Kate Carnell and Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett have pulled out all stops
to change the Prime Minister's mind on a heroin trial, as the drug summit
begins in Melbourne today.

Mrs Carnell will present a five-point plan to the leaders' meeting,
covering injecting rooms and drug courts and proposing that the Prime
Minister's hand-picked National Council on Drugs investigate heroin trials
and present their findings to the April 9 Premiers' Conference.

Despite his calls for a national heroin trial earlier this week, Jeff
Kennett said last night that if necessary his state would go it alone and
run a trial in Victoria, if Mr Howard approved.

Investigating the feasibility of a heroin trial was exactly the sort of
thing Mr Howard's advisers on the National Council should be doing, Mrs
Carnell said.

What was the point of having independent advisers if they couldn't look at
all the options?

Mrs Carnell will call also for a national research project on safe
injecting rooms, saying that if it found in their favour the ACT would be
prepared to run a trial.

She will call for increased Commonwealth funding for a national system of
drug courts (being tested in NSW), and more money for rehabilitation and
treatment programs to which the courts would refer addicts. She will call
on her state colleagues to ''fast track'' trials of opioid alternatives,
such as Naltrexone and Buprenorphine, and share information on trials, so
that a broader range of treatment and maintenance options would be
available more quickly.

She wants a re-evaluation also of drug-education programs and advertising
campaigns because, she says, the current crop is not working.

Of the five state and territory leaders who have gathered to thrash out the
issues, Western Australian Premier Richard Court and Queensland's Peter
Beattie are opposed to a heroin trial; South Australian Leader John Olsen
is ''open-minded''; and Mrs Carnell and the Victorian Premier are in favour.

In a parliamentary address yesterday Mr Olsen urged his colleagues to view
the heroin-trial issue objectively. He would not pre-empt the South
Australian Select Committee inquiry, and would make his decision after it
had reached a conclusion. If a trial were to go ahead in South Australia it
would need to be ''subject to strict conditions''.

''Abstinence must be the primary aim of any program,'' he said.

Mr Kennett said he was still hopeful of persuading Mr Howard to support
heroin trials, and would use Victorian hospitals for trials if he had Mr
Howard's approval. Mrs Carnell responded that this would be like Moses
agreeing to the 10 commandments on the condition that the devil would agree
too.

It was very unlikely that a heroin trial would take place anywhere in
Australia while John Howard maintained his strident opposition.

''We all remember what a courageous leap forward this country took when the
decision was made to introduce needle-exchange programs," she said. "That's
the kind of leadership and decisive action I believe Australian political
leaders need to show.''

Victorian Opposition Leader John Brumby, who is at odds with federal Labor
Leader Kim Beazley in supporting a heroin trial and safe injecting rooms,
said Mr Kennett had his full support to "push the envelope" on the issue at
today's meeting.

He believed it could be done without the approval of the Prime Minister.

An AC Neilson poll for the Sydney Morning Herald found that the Prime
Minister was doing a poor job on the drug problem. Two thirds of 2063
people surveyed across the nation thought the Government was taking the
wrong approach to illegal drugs, but those surveyed were split on the idea
of a heroin trial, 48 per cent opposed and 45 per cent in favour.

Four per cent of interviewees supported safe injecting places but 71 per
cent were against decriminalising heroin.