Julia Irwin (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This week is Drug Action Week, so I will take this opportunity to reflect on the impact of drug laws and, in particular, on the regulation of drug addiction treatments in Australia. New South Wales is the only state in Australia with a safe injecting room. The Sydney Medically Supervised Injecting Centre is the first injecting centre in Australia and has been running since May 2001. The centre helps to reduce health problems and mortality associated with drug use, the transmission of blood borne diseases, such as HIV and hepatitis, and gives people who inject drugs better access to drug treatment and health and social welfare services. It also reduces the so-called public nuisance associated with injecting drugs in public places. An 18-month trial has seen a reduction in overdoses, a decrease in the appearance of drug use in surrounding areas and the centre act as a gateway to drug treatment for a number of clients.

As I have seen in countries like Germany and Switzerland, there are many benefits of safe injecting facilities; but, in Australia, federal, state and local governments simply want to turn a blind eye to drug treatment. Nowhere is this more apparent than in my own electorate of Fowler. Centred on Cabramatta, Fowler has a long history of drug dealing and drug use. Programs based on a policing strategy have had mixed success. Certainly reducing the supply of illicit drugs has had some effect. But, as any first-year economics student will tell you, if you reduce the demand for illicit drugs as well as the supply, you will reduce the overall market.

It is not just in the Fowler electorate but all over Australia that elected representatives simply put their head in the sand when it comes to addressing issues related to the treatment of people suffering from addiction to illicit drugs. Across Australia, more than 30,000 people are at present on some form of methadone treatment—that is around 200 people in every federal electorate. Those people come from all walks of life, from all city suburbs, as well as from regional centres and country towns. So it concerns me when officials place unreasonable restrictions on the location of treatment services. ‘Not in my backyard’ is the guiding principle for the location of treatment centres.

The effect of these policies is that, increasingly, drug treatment facilities are located at sites outside the planning powers of local government, and these facilities tend to be much larger than would otherwise be advisable. These developments result in large congregations of clients visiting the centres to obtain daily supplies of methadone. We have seen the impact of this in Barbara Street, Fairfield, and, more recently, in Liverpool, where there are frequent reports of criminal and other unacceptable behaviour. The closure of smaller facilities in surrounding suburbs has led to more and more patients visiting the larger facilities. It has been found overseas that one of the biggest difficulties in treating addiction to illicit drugs is the concentration of clients around large single facilities. By forcing clients to live close to treatment facilities, it often removes them from employment opportunities and family support. One failed strategy by local governments has been to place treatment facilities in industrial areas, presumably out of sight and out of mind, but these centres are difficult to access and, because of poor transport links, they can only make the problems of large groups gathering together even worse.

Only when communities recognise that people suffering from drug addiction are not aliens—they are definitely not aliens; they are human beings—and that they come from our own suburb, from our own street, and that they too are part of our community will we begin to appreciate the effective role that treatments can play and the way that those treatments can improve life for the whole of our community. By forcing treatment facilities to other locations, we are simply maintaining the problem by passing it over to someone else. Only when we accept responsibility for the drug problems in our own communities and in our own backyards can we expect to make progress. (Time expired)