SUMMIT OVERCAME PREJUDICE

The drugs debate won greater sophistication when MPs showed they could
change, writes DAVID HUMPHRIES.

THE Liberal MLC John Francis Ryan is known around parliamentary haunts as
Ned Flanders, the Simpsons' neighbour in the cartoon series to whom,
admittedly, he bears some physical resemblance.

But it is the shared elements of their characters that makes the comparison
stick. They are both devout Christians, diligent at their work and their
families and possessing, through a shared common decency often
misrepresented as dorkiness, propensities to annoy the hell out of buffoons
who exhibit neither.

Last Thursday, Ryan illustrated another capacity, the sort he would have
encouraged in the high school students he once taught. It's about having
courage enough to change your mind when the evidence before you contradicts
your earlier perceptions and prejudices, even at the risk of isolation by
your peers.

Ryan set aside the written speech he had prepared for the Drug Summit,
declaring: "Like many of you, I believe that I have learnt from and been
profoundly changed by what I have seen and heard so far."

He talked of being "deeply affected" by a visit the previous day to Kings
Cross, where police told him and other summiteers of the 13 deaths over the
past year in illegal injecting rooms.

If society could cope with the established practice of giving clean
syringes to drug addicts on a no questions asked basis, "it is not a great
step to give them a space to carry out their deadly habit in a position
that might stop them from dying", he said.

That his subsequent successful amendment for the summit to endorse
"medically supervised" injecting rooms was seconded by John Brogden, the
youthful Pittwater MP with prospects of future Liberal leadership, and
opposed and decried by the over-whelming majority of Coalition MPs, raises
questions about just how out of touch was the hardline, head-in-the-sand,
say-no-to-everything approach this Opposition brought to the summit.

I have little idea of the correct way forward on the drugs epidemic and I
couldn't pretend to have a firm grip on what voters will and will not
tolerate from many of the 168 often bold recommendations the summit put
forward for Government consideration over the next six weeks.

But a few things are clear. Thanks partly to the summit, the drugs debate
has entered a higher tier of sophistication which is already starting to
disseminate through the community.

It is difficult to contemplate how even the most entrenched sceptic (and I
began last week dismissive of the summit's chances of finding consensus or
headway) could not be moved by the emotion and evidence presented.

I'm now convinced a growing chunk of society is of the view that, as
distasteful as some of the propositions may be in practice, a community so
tired, frustrated and fearful with past impotence is demanding advancement.

No-one put better at the summit the uselessness of holding out for a
miracle erasure of the drug problem or the reliance solely on law
enforcement to deliver it than James Wood, the police royal commissioner
who hardly could be marked as a bleeding-heart liberal.

"The danger we face is the search for a single, simplistic solution ...
whether by unremitting and unthinking law enforcement or a magic bullet,"
he said. "For law enforcement, no matter how well resourced, can never
prevent the supply, let alone demand, for these substances."

A still cautious but, by his own admission, semi-persuaded Premier tried to
put his finger on the public mood on Friday. "The people of NSW are roughly
where I am and they don't want to do anything which is going to make the
situation worse," Carr ventured. He wasn't forthcoming on whether that
meant the public was ready for the summit's more contentious recommendations.

Carr confessed to a change of mind, at least on injecting rooms, but the
test is whether those in his Government who navigated last week's passage
can keep him on course.

My bet is the answer rests with the direction of public mood, in all the
manifestations politicians measure it, including headlines, radio talkback
and the anxiety of their own backbenchers.