DRUG REFORM VICTIM OF PRAGMATISM

HARDLY anyone emerges with any credit from the short-lived ACT
Legislative Assembly revolt on the Budget. Labor was opportunistic in
voting against it, when its objections to it involved little more than
the rhetorical flourishes and matters of emphasis that any alternative
government might have. The opportunity was there because Paul Osborne
and Dave Rugendyke, two of the Independents who normally support the
Government, had declared themselves unable to vote for a Budget which
included an appropriation of $800,000 for a drug-injecting room a
measure which Labor supports.

On line-by-line consideration, a 9-8 majority of the Assembly voted
for the health appropriation, because Kerrie Tucker, who normally
votes with Labor, switched to support the measure, but, when the
Budget as a whole went up, she voted against the Budget. It had always
been open to Chief Minister Kate Carnell to separate the item for the
injecting room from the Budget as a whole, but this, last week, she
flatly refused to do. Though she had lost Supply something which would
have ultimately forced her either to resign or go to an election but
was not an immediate crisis she had not been displaced as chief
minister, something which can only be done by the Assembly. It was not
clear that the Independents who had deserted her on the Budget would
have supported a no-confidence resolution.

Labor, under fire for its tactics and probably ambivalent both about
seizing power over an issue where it agreed with the Liberal Chief
Minister and her Minister for Health, Michael Moore, and about
depending for power on the whims of Mr Rugendyke and Mr Osborne,
offered Mrs Carnell a deal separating the injecting room from the main
Budget and having separate votes on it.

By the time it announced the offer, Mrs Carnell had made her own deal
with the Independents. The effect is that the Budget will go through,
minus the injecting room but with the $800,000 it represented going to
drug projects. The injecting room will not come up before the next
election, 16 months away. Mrs Carnell no doubt reasons that it is
better to keep the Independents on side than to find some clever way
of frustrating their anger. Labor, for example, might vote for the
measures, but then put up a no-confidence motion which an angry
Osborne and Rugendyke might support.

The only victims are to be those who might have benefited from the
injecting room. Some time ago, the search for a complete set of
alternatives for those involved in narcotic drug abuse was thought by
its proponents to be a moral issue; now, apparently, it is merely a
playing card in the game of politics.

It can be argued that deferring the issue until the next election
passes the decision to the wider electorate and will give a decision
to proceed, if that happens, even more legitimacy than it has had before.

In fact, of course, it is unlikely that the election will be cast as a
referendum on alternatives in drug treatment.

Rather, Mrs Carnell has chosen, as the price of power, to give a
complete, if temporary, victory on the issue, to Mr Osborne and Mr
Rugendyke. The nature of the deal makes her hostage to future claims
from them, particularly if Labor plays by their script.

In other jurisdictions, not least in Tasmania, the major parties have
learnt by bitter experience that it is a game not worth playing.

Labor and the Liberals have compromised themselves, not made
compromises that lead to better government.