INJECTING ROOMS 'NOT HIGH PRIORITY' DAVIES TELLS PARLIAMENT

Member for Gippsland West, Susan Davies, has told parliament that legalising
heroin injecting rooms is "not a high priority for my electorate or me."

This was despite the fact that she cast the deciding vote for injecting
rooms, in the Lower House.

"It is not an issue that has stirred the passions of most of the people in
my electorate, despite some intense efforts to create a controversy," Ms.
Davies told parliament.

She claimed her electorate was more interested in additional treatment
facilities for drug and alcohol problems, than safe injecting rooms.

"In itself, the issue (injecting rooms) is not one of high priority."

"A high priority. . . I have received the message many times . . . is
solving the drug problems that occur in my area and rural areas in general."

Ms Davies said mixing drugs and the combination of drug use and driving,
were among the more severe problems.

She also said the people of her electorate "need and want the capacity to
treat their specific problems in their own areas, so that they can stay in
their communities.

"That means treatment must be close by, not in the Valley or the city."

Ms Davies said she had repeatedly given the government that message, and
emphasised that rural areas needed additional treatment facilities for drug
and alcohol problems.

"I believe facilities need to be added until the stage is reached where any
adult who says 'I want to enter a detoxification facility' can do so
straight away."

"I do not, think it is practical to make such people wait."

"I emphasis the point that a proportion of those facilities and different
sorts of facilities need to be introduced into rural areas."

Heroin Users

Ms Davies said there were heroin users in her electorate, which she regarded
as 'tragic', but noted that street use was not the same problem in Gippsland
West as it was in metropolitan areas.

"The problems for heroin users in rural areas are more likely to manifest
themselves in the form of people using and sometimes dying alone at home,
which I find sad and terrible."

"I know how difficult and complex the issue of drug abuse is, and I do not
believe there is one magical solution to the problem.

"The proposal of an 18-month trial of possibly one, two or up to five
supervised injecting facilities was an attempt to make the unsafe lives of
some heroin users a little safer.

"It may have helped some users to think that someone cared, and there was a
place to go."

Ms Davies said she believed that part of the solution to the drug problem
lay in helping people to feel better about themselves and their lives, and
to make them feel a part of the wider community.

"I genuinely believe we are on the road to encouraging a more caring society
than we have been over the past few years."