SOME ARE BLINKERED BY IDEOLOGY

I was shocked to read in "Branch nod to injecting room plan" (CT, 27 June,
p.3) that some people in the Australian Labor Party are opposed to a safe
injecting room for heroin addicts. The two people who were mentioned in your
paper, Michael Cooney and Brendan Scott, obviously have little understanding
of the issues involved here. Their families have clearly never been hit by
the blight that is heroin.

Does this pair think that it is good that our parks, public toilets, car
parks and my children's playground are littered with needles? - needles that
potentially carry hepatitis and the AIDS virus. I, for one, am sick to death
of picking up needles, risking injury to myself because people like Cooney
and Scott come from a blinkered ideological position and stubbornly refuse
to shift from it.

If the Labor Party is to be a credible force on the political spectrum, they
should distance themselves from the fringe elements that are represented by
the likes of Scott and Cooney.

(Ms) A. HOLMES Griffith