DROPPING INJECTING ROOM A PRICE STANHOPE 'CAN'T PAY' FOR POWER

ADMITTING the odds were against Labor forming Government over the
Budget impasse, Labor Leader Jon Stanhope reaffirmed his party's
commitment to the heroin-injecting room trial yesterday.

Mr Stanhope was applauded by annual-conference delegates when he said
the prospect of Labor abandoning the trial to meet the demands of two
key Independents "is a price which the party can't pay".

Independents Paul Osborne and Dave Rugendyke blocked the Carnell
Government's Budget on Friday because it allocated $800,000 to the
injecting room.

Both major parties are negotiating with the cross-bench to find a way
around the impasse.

Outside the conference, Mr Stanhope said he would put more money on
the Liberal Government attracting the support of Mr Osborne and Mr
Rugendyke.

"I'm very aware of their utter determination that the safe-injecting
place not go ahead. That is a position ultimately which the Labor
Party will not meet, and can not meet. And it remains to be seen
whether the Liberal Party can or will."

Chief Minister Kate Carnell and Urban Services Minister Brendan Smyth
had split with Liberal Party policy to support the trial.

"That's part of the difficulty we have with this whole issue," Mr
Stanhope said.

"The Liberal Party is not committed to progressive drug-law reform.
But Mrs Carnell's image has always demanded that she be seen as a
progressive leader." The community would view Mrs Carnell changing her
vote in the event of a second debate with "justified cynicism".

Labor's revised drugs policy was to be debated at yesterday's
conference, but delegates voted to fine-tune the policy behind closed
doors later this year.

Seconding the motion to defer the debate, Deputy Leader Ted Quinlan
said MLAs would try to keep drugs as the only issue in ACT politics
for "political advantage".

"We need to choose every word of our policy on the issue with the
utmost care so that they cannot be misrepresented, exaggerated, and
used against us."

Mr Stanhope said a "significant number" of people in the Labor Party
did not support the injecting room, but it was party policy.

Labor would need support from three of the four cross-benchers to take
Government.

"At the end of the day they will make their own judgment so far as it
suits them attaining the agenda which they're pursuing . . . no
injecting place," Mr Stanhope said.

* In a win for the Right faction, conference delegates elected Michael
Kerrisk as branch secretary yesterday. He replaces the Left faction's
Kate Crowle.