Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Prime Minister. What is the government’s response to the ANCD report on illicit drug use? How is the government helping families affected by illicit drugs?

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Cowper for his question. Many members will be aware of a report released today by the Australian National Council on Drugs, an advisory body chaired by a former minister in our government and a former ambassador to Ireland, Dr John Herron. This body is the peak advisory body to me and to the government on the scourge of drug abuse in the Australian community.

Sadly, this report has found that 13 per cent of Australia’s children live in a household where there is substance abuse. That includes 230,000 with a binge drinking problem, 40,000 with cannabis abuse and 14,000 with methamphetamine abuse. It has also found that families with parental substance abuse have many other complex problems, including mental illness and a history of abuse and poverty.

Although the findings of this report make distressing reading, we should be grateful to the council for having carried out the analysis and made it public. It reminds us that, although a lot of progress has been made—over the last 10 years the government has invested more than $1.4 billion in the Tough on Drugs strategy, which aims to target law enforcement, education and rehabilitation—there is still a great deal more to be done. On 22 April, the government announced a further $150 million over four years to strengthen its fight against illicit drugs and tackle amphetamine type stimulants, including what is colloquially known as ‘ice’. This includes more than $100 million for new drug treatment services, with an emphasis on family support, and additional resources to tackle these stimulants; $9.2 million to strengthen drug prevention; and $37.9 million to increase Australia’s law enforcement efforts.

I think what Dr Herron’s report has done is to bring to the attention of the community, and particularly Australian parents, the impact on families and those otherwise closely associated with people who have a severe drug addiction. Many people would have heard the interview with the young mother on Radio National this morning—and perhaps it was on other radio stations, but I heard it on Radio National—in which she described the terrible experience of suffering a seizure, as a result of drug abuse, in her car with her three young children. She was also made deeply conscious of just what a threat her drug abuse represented to the children that she was charged with caring for. That particular personal testimony certainly had an impact on me; I think it would have an impact on many other people throughout Australia, particularly Australian parents.

We have come a long way—we have fewer deaths from heroin overdoses and we now have a more intelligent attitude to marijuana abuse. We no longer, as some Australians did only a few years ago, romance in this stupid idea that you can take marijuana, you can use cannabis, without it having any harmful effects. We now realise the enormous contribution that marijuana abuse has made to the level of mental illness in this country and the number of suicides it has been responsible for. I think our campaign has been very, very successful, but this report is a grim reminder that there is a great deal more work to be done, and this government remains totally committed to the task.