MOORE USING DRUG ISSUE AS DISTRACTION: STANHOPE

ACT Health Minister Michael Moore is a drug-reform zealot and is using the
heroin shooting-gallery issue to distract from the nurses' dispute,
according to Labor Leader Jon Stanhope.

Mr Stanhope said yesterday he was cynical about the fact that Mr Moore had
brought up the shooting gallery issue on the day nurses at Canberra
Hospital were going to the Industrial Relations Commission over staffing
levels.

Mr Moore had ''refused point blank'' to believe Australian Nursing
Federation claims that the hospital was drastically understaffed, and there
were ''very serious resource issues'' in talking about any new initiative,
given the public hospital was ''not coping''.

Mr Moore said he had tabled the paper, containing the shooting-gallery
proposal, in the Assembly late in June. ''Perhaps Mr Stanhope was asleep,''
he said.

The legal and funding issues were being examined by the Department of
Health and Community Care, and he hoped to make a further statement later
this month. Huge savings would be made in terms of social costs, Mr Moore
said. The proposal had been made in response to calls for radical change by
ambulance officers, who could see the results of failed policy on the
ground.

He was pleased the ALP was ''receptive'' to the proposal.

Mr Stanhope said the ALP was in favour of the plan, in principle, because
it was clear that current policy wasn't working. Still he had detected
''serious disquiet'' in the community about shooting galleries, and broad
community debate was needed before any decisions were made.

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)