There was ample evidence about the destruction to their lives—not only their lifestyle but the quality of their lives, their potential for the future, their health, their mental health and their relationships, most importantly. Secondly, there are their families. This is not just their immediate family members, such as a spouse; particularly we heard from parents who are bearing the brunt of still loving their child, trapped in the addiction of drugs, and trying to balance providing support and love for their child whilst managing the, in some cases, almost unmanageable violence. There is the use and abuse of families that so often seems to accompany people who are trapped in an addiction that they cannot control. There is the effect on siblings where one child is using drugs—the effect on the remainder of the family as they seek to live a somewhat normal life while the parents are trying to fight that battle and hold that balance. Very disturbingly, as my colleague has just mentioned, there is the effect on children of drug users and the debilitating start they have to life when all of those factors start coming to bear in an environment that, while it should be supportive, nurturing and setting them up for the rest of their lives, is actually destroying the very foundation that normal, balanced children should have at the start of their lives.

At a broader level, there are many victims of crime. There is much crime that is associated with drugs, and the Australian Institute of Criminology just this year has shed some further light on that. It has highlighted that people in police detention for various offences are four times more likely to be illicit drug users than the general population. That is a huge number of people, and includes users of drugs such as cannabis. Well over half of the adults in custody have tested positive to cannabis, whereas a quarter have tested positive to methamphetamines and about 10 per cent, or just under, to heroin. There is a high degree of connection between people who are using drugs and the crimes that they commit. If you look through the range of crimes, you can see that there are crimes of violence and property theft which come from the addiction and the desire to obtain more. In some cases, particularly with ice, there is the violence that comes purely as a result of the drug. So there is a large effect on society which is directly impacted by drugs.

Lastly, there is the impact on the taxpayer, who is increasingly footing the bill that is coming from the mental health impacts on those who have been using drugs. This is even for drugs that, going back a couple of decades, many in our community were pushing and advocating as quite safe. There are even some today who are still saying that those drugs are safe, yet the evidence is clearly against that. The high proportion of people in our jails who have that link to drugs means there is an additional drain on the taxpayer for supporting the policing, the justice and the jail system. Lastly the need for rehabilitation and work on the health of these addicts means that there is a large amount of funding and resources required just to treat the results of drug use.

Before I get on to the recommendations of the report, I would like to thank the witnesses who were prepared to come forward, particularly those who were drug users themselves and families who have been affected by drug use. It is no easy thing to come before a formal committee, people who are strangers to you, and to bear your soul about the things that have affected you and your family. I commend them and thank them for being prepared to do that.

I would like to turn briefly to some of the recommendations from the report. Recommendation 1 states:

The Commonwealth Government continue its allocation of significant resources to policing activity as a highly effective prevention method.

I strongly support this recommendation. I particularly support the fact that we have increasingly seen high levels of cooperation between the Australian Crime Commission, the Australian Federal Police, state police, state crime commissions, the Taxation Office, Australian Customs and AUSTRAC. I think it is important that we continue to see this high degree of combined activity across levels of government so that we can tackle the scourge which is the illicit drug trade in Australia.

It is important to see that out of that come the initiatives like the proceeds of crime funds which go back into the community to try and help overcome some of the problems. I welcome some of the money that has come back into South Australia, for example, into the Baptist Community Services, where the Westcare Drug Intervention Program has been able to train Indigenous workers to help them target people with a history of abuse and the effects that flow from that—the family breakdown, the homelessness and the mental health issues.

Recommendation 4 talks about funding going to organisations which support a drug-fee outcome versus a drug use or management outcome. There has been a fair bit of controversy around this and I think sometimes people have been in vehement agreement but have been working with different definitions of terms. The one comment I would like to make is that this recommendation is identifying in clear terms that there are some individuals and some organisations who genuinely believe that drug use can be managed. They see that management as being a long-term outcome. Some of the recommendations and some of the evidence that came through from witnesses highlighted the incredibly damaging effect on their preparedness to say no to drugs when they had a body, purportedly a professional body there to help them, telling them that they could make the choice if they wanted to use drugs occasionally or on a regular basis and that it could be managed. They provided that message and that message took away and undermined many of the other messages which are being sent out to people in our community, particularly our young people, that say drugs are damaging and they are addictive.

I think it is important that we do work with organisations that are prepared to use a range of methods. They may include some methods that provide substitutes or support for people to keep them healthy and alive, but the end aim of those organisations must be to see people come off the drugs and be drug free. I think that is the important message to come out of that.

Recommendation 5 deals with the difficult issue of care for children and the balance that has to be achieved between what is in the best interests of the children and, where possible, maintaining the connection between the biological parent and the child. There is a huge network of people in our community who selflessly give of their time to provide foster care for children. I would like to take this occasion to bring to the attention of the House Susan Buckskin and William Sansbury, people in Wakefield who have been fostering for over 21 years and have just recently been given a Foster Carer National Recognition Award.

The feedback I get from people in Wakefield and from broader South Australia, where I have been working with foster carers for a while, is that the long-term impacts of frequent moves and relocations—going back to the parents, then back to foster care and then back to the parents—is damaging for children. I have spoken to a number of foster carers who are strong advocates of reconnecting children with parents wherever possible, where it is safe and in the child’s best interests to do so. But they also tell me about the need for an acceptance of the fact that longer term foster care arrangements or indeed adoption must be considered in the mix. We must not exclude longer term care for these children, because for some of them that will be the only option that gives them a start in life that is fair and reasonable.

Recommendation 16 deals with education. I think it is disturbing when we look at reports such as the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime report, which looks at some overseas evidence, and the Drug Advisory Council of Australia report, which looks at the fact that the use of drugs by teenagers in Australia is some four times higher than in countries like Sweden and that some 29 per cent of Australian teenagers between 14 and 19 in 2004 had tried drugs. We got evidence from young people who were witnesses saying that they experimented. There is that natural teen desire to go outside the bounds and do something that is perhaps frowned upon, and part of it is because they do not have compelling evidence that says: ‘This will damage you.’

As we look at some of the campaigns which have been run overseas that highlight issues that are important to young people—things like their appearance, their health and their ability to participate in activities that they want to participate in—that kind of very hard-hitting education campaign is something that we, as a matter of priority, need to invest in so that our young people are equipped with the knowledge that they need to make choices about their own health and their own future.

Recommendation 17 talks about a consistent message. This just builds on recommendations that came out of the ministerial council on drugs back in December 2006, where one of the resolutions adopted was to discourage the use of terms such as ‘recreational’ and ‘party drugs’. Yet I notice that as recently as last week the media in particular were still referring to people taking recreational and party drugs. I believe that this recommendation and the one following it are sound in that where we can exercise authority we should do, to constrain government funded bodies from using those terms and to seek earnestly the support of the broader media organisations to refrain from those uses because it sends a mixed message to our young people.

If we are serious about telling young people that, based on the evidence, based on the life experience of so many people here in Australia, drugs damage them then why do we accept that people in our community, particularly in the media, are sending messages that these are party drugs or recreational drugs? They are messages that say: ‘These things are okay to use because we say recreation is good for you. We say that it’s okay to let your hair down occasionally, have a party.’ Those terms are completely at odds with the facts and the outcomes that these young people will experience. I cannot emphasise strongly enough the need for the media to come on board in the interests of our young people and our community and in the interests of the children to come who will be affected by young adults who become drug addicts and then become parents—they have a role to play in this and they cannot just step back and continue in their current practice when the results of that are so clear.

I commend this report to the House. I commend it to the government and to the broader Australian community. I ask them to look at the fact that this is about being tough on drugs but it is also about having compassion—real compassion—that says we are prepared to take some action and put some resources individually, as a government and as corporations, including the media in Australia, to get a better future for young people and those who have been affected by drugs in Australia.

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