RESTAURANT PLAN SAVES TRIAL FROM GOING TO WATER

The 11th-hour rescue plan of Sydney's contentious heroin injecting room
project was hatched in a most unlikely venue - the swank Boathouse
restaurant on the waterfront in Glebe.

Ensconced for lunch at a panoramic window table in Blackwattle Bay last
Friday were Dr John Carmody, Associate Professor of Pharmacology and a
member of the University of NSW's Council and the chairman of Ord Minnett,
and fellow university council member Mr Peter Mason.

Dr Carmody, an outspoken Catholic layman, was infuriated by the news that
the Vatican had stepped in and forced the Sisters of Charity to abandon
their trial of the Kings Cross injecting room.

He had spent the day on the airwaves lambasting Rome's intervention in
domestic affairs in contradiction with ultra-conservative Catholics such as
Sydney barrister and Catholic Advocacy Centre spokesman, Mr Paul Brazier.

(That morning, Mr Brazier had denounced the nuns involvement in the
injecting room trial as "formal co-operation in evil", saying the plan
should have been hit on the head before it got off the ground.)

In a fortuitous confluence of events, it happened that the left-wing Labor
MLC Dr Meredith Burgmann - also a vocal supporter of the NSW
Government-backed trial, and a former university council member - was
seated at a nearby table, there with family to celebrate the graduation in
law that day of her niece Verity.

The two tables, passionate about the fate of the project, put their heads
together.

By the end of lunch, an enormous lobby effort had been set in train. Mr
Mason contacted the Vice-Chancellor, Professor John Niland, while frenetic
telephone calls were carried out by Carmody across the country.

In the end, with Dr Burgmann handling the political end, they harnessed the
support of a who's who of the country's medical and academic community,
reaching all the way to a hotel in Beijing to gain the symbolic and
heart-felt OK from one of the original architects of the St Vincent's
project, Dr Alex Wodak.

Such was the depth of anger inside Sydney's academic, medical and public
health community that within three days the group managed to draft a
strongly worded resolution which swung the support of one of Australia's
most prestigious universities behind one of the country's most radical drug
reform projects.

With minor fine-tuning, the resolution - passed unanimously - resolved that
the UNSW Council inform the NSW Government and the Special Minister of
State, Mr John Della Bosca, of its support for the 18-month trial of a
medically supervised injecting service so that "this harm minimisation
program, affecting the welfare of the vulnerable people of NSW and
Australia, can proceed with the full confidence of the Government and the
community".

And so, the injecting room trial, if it proceeds as planned under the
auspices of the UNSW, will now have the imprimatur and gravitas of some of
the country's most experienced specialists and researchers - from Professor
Peter Baume and the faculty of community medicine to Professor Wayne Hall's
National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre to Ron Penny, Professor of
Medicine at St Vincent's and Ian Webster, Professor of Public Health at
Liverpool Hospital.

The sisters' courageous stance may have been forced into a premature end.
But for the NSW Government, the Vatican's intervention may prove to be yet
another political godsend.