Friday, 19 August 2022

Production of documents

Melbourne medically supervised injecting facility

Ms CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (09:40): I rise to move motion 822:

That this house:

(1) notes that:

(a) the Andrews government will not commit to releasing a long-awaited report into Melbourne’s second drug-injecting facility before the November election;

(b) Mr Ken Lay had been tasked with reviewing potential locations for another supervised injecting room in Melbourne’s CBD;

(c) the Premier, the Honourable Daniel Andrews MP, and the Minister for Health, the Honourable Mary-Anne Thomas MP, stated earlier this month that they did not know when Mr Lay’s report would be finalised despite it being expected to be finished in 2020;

(d) the state government bought the former Yooralla facility site at 244 Flinders Street early last year;

(e) residents of Melbourne deserve to be informed about the issues identified by Mr Lay in relation to the government’s plans for a second injecting room prior to the November state election; and

(2) in accordance with standing order 11.01, requires the Leader of the Government to table in the Council, within three weeks of the house agreeing to this resolution, the current draft of Mr Lay’s report and any prior drafts of the report that were provided to the government.

This is an important motion that highlights the failure of the government to release the Lay report. It goes to the point that this government is a secretive government. It is not releasing this very important report that Ken Lay is undertaking, looking at the potential locations for additional injecting rooms in the CBD.

Ms Symes interjected.

Ms CROZIER: The Attorney-General interjects. The point is that the Lay report was due to be finished 18 months ago. It was extended by another year until the end of last year, 2021, and now the Premier is saying that it will not be released until after the election. Surely these residents and businesses in the CBD have a right to understand what is in that report and potentially where the second injecting room is going to go. Furthermore, what is really uncertain about the second injecting room is that there are reports that a consortium of drug researchers has:

… piled pressure on the state government to build several more safe injecting rooms across Victoria.

That includes several more in the CBD. What we need to understand is: where are these injecting rooms going to go? How many will be in the central business district of Melbourne? How many will be in the suburbs? We know that the North Richmond facility has caused utmost distress to those residents. It is placed next to a primary school. The residents have been continually dealing with drug overdoses and antisocial behaviour. Children have had to see overdoses and terrible situations. That is what they have witnessed. We have had drug dealing inside the injecting room by workers. I mean, this is an utter failure, and the government keeps coming out and saying, ‘No, we need to be looking at the Ken Lay report’. Well, they have bought Yooralla at a cost of over $40 million. It is sitting idle in Flinders Street. Nobody can tell us what is going on with that. The Lay report needs to be released, and it needs to be released so that Victorians can understand exactly what the plans of this government are.

The motion that I am moving today is just that. It requires the Leader of the Government to table in the Council within three weeks of the house agreeing to this resolution the current draft of Mr Lay’s report and any prior drafts of the report that were provided to the government. The government may argue that it is not finished. Well, we know that there would have been certain drafts submitted. There is a whole range of things that the government are keeping secret from the Victorian public. This is another one. It is shameful, the lack of transparency around this issue. It is shameful that the government will not tell those residents and those businesses who are going to be impacted by their decisions what they intend to do. It is shameful that the government refuses again and again and again to provide the truth to Victorians.

So I ask that all members of this house, in the interests of those residents and those businesses in the CBD and for all Victorians, support this motion so that we can see exactly what is in that report. I know that Cr Roshena Campbell has also been wanting to understand for her constituents what is going on, yet we do not have transparency at any level of government in Victoria on this—and we need to. We need to see what is in that report. Businesses, residents and every single Victorian deserve the truth, and they deserve to see what the government’s plans are. To push it past the election, just like what Mr Davis talked about with the annual reports that we will never see because the Parliament will not be sitting—again, it is a lack of transparency, a lack of truth and more secrecy from the Andrews Labor government. I urge all members to support this very, very simple motion that calls for the release of documents relating to Mr Lay’s report.

Ms SHING (Eastern Victoria—Minister for Water, Minister for Regional Development, Minister for Equality) (09:44): It is always a challenge to rise on a documents motion and to confine myself to the nature of the arguments around provision of documents, particularly when I am speaking immediately after Ms Crozier’s contribution, which has only referred in passing to the nature of the motion itself seeking a range of documents which are, as I will go to shortly, the subject of a range of considerations around release that include commercial-in-confidence, cabinet-in-confidence and otherwise privileged documents.

I do, however, want to, in noting the preamble and the subject matter specific contributions of Ms Crozier in support of her motion, take this opportunity to correct a number of what I would see as mischievous, at best, comments around the issue of drug use and overdose, around medically supervised injecting room processes, around the way in which the facility in North Richmond has operated and around the way in which the independent panel has considered the way a location in the city of Melbourne may address the further issues at play around overdose and around fatalities, and again to correct a number of the really grubby assertions being made in support of a lowest common denominator political narrative from those opposite.

The facility in North Richmond, for avoidance of any doubt on this issue, is saving lives. You know that, opposite; the community knows that. It is not an easy subject to contemplate, and in fact the issue of addiction and overdose is something which is variously on the front pages of newspapers when people want to decry and demonise people who are addicts. Well, newsflash to those opposite: addicts are in every part of our communities. Addicts are at the whim of a range of circumstances relating to provision of support services, relating to residential rehabilitation facilities and in relation to community-based assistance that is tailored to meet the needs of people at their most vulnerable.

Now, when we see this blatant scare campaign being run by Ms Crozier in various tabloids and again in this house, we can see fearmongering at its best. This is a skill which those opposite have refined and honed over the years to the point where it is about the best thing they are capable of doing, because they are sure as hell not able to come up with any nuanced or indeed properly developed or considered policy solution or framework to address harm minimisation in our community. Noting in fact the work that has been done by one of their former leaders—and I say ‘one’ because there have been a few—the former opposition leader, Mr O’Brien in the other place, appeared in fact capable of understanding the issues.

Mr Gepp: Could be making a comeback.

Ms SHING: I hope that Mr O’Brien is back, as I am sure many people do, in the leader’s position, because after the election loss sustained by those opposite Mr O’Brien said:

We’ve got work to do. We were sent a message at the ballot box. We’ve heard that message and we are going to work to make sure that we are better.

And:

We need to be back in the centre field of politics. That’s where we need to be. That’s where Victorians are and that’s where the Liberal Party is going to be.

So there was a period, an albeit very brief period, a very, very brief period, of self-reflection from those opposite where perhaps they appeared to understand the impact of their scaremongering, deceitful tactics around a number of issues. We are not just talking about African gangs. We are not just talking about a range of—I don’t know—groups that can be demonised and picked out easily. We are actually talking about people who live with and suffer from and often buckle under the burden of addiction.

When we think about the work that has been done in the North Richmond facility, when we think about the statistics, that facility has managed more than 5000 overdoses. That is 5000 cases of users being at risk of death—at risk of death—taking pressure off emergency departments and also reducing paramedic and ambulance call-outs. And on the one hand, depending on what day it is in this place, you will hear people like Ms Crozier decrying the state of the health system and urging any pressures to be taken off it where possible, yet on the other hand they are very, very happy to say that instances like this, where 5000 overdoses have been prevented or managed, in fact should not matter, that the health and hospital system should in fact be held to ransom by the absence of facilities just like this one.

When we had a review in 2020 in relation to the medically supervised injecting facility it was demonstrated that the number of heroin-related deaths within 1 kilometre of the medically supervised injecting room declined after it opened. We also know from Coroners Court materials that there was a decline in heroin-related overdose deaths in the Yarra city LGA from 26 deaths in 2018 to nine deaths in 2020. To those opposite and to anyone who wants to create a cheap political narrative about this issue, I would suggest going and speaking with the families of those 17 people who died.

Ms Crozier interjected.

Ms SHING: I would suggest going and looking them in the eye when you make a cheap political commentary about the fact that medically supervised injecting rooms are somewhat of an impost, a blemish on your desire for a pristine existence that ignores the reality of addiction and in fact seeks to—

Ms Crozier interjected.

Ms SHING: Again, I am going to pick you up on that interjection, Ms Crozier. You are talking about the adjacent school premises. The school itself has been publicly supportive of what this facility has done, because it means that kids at the school are not exposed to the kind of risks, the kind of frequency of overdose, the exposure—

Ms Crozier interjected.

The PRESIDENT: Order! Ms Crozier, your continued interjection is not welcome at all. You know you have a right of reply at the end. Ms Shing, without any interruption.

Ms SHING: to the most traumatic and the least acceptable or palatable elements of addiction. We know that facilities like the North Richmond facility work. They literally save lives. We also know that it is important to do the work to understand what any trial of a facility might look like. Ms Crozier got to her feet today and talked about all sorts of concerns, and I would imagine laid the foundations for a further chapter in the conspiracy theory she has been running in the public media around additional sites. Let us be absolutely clear—

Ms Crozier interjected.

Ms SHING: Ms Crozier is trying to quote herself back at the record again. That is always an interesting indication of support, isn’t it? There will be no additional supervised injecting rooms beyond the discussion around a trial to include a second supervised facility in the City of Melbourne so that more Victorians have access to life-saving services. Ms Crozier can talk about herself in the third person all she wants in this chamber. It does not change the reality that the trial is about a second facility for a period of three years and there is no contemplation of any further sites.

The bottom line is when we pick away at this documents motion it is just another cheap attempt by those opposite to use parliamentary processes to argue in favour of a narrative that victimises people at their greatest time of need. When I think about that work and I think about how those opposite might well be in a position to craft a narrative that says, ‘We care about people who need access to residential rehabilitation’, for example, and when I look at those numbers, I note that when the coalition were last in government, in total over four years they funded an additional two—

Ms Symes: How many?

Ms SHING: Two residential rehabilitation beds across the entire state. That is half a bed per year. Since we were elected the numbers have doubled, from around 209 to well over 400. If that does not say anything about the way we are putting our money where our mouth is, then what any sceptic or cynic or anyone looking at the merit of Ms Crozier’s motion should consider is that when it comes to walking the talk on these issues, these extraordinarily sensitive and often tragic issues, two residential beds over four years should tell you everything you need to know about the coalition’s interest in addressing these issues.

Dr CUMMING (Western Metropolitan) (09:55): I rise to speak to this motion on a subject that has been extremely passionately debated in my community for the last 20 years. It is sitting on the front page of my local paper today. I have said numerous times that we want to see what this government is proposing in the way of injecting rooms throughout the state of Victoria. There are conflicting reports. Do you want a safe injecting room in Footscray? Do you want one in St Kilda? Where else do you want one? It is very simple—produce the document now before the election so that the Victorian community can actually vote on a government based on where the safe injecting rooms will be. Previous governments have done that. Bracks, Kennett—

Ms Patten: Kennett promised five.

Dr CUMMING: Kennett promised five. There you go. Thank you, Ms Patten. So why doesn’t Mr Andrews show us what he wants to do? Is he the Premier of Victoria? Are we coming up to an election in 99 days? Show the community so we can all know how to vote. One of my councils, in Maribyrnong, are in a complete panic. You have the two Greens councillors and the socialist that want the safe injecting room in Footscray, and then you have the ALP councillors, left and right, wanting to know what is going on—my former councillors. Why don’t you tell your ALP colleagues in the City of Maribyrnong what is going on now? It is not right. It is not right for my Vietnamese community and African community in Footscray’s CBD. It is not right. Let them know. Let the businesses know.

Members interjecting.

Dr CUMMING: No, that is fine. I am hearing from the government that we have the old Footscray Hospital site, and my community wants to know what you are going to be doing with the old Footscray Hospital site. Will there be a drug rehab facility, a large brand new hospital or a large mental health facility? You are building the new hospital in Footscray, but what is happening to the old hospital site in Footscray? What are your health plans? The community is crying out for drug rehab facilities. They are crying out for mental health beds. They deserve the best. What are your plans for Footscray?

Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (09:58): I am pleased to rise on this motion, and I will speak briefly because I know we have got a lot of general business to do today. Firstly, I want to correct for the record: there was no drug dealing done at the supervised injecting room in North Richmond. That is a completely false statement. There was no drug dealing done in the supervised injecting room, so I want that to go on the record. Certainly there were staff who may have been brought in by the police—not in the centre, though, Ms Crozier, never in the centre. They may have been working in the centre at times. They were never dealing from the centre, as you asserted.

But going to this motion, and I think following on from Dr Cumming talking about Footscray—I do not know why that had anything to do with the motion about Mr Lay’s report, which is to do with the Melbourne CBD—I am somewhat disappointed by the government’s announcements. The government have asserted numerous times that they will only open two injecting rooms. As someone who has taken a great interest in this subject not just here in Victoria and not just here in Melbourne but also overseas, I have seen communities open up their own facilities. I have seen nurses open up facilities in laneways in Vancouver to save the lives of their residents. We know, as Ms Shing very adequately outlined, of the lives saved in North Richmond.

This motion was debated on Tuesday night at the Melbourne City Council—almost exactly the same motion was debated on Tuesday night. The Melbourne City Council voted six to three in support of a supervised injecting room in the city as long as it works in consultation with them. I agree with them, because, do you know what, there are 53 ambulance call-outs every week in the Melbourne CBD for overdoses—nearly eight a day. We worry about the stretch of our ambulance services, yet we have 3000 ambulance calls every year—53 every week—in the Melbourne CBD. That shows us the need for a supervised injecting room. That shows us the need for a centre that provides a pathway to treatment.

We are really stretched when we look at treatment. Opioid replacement therapy—there is becoming less and less and less availability for it. We are seeing people who are moving onto a methadone program having to pay $50 up-front to start the program. That acts as a huge barrier. In other jurisdictions—in almost all other jurisdictions—in Australia opioid replacement therapy is free. There are really good programs, like daily hydromorphone use, coming out today that are available in Canada, are available in Europe, are available in the US but are not available here.

We have seen the CBD rates of overdose change, and I understand that Mr Lay is responding to that, because the CBD, as we all know, looked very different in the fourth quarter of 2021 than it did in the fourth quarter of 2020. We are seeing that in the ambulance call-outs. These centres are incredibly important. The idea that land prices drop and all the scaremongering that we hear around this have just not been borne out. It has just not been brought to bear. North Richmond’s school is full. The prices for properties have not even been hit by the downturn like the rest of the state. The community wants it. We are seeing problems on Victoria Street due to land banking—and that is a real issue, and I do not know what we as a Parliament or the local government can do about that—but frankly, we know these centres work, we know they save lives and we know, more importantly, they help people move onto a pathway to recovery. That is one of the really promising things that we have seen out of North Richmond—the number of people entering onto recovery pathways, dealing with their trauma, dealing with their homelessness, dealing with their mental ill health and coming out the other end. That is what these centres are for—they are here to save lives and they are here to help people.

On behalf of Laura Turner, who lost her sister in the CBD, and on behalf of Loretta Gabriel, who lost her son in the CBD, I stand by an injecting room in the CBD. I think we can do things better. We have learned from North Richmond how we might establish a centre and the facilities we might offer, but frankly I would like to see one over in Port Phillip. There were 1500 overdose call-outs to ambulances in Port Phillip. In Stonnington there were nearly 700 overdose call-outs. This is not just something for the CBD, and I think it is something that we as a Parliament need to consider.

Mr LIMBRICK (South Eastern Metropolitan) (10:04): My heart sinks whenever I hear the Liberal Party start talking about drug law reform issues, because I feel that what is really going on here—and the government might have it right here—is it is just another scare campaign. It is undeniable that the supervised injecting room has saved lives. It is absolutely undeniable that people who have substance abuse issues have received treatment and their lives have been saved by it. I still remember at the last election there were corflutes out at the polling booths that had a picture of an arm, presumably a drug addict’s arm, and a needle—running this scare campaign. I really hope that is not what they are planning to do again, because it did not work last time. But I would like to see this report because I am very interested. Although it is undeniable that the facility has saved lives, it is also undeniable that there are amenity issues, and I am very interested to see what sorts of effects they are looking at mitigating through site selection and that sort of thing.

One of the things that I am very, very interested in—and Ms Patten brought this up—is what is happening in Canada and in other jurisdictions around the world, and that is hydromorphone prescription. This has been relayed to me by numerous people in the alcohol and other drugs sector as a solution to many of these issues. One of the often unstated benefits of hydromorphone prescription is it allows the destruction of the organised crime market that supplies heroin. Anyone who wants to talk about organised crime and being tough on crime—I want to annihilate the organised crime market for heroin, and the way we do that is through hydromorphone prescription. We can do it, and it will do it instantly. We are talking about drug dealing and stuff. Well, let us stop it. We can stop it.

I really urge the government to be bold on this issue because it is absolutely crucial to helping these people. I do not want organised crime selling drugs on the streets. If we look at the last two decades or even longer in this state, there are so many problems with corruption—the Lawyer X scandal, all these gangland wars. It is all caused by our drug prohibition. It is all caused by dug laws. We have an opportunity, if the government is brave enough to do it, to fight back against all this. I would urge the government to proceed more boldly on these issues, and I would also urge the opposition to stop these irresponsible scare campaigns that are really, really damaging and dangerous.

Ms CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (10:07): I will be very brief because I know there is more business to get through. Mr Limbrick and Ms Patten have just been speaking about hydromorphone therapy. That is exactly what Emma Kealy, the Shadow Minister for Mental Health, has announced today. It is an opioid replacement treatment therapy to help these addicts. That is part of the solution. That is what we are saying: you need to help these addicts.

The government has got no solutions but to open up more of these injecting facilities and keep these reports secret. We are providing real solutions, Mr Limbrick. We agree with you, and I would hope that you would acknowledge that, because Labor’s approach is not working. You are saying that there are more addicts. Ms Patten is saying that there are more call-outs. Go and speak to those residents in North Richmond. They will tell you how many ambulance call-outs there are. They will tell you what their children have to see. They will tell you what is happening to the businesses and what is happening to those people that they feel are not supported enough.

We want to do more in treating these addicts, and that is why the shadow minister has announced today a world-class, world-first opioid treatment with hydromorphone that will be happening here in Victoria. I would urge you and the government to support that initiative because it is exactly what is needed. But in relation to the motion, I would urge all members to please support this in the interests of transparency and what Victorians need to understand prior to the election.

Motion agreed to.