NOT IN OUR BACK YARD

Night approaches and a wintry chill urges the few hunched pedestrians on
their way. It is mid-week and inner Melbourne seems shut down. Around here
heroin is often in your face. Knowing kids in baggy track pants palm gear
to passing clients; users loll and shuffle around the laneways.

Nine storeys above the darkened streets, in one of those newly fashionable
urban apartments - all glass and views and open space - the sophisticated
city is meeting the working-class suburbs.

Drugs have brought together this little group, from Springvale and
Footscray and St Kilda, to meet their inner-city allies who live less than
a block from Russell Street, hub of the urban drug trade. The meeting of
eight includes Ed Dermidjian, whose wife Carol founded Footscray Matters;
Le Hoa Whysham, president of the Springvale Traders Association; and a
long-time St Kilda resident, Ken McLean.

They have in common this much: vehement opposition to the State
Government's proposed trial of supervised injecting facilities. They decide
to call themselves Drug Action 2000 - DA2K for short. It sounds like a rap
band rather than what they are: a group of new, 50-something policy
lobbyists on a learn-as-you-go plan.

At their centre is Peter Faris, Queen's counsel and former head of the
National Crime Authority. If anyone should know that conventional law
enforcement has failed to stem the heroin trade, it is he. Yet here he
seems opposed to innovation.

As head of Residents 3000, a city lobby group, Faris has said he does not
care where a facility goes as long as it is not in the CBD, but he
maintains injecting rooms are not the solution in anyone's back yard.

He lives on Exhibition Street but has led the opposition elsewhere, getting
a standing ovation from what had been a fearful and angry crowd at
Springvale Town Hall last month. Two weeks ago, at a protest organised by
the group calling itself Footscray Matters, a queue of like-minded people
greeted him at the door.

Last week Greater Dandenong Council ruled itself out of the government's
injecting-room trial. Faris thinks that this decision in ALP heartland,
with nine out of 11 councillors aligned to the Labor Party, signals the
beginning of the end for the government's drug strategy.

"I think it is amazing stuff that a Labor council has listened to
ratepayers and the people who voted them in rather than the Labor Party in
Spring Street," he says.

It listened in part to a wild and rowdy public meeting that shocked even
Faris."I haven't injected emotion into this debate," Faris says in his
defence."It is already there because people are torn over this issue. It's
the government's fault for forcing the community to register their
opposition, for putting the people on the offensive or else copping it (a
trial) in their communities.

"I am just one person who has, to a degree, been thrust into this role
because of circumstance. I don't have spin doctors, I don't have public
relations people. I don't have the millions of dollars.

"What councils are doing is phoney South Yarra-type consultation, which is
fine for people who have a number of tertiary degrees and write submissions
professionally. If your average working-class person comes home after work
they aren't going to sit down and write something."

Phoney South Yarra-type consultation? Over two weeks Greater Dandenong held
workshops and that wild meeting. The process revealed an unyielding 90 per
cent opposition, says council chief executive Warwick Heine. But set
alongside the programs Yarra and Port Phillip councils ran, it looks hasty
and truncated.

Yarra has had a drugs forum since 1996. It was formed amid concerns over
the street trade in Smith Street, Collingwood, where dealers operated a
take-away service, trading through the open windows of cars. The Yarra
Health and Drugs Forum has about 90 members, drawn from local health and
welfare agencies, police, government departments, residents and business
people. It meets about 10 times a year and supervised injecting facilities
have been raised several times, Yarra mayor John Phillips says.

Last December a public meeting at Collingwood Town Hall discussed injecting
rooms, followed by another meeting at Richmond Town Hall. Each drew about
200 people. From mid-February to early March there were 12 meetings,
including a series for particular interest groups, such as local business
people, school principals and different ethnic groups.

"There will never be unanimous support for this," Phillips says. "This
triggers extreme emotions in people. It's blood related. It's a needle
prick, maybe it has some AIDS connotations to it." However, "I think once
people are given the information and have time to digest it, there is a
much more rational or compassionate response."

Port Phillip mayor, Julian Hill says his council had discussed the issue
for more than a year. In the last three months of last year it held a
series of meetings, with drug and welfare agencies, and for the public. A
further public forum on safe injecting facilities in March drew just 30
people: "It doesn't seem to be an issue any more," Hill says.

Both councils had adopted in-principle support for injecting facilities by
the end of last year. The problem, says Hill, is that holding a rational
public meeting is now impossible "with the rogue elements that are playing
politics ... I'm only concerned about Dandenong's decision in one sense: it
may give the vigilante groups some comfort. I think Maribyrnong will be
coming under increasing pressure from some of the rogue elements".

Yesterday Maribyrnong was finalising a reference group that will oversee
the development of its drugs strategy by the end of this year. It had a
similar experience to Dandenong: after about half an hour, a mass public
meeting in March ceased to function as an information exchange. Speakers
were drowned out by a hooting crowd.

"It was clear anyone who was anti-injecting facilities was not interested
in listening," Maribyrnong mayor Gerard White says. "I was a bit
disappointed with that meeting. I was wanting people, wherever they stood,
to have their case heard." He does not know which way his community is
leaning, but he does know divisions run deep.

Footscray Matters staged its own protest meeting two weeks ago. Peter Faris
and Carol Demirdjian led it, and when supporters of injecting facilites
tried to speak they were howled down. Tonya Stevens, a new councillor, says
she was disheartened by abuse: "Throw the bitch out," someone called. "We
know where you live," threatened another.

Veteran youth worker Les Twentyman says the meeting was a shambles:
"Someone walked past me and said 'If my kid gets on drugs, you're f-----
dead,' and I felt like saying `If your kid gets on drugs, he will be dead
if we keep going on with this siege mentality'. I hate drugs. I have buried
48 kids in the past eight years. While these people keep procrastinating,
kids keep dying."

Twentyman says he was dismayed when the meeting would not allow elected
representatives, including Stevens, and the local state MP, Bruce
Mildenhall, to speak in favor of injecting rooms.

Demirdjian says a trial will do nothing for the 271 people who died outside
the five proposed trial municipalities. She says her group may not
participate in the Maribyrnong reference group because it is stacked 75 per
cent in favor of a trial of injecting rooms. Nothing less than an official
poll of residents will satisfy her.

Footscray Matters has spawned a reaction, a group in favor of an injecting
facility calling itself Footscray Cares. It claims about 100 members and
says the estimated 350 who turned out to the Footscray Matters protest is a
misleading figure because it included people who supported a facility but
who were not allowed to voice their opinion.

Footscray Cares spokeswoman Marian Burford is pleased public meetings are
unlikely to feature again: "Any attempt at a public meeting is just going
to be a slanging match."

Demirdjian says an injecting-room trial in Footscray is a case of a
working-class suburb bearing a burden for the western half of the state,
but Burford responds by suggesting she should notice where people are
dying. White says it is unclear how representative either group is.

It is in Labor areas that the government is striking its strongest
opposition. One observer noted that at Maribyrnong, Faris seemed to "dress
down for Footscray" in jeans and a T-shirt. Faris counters that his roots
are in Footscray. "I am not a silvertail who is slumming it. My Who's Who
tells me that Professor Penington went to Scotch College, Melbourne
University and is a member of the Melbourne Club. My CV reads nothing like
that. If anyone is speaking down to people it's him, not me."

Hill acknowledges the stronger opposition in Dandenong and Footscray
reflects the make up of the communities. Blue-collar areas seem to favor a
punitive approach to drug crime, whereas the inner suburbs, with a higher
proportion of tertiary-educated residents, seem more inclined to view it as
a health issue.

Demirdjian says that Dandenong and Maribyrnong are more family-oriented
suburbs, with fewer young people living alternative lifestyles. "They are
much poorer suburbs ... it's not about not-in-my-back-yard, it's about
protecting a vulnerable community."

But Faris suspects there is dormant opposition in Port Phillip and Yarra
that will emerge when locations of injecting facilities are nominated.
"We'll pick them up when it is their turn to go apeshit," he says.

Both mayors, however, see it differently."I have no sense of stronger
opposition now than six months or 12 months ago," Hill says. "That's not to
say if three potential sites were named that you would not find stronger
localised opposition or concern, but there's no overall sense that
anything's changed."

Phillips says Yarra Council has enough support and, like Hill, dismisses
the chance of a backlash. "No one likes this utterly, but they feel it's a
worthy, but minimal initiative."

He says the proposal is "a minor thing in the scheme of things, but it
matters because it deals with the reality of people dying now and with
people lurching about chaotically on our streets".