A second safe injecting room will not be built in Melbourne after the Victorian government abandoned a four-year-old promise and the recommendation of an expert report to open one in the CBD.
Mental Health Minister Ingrid Stitt instead announced a $95.11 million “statewide action plan” that includes wraparound support services for two of the locations that had been publicly floated as possible sites for city injecting rooms.
Ken Lay’s report recommended a second safe injecting room be built in Melbourne, but Premier Jacinta Allan’s government has rejected it.
Former police commissioner Ken Lay’s 120-page report, belatedly released on Tuesday a year after it was provided to the government, specifically recommended the government open a second, CBD-based safe injecting room.
He said this should be a discreet site with just four to six booths with broader support services acting as a “gateway” to engage vulnerable people, after the bigger and permanent North Richmond site had treated more than 300 people for hepatitis C, provided more than 800 with opioid replacement therapies, and given more than 3340 referrals to other health and housing support programs.
Three mental health ministers and two premiers dithered over the drug reform first announced by Daniel Andrews in June 2020, on the recommendation of Professor Margaret Hamilton.
They reached 24 in 2022 – the highest in a decade – overtaking all other local government areas, including the City of Yarra. Ambulance callouts also reached 158 in the local government area in the year to June 2022.
The government’s commitment wavered in the lead-up to the 2022 state election, when Lay was sent back to do more work on the basis that COVID-19 could have changed drug habits.
“The evidence indicates that drug-related harms have since returned to pre-COVID levels, and in some cases are now even higher,” Lay said in his report.
The government had grown concerned that no location could serve both drug users and the rest of the CBD community. Each possible site has been beset with community campaigns against them.
Premier Jacinta Allan and Stitt will address the media on Tuesday morning.
cohealth Central City on Victoria Street, near the Queen Victoria Market, was named as the preferred location for a facility in 2020 before the government turned its attention to the former Yooralla building on Flinders Street and then the Salvation Army site on Bourke Street.
Lay said he considered the Yooralla building, a separate City of Melbourne-owned site at A’Beckett Street, near the corner of Elizabeth Street and a second Flinders Street site, but had been instructed not to recommend any specific location.
As part of Tuesday’s announcement, the government will turn the Yooralla building into a $36.4 million health hub run by cohealth that will establish a two-year trial of the opioid replacement therapy hydromorphone for 60 patients. The government will also put $9.4 million towards wraparound health and support services at the Bourke Street Salvation Army site.
Twenty dispensing machines will also be funded to provide the overdose-reversal medicine naloxone and the government will appoint a chief addiction adviser.
The government also announced that St Vincent’s Hospital would join in running the existing North Richmond facility, which has been run by North Richmond Community Health.
The opposition and the Victorian upper house crossbench have been agitating the government to release the findings of the Lay report. Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes, the leader of the government in the upper house, faced the prospect of being suspended from parliament if the document was not produced by next Tuesday.
kerokicredit on
So Lay had a specific site in mind but was instructed not to recommend it, and then a year after the report released they throw up their hands and say they just couldn’t find a good site? Even though they’re now funding those sites for drug services?
SeaDivide1751 on
The gov has funnelled money into providing rehab and drug replacement therapy. Seems superior than opening a honeypot room to attract even more junkies to one area of the CBD like the one on Victoria Street does. It has destroyed the area and businesses
3 Comments
A second safe injecting room will not be built in Melbourne after the Victorian government abandoned a four-year-old promise and the recommendation of an expert report to open one in the CBD.
Mental Health Minister Ingrid Stitt instead announced a $95.11 million “statewide action plan” that includes wraparound support services for two of the locations that had been publicly floated as possible sites for city injecting rooms.
Ken Lay’s report recommended a second safe injecting room be built in Melbourne, but Premier Jacinta Allan’s government has rejected it.
Former police commissioner Ken Lay’s 120-page report, belatedly released on Tuesday a year after it was provided to the government, specifically recommended the government open a second, CBD-based safe injecting room.
He said this should be a discreet site with just four to six booths with broader support services acting as a “gateway” to engage vulnerable people, after the bigger and permanent North Richmond site had treated more than 300 people for hepatitis C, provided more than 800 with opioid replacement therapies, and given more than 3340 referrals to other health and housing support programs.
Three mental health ministers and two premiers dithered over the drug reform first announced by Daniel Andrews in June 2020, on the recommendation of Professor Margaret Hamilton.
[Heroin-related overdose deaths](https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fcoronerscourt.vic.gov.au%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2F2024-01%2FCCOV%2520-%2520Overdose%2520deaths%2520in%2520Victoria%25202013-2022%2520%2528revised%2529%2520-%252020240125.pdf) in the City of Melbourne have escalated in the years since.
They reached 24 in 2022 – the highest in a decade – overtaking all other local government areas, including the City of Yarra. Ambulance callouts also reached 158 in the local government area in the year to June 2022.
The government’s commitment wavered in the lead-up to the 2022 state election, when Lay was sent back to do more work on the basis that COVID-19 could have changed drug habits.
“The evidence indicates that drug-related harms have since returned to pre-COVID levels, and in some cases are now even higher,” Lay said in his report.
The government had grown concerned that no location could serve both drug users and the rest of the CBD community. Each possible site has been beset with community campaigns against them.
Premier Jacinta Allan and Stitt will address the media on Tuesday morning.
cohealth Central City on Victoria Street, near the Queen Victoria Market, was named as the preferred location for a facility in 2020 before the government turned its attention to the former Yooralla building on Flinders Street and then the Salvation Army site on Bourke Street.
Lay said he considered the Yooralla building, a separate City of Melbourne-owned site at A’Beckett Street, near the corner of Elizabeth Street and a second Flinders Street site, but had been instructed not to recommend any specific location.
As part of Tuesday’s announcement, the government will turn the Yooralla building into a $36.4 million health hub run by cohealth that will establish a two-year trial of the opioid replacement therapy hydromorphone for 60 patients. The government will also put $9.4 million towards wraparound health and support services at the Bourke Street Salvation Army site.
Twenty dispensing machines will also be funded to provide the overdose-reversal medicine naloxone and the government will appoint a chief addiction adviser.
The government also announced that St Vincent’s Hospital would join in running the existing North Richmond facility, which has been run by North Richmond Community Health.
The opposition and the Victorian upper house crossbench have been agitating the government to release the findings of the Lay report. Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes, the leader of the government in the upper house, faced the prospect of being suspended from parliament if the document was not produced by next Tuesday.
So Lay had a specific site in mind but was instructed not to recommend it, and then a year after the report released they throw up their hands and say they just couldn’t find a good site? Even though they’re now funding those sites for drug services?
The gov has funnelled money into providing rehab and drug replacement therapy. Seems superior than opening a honeypot room to attract even more junkies to one area of the CBD like the one on Victoria Street does. It has destroyed the area and businesses