Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Late last month I held a community drug action forum in my electorate of Swan. I teamed up with the City of South Perth and a not-for-profit organisation called Sideffect to host a forum for students, parents and teachers about the consequences of illicit drugs.

Sideffect was started by Rodney Bridge after the death of his son, Preston, who died at the age of 16 after taking a synthetic form of LSD in February 2013 during his school ball afterparty. Following his family tragedy, Rod found out that the LSD substance was made up of 25I-NBOMe as well as a shopping list of other synthetic drugs. Rodney Bridge believes Preston lost his life that night based on one choice and, had he known what he was taking, he would have made an entirely different decision. Educated choices cannot be made without education.

Sideffect was born out of the understanding that people need to know more about these drugs in order to make informed choices. The consequences of taking drugs, especially synthetic drugs, need to be heard and reiterated so we can stop this epidemic in its tracks. So Rodney Bridge has spent the last five years building up Sideffect to ensure our children are educated so that no family must go through what his family went through.

The Sideffect forum was part of the Swan Anti-Methamphetamine Initiative, and it was great to have so many of my constituents brave the wild and woolly weather with the rain. The students, parents, teachers and neighbours who attended were all impacted on by Rodney's story and the work he's now doing with Sideffect, and I'm certain all present found the presentation to be an eye-opener. The forum was also a fantastic opportunity to announce that such a deserving organisation like Sideffect has been granted $150,000 from the coalition government to scope a new drug awareness program and expand the very important work that he's doing. The funding the organisation got was part of the $712 million the coalition government has invested into strategies to minimise drug and alcohol abuse since 2016-17.

I'd like to thank the Sideffect team of Rod, Dave and Alec for their fantastic presentation and the City of South Perth, particularly the CEO, Geoff Glass, for his support for this community initiative. I've received an enormous amount of feedback from those who attended. One constituent called my office last week to let me know that she's called four different high schools in my electorate of Swan to encourage them to host their own Sideffect forum. She was very pleased to advise that three of the four had already booked Sideffect for their education program.

This is a prime example of how communities can band together and tackle the issue of drugs. There's more work to be done, but I'm confident that with Sideffect and the community on board we're taking a big step in the right direction. I'd particularly like to thank the Minister for Health, Greg Hunt, for taking a deep interest in this initiative. It will help to serve and protect the children of our community.