BEAZLEY BACKS SAFE INJECTING

KIM Beazley yesterday offered support for state-based safe-injecting
rooms for heroin users and urged the federal Government to overturn a
decision that will prevent the anti-addiction drug Naltrexone being
made widely available to heroin addicts.

The Labor leader's comments came in an end-of-year address that
highlighted Labor's social priority 96 increasing fairness in the face
of economic change 96 and that contrasted with the more narrowly
focused economic agenda outlined last week by Prime Minister John Howard.

"Australians don't mind change," Mr Beazley told the Ashfield Uniting
Church in Sydney. "What they don't like is unfairness."

He said governments could make a difference on that count and promised
a future Labor government would do that, including by providing better
education opportunities.

Asked whether he personally supported steps by the churches to back
safe-injecting rooms, Mr Beazley said yes.

"I think you have to have a complex response to the scourge of drugs
in our community," he said, setting out a four-part package.

"You must ensure that those who are the pushers of these things, the
profiteers, not only go to jail, but lose all their assets.

"You have to make absolutely certain that you have the right
rehabilitation programs as well.

"You have to make certain you've got a decent Coastguard to stop them
coming into the country so far as you can."

And, on injecting rooms: "You must keep addicts alive so they have a
chance to recover."

A federal Labor government would support the states 96 like NSW and
Victoria where there are ALP administrations 96 which are organising
safe heroin-injecting centres locally, he said.

The NSW Government expects to set up that state's first such facility
by March, but is yet to finalise the service's operator, and the newly
elected Victorian Government has also promised a similar closely
supervised trial.

The ACT Legislative Assembly has also passed legislation that would
permit such a trial in Canberra.

On Friday, the federal Government's pharmaceutical benefits advisory
committee decided to recommend that Naltrexone should be made
available at a heavily subsidised rate to alcohol-dependent people.

But the committee refused to back any subsidy for heroin users,
ensuring the drug remains prohibitively expensive for them.

Asked whether he would back calls for the committee to be sacked in
the wake of that decision, Mr Beazley said: "I just back calls for
them to change their minds."

He said: "They've done it for alcoholism; they should do it for heroin
users."