Tuesday, 2 May 2023

Medically supervised injecting facilities

Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria) (17:39): (161) My adjournment matter is for the Premier, and the action that I seek is that he rejects the Greens’ outrageous and unsafe proposal to allow children to access drug-injecting rooms. When I thought I had heard it all, I read in the Herald Sun:

Kids would be free to inject drugs under a controversial plan by the Victorian Greens to broaden access to the state’s only supervised injecting room.

Under this new plan children will be able to access this facility along with people who are subject to court orders. This is apparently based on health advice. I wonder if it is the same health advice that the government used during COVID. Last sitting week I raised concerns about the Richmond injecting room being situated next door to a school. Currently that concern seems redundant considering now they are bringing schoolchildren into the injecting room. Exposing children to drug deals, drug use, violence and death is an indictment of this government. We need to avoid normalising drugs at all costs.

Kel Glare, a former Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police, says this:

Clearly, the government of Victoria cares more about the welfare of drug addicts than about the well-being of the local population and particularly the welfare of young children.

…

Locals, including very young children, have been attacked and harassed by drug users, have witnessed dead bodies in the streets, had their properties damaged, and have seen men having oral sex with men. Other sexual activities of every description are committed in open view. Parents suffer the constant fear of their children being harmed by the presence of contaminated discarded needles and the behaviours of drug users and children themselves suffer similar fears.

A local parent Neil Mallet says Labor have not ‘owned up to the inherent and immeasurable risk they have created for these five- to 12-year-olds’. So far the Labor government has ignored serious safety concerns raised by the school community. A leaked letter to Martin Foley and James Merlino outlined that the school was concerned about the decreasing enrolments due to safety fears. The school council has identified a likely and foreseeable risk of catastrophic harm and is calling on the Victorian government for urgent and immediate action. I join with the school community, and I urge the government to reject the Greens’ outrageous proposal. When the community cried out for the government to stop putting their children in harm’s way, what they did not ask for was that their children would now be allowed inside the facility. It is frankly not what they asked for.

The PRESIDENT: Before we move on to the next adjournment matter, we had a query whether that adjournment matter is going against the anticipation rule. I can just clarify that standing order 12.17 says:

A member may not anticipate the discussion of a subject listed on the Notice Paper and expected to be debated on the same or next sitting day.

So that was fine as far as my reading goes.