Drug Rehabilitation Services
Reverend the Hon. Dr GORDON MOYES: I ask the Special Minister of State the following question without notice. Is the Minister aware that rehabilitation clinics in Sweden have a higher than 80 per cent success rate in seeing illicit drug users drug-free permanently on the basis of their national standard of being free of illicit drugs for at least five years? What is the success rate in New South Wales for former illicit drug users becoming drug-free permanently? Also, what standard does New South Wales use to determine whether a former illicit drug user has effectively been rehabilitated? Has the medically supervised injecting room any record of any person attending at any time who has become drug-free?
The Hon. JOHN DELLA BOSCA: That is a very good question. I will start with a response to the final part of the question. I draw the attention of Reverend the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes to the series of answers I have given to aspects, and evaluation, of the medically supervised injecting room trial as a gateway to treatment, the number of persons who have come into the centre from what are effectively the depths of the addiction cycle—being street-based addicts in many cases—and who have gone through the process of referral to various drug treatments, including buprenorphine and substitute therapies, and so on.
I believe it would be best if I reported subsequently to the House in respect of the balance of the question because Reverend the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes has asked me specifically for a comparison with the success or otherwise of various foreign models, particularly Sweden. I very strongly counsel members not to place too much stock in international comparisons. I appreciate that Reverend the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes has vast professional and personal experience in matters of drug rehabilitation. He would be aware that there are many cultural differences in the ways these matters are recorded, quite apart from the treatment practices and, indeed, the nature of the social environment of addiction in different societies. I will undertake to obtain appropriate comparisons for Reverend the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes.
[Interruption]
I will ignore the interjection of the Hon. Catherine Cusack, which I am sure she wants on the record. I do not understand the interjection of the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. The question of Reverend the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes was a very good one and those parts of it I cannot answer now I will obtain information for him and relay it to the House as soon as possible.
