INJECTING ROOM: CARNELL COULD FALL

The heroin-injecting room could bring down the Carnell Government if key
cross-benchers register their protest by blocking the Budget next week.

Treasurer Gary Humphries held firm yesterday and said the Government would
stand or fall on its Budget.

Independent Dave Rugendyke has already locked himself in to opposing the
Budget over the injecting room.

With eight votes against it, the Government needs support from
cross-benchers Trevor Kaine and Paul Osborne to get the Budget through the
Assembly.

"The Government has put the document on the table as a totality and stands
and falls on the strength of that document," Mr Humphries said. "We won't
be taking out the injecting place to get the thing through."

He conceded that the Government could fall over the issue.

But it was a "damn good Budget" and the Government would not be changing it.

"To me it makes little or no sense to talk about rejecting the Territory's
first-ever surplus Budget in accrual terms," Mr Humphries said.

"We believe that out of all the Budgets we have brought down, this is the
one that ought to be accepted."

The Government was not going to allow cross-benchers to take a "smorgasbord
approach" to the Budget.

The Treasurer also warned that Independents could suffer voter backlash if
they were seen to be destabilising the Assembly.

But Mr Rugendyke said he had received a lot of community support for his
stance. His conscience would not allow him to support a Budget that funded
an injecting room.

Mr Kaine's office said he was very concerned about aspects of the Budget,
particularly Health Minister Michael Moore's discretionary fund. But he did
not think the Budget should be blocked over the injecting room because the
Assembly majority supported the trial.

Mr Osborne said earlier this week he was more convinced than ever that the
injecting room had to be quashed. He could not be contacted last night.

Opposition Leader Jon Stanhope said Labor was ready to take Government if
it came to that. But a Labor Government would maintain its commitment to
the injecting room.

"Of course Mr Osborne and Mr Rugendyke have promised much in the past two
years," Mr Stanhope said.

"And they are yet to keep their words in a single instance. This will be
another case of gnashing of teeth [and] beating of breast."

Mr Humphries accused Labor of hypocrisy in blocking the Budget every year.

"This is exactly what the Labor Party decried in 1975, federally," he said.