Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Tangney for putting this motion forward for us to discuss and debate this afternoon. I commend him for his contribution. Although I have a different view about compulsory drug testing, I thought the remainder of his speech outlined a serious problem and one which we in this place understand. I want to refer mainly to the issues relating to the public health aspects of illicit drug use and drug use more generally.

We're reminded by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare's Australian Health Report Card 2016 that drug use is a serious and complex problem, which contributes to thousands of deaths, substantial illness, disease and injury, social and family disruption, workplace concerns, violence, crime and community safety issues. The use and misuse of licit and illicit drugs is widely recognised in Australia as a major health problem. It's recognised by the member for Tangney in his reference to the initiatives taken by the Commonwealth government, including the $240 million for primary healthcare services.

Illicit drugs contributed to 1.8 per cent of the total burden of disease and injury in Australia in 2011, and this included the impact of injecting drug use and cocaine, opioid, amphetamine and cannabis dependence. While illicit drug use is a significant issue in the context of Australia's health, tobacco continues to cause more ill-health and premature death than any other drug, and alcohol-related hospital separations are higher than those related to illicit drugs. Illicit drug use is a major risk factor for ill-health and death, being linked to HIV-AIDS; hepatitis C; low birth weight; malnutrition; infective endocarditis, leading to damage of the heart valves; poisoning; mental illness; suicide; self-inflicted injury; and overdose.

Just on the matter of alcohol, I commend the Northern Territory government for its recent announcements about its strategy to address alcohol misuse and abuse in the Northern Territory, including the introduction of a pricing mechanism on alcohol—that is really very important. Having alcohol pricing based on having a base line on alcohol consumption is, I think, really something which we ought to be adopting across the nation.

The law enforcement approach which the government is adopting in part, as well as its public health approach to illicit drugs, is commendable. Its law enforcement approach is to address the harms of illicit drugs through a mixture of demand reduction, supply reduction and harm reduction interventions. However, there needs to be more done through investment dedicated to public health approaches and a commitment to community led initiatives and rehabilitation programs.

The Australian Drug Foundation has observed how grassroots community prevention programs can have a significant impact on reducing alcohol and drug problems, and community activities are best focused on a primary or upstream prevention, where programs aim to protect people from developing an AOD related problem. Additional funding is needed for these bodies and programs. A report funded by the National Drug Law Enforcement Research Fund found, similarly, that early interventions are important, and school and community based programs that engage with at-risk families and children may be critical for reducing levels of involvement in the most problematic forms of drug related behaviour.

Law enforcement data suggests that different users respond to police contact in different ways. While it may be an important catalyst in reducing drug use in some, it constitutes only a partial solution. For example, young adults who use amphetamine type stimulants may develop less favourable attitudes towards police through their substance related contact with police and that of their drug-using peers, and it is likely to be inherently negative due to the circumstances leading to their contact. Additional and diverse strategies need to be used to target different groups in recognition of the diverse reasons that people use illicit drugs—for example, a family history of drug and alcohol use is strongly associated with childhood trauma, which may in turn lead to an earlier initiation into the dangerous route of drug injection—and the fact that certain groups disproportionately experience some drug related risks. For example, people in the lowest socioeconomic status groups and people in remote and very remote areas are more likely to have used methamphetamines than people in non-remote areas.

This is an enormous problem for the Australian community but one which I believe we can address if we do it holistically, and I'm a very great enthusiast for a greater emphasis on public health initiatives.

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