Melbourne will not get a second injecting room while Allan is premier

Premier Jacinta Allan has declared Victoria will never get a second injecting room under her leadership, after the government failed to identify a CBD location that would not hurt the city’s shopping strips and stigmatise vulnerable drug users.

Allan abandoned the four-year-old policy on Tuesday, against the recommendations of former police commissioner Ken Lay’s report, which the government requested in 2020 when it promised to open a safe injecting room in the CBD. The government remains committed to the existing North Richmond facility, which first opened as a trial in 2018.

Ken Lay’s report recommended a second safe injecting room be built in Melbourne, but Premier Jacinta Allan’s government has rejected this.Credit: Justin McManus, Eddie Jim

Lay said there was evidence the facilities saved lives, and drug and alcohol experts mourned the lost policy expansion.

The premier – while conceding the outcome was disappointing – instead announced a $95.11 million package to fund support services, an expansion of opioid replacement therapy and begin work on a broader drug strategy.

“This issue of the location has been a sticking point. We have been unable to find a location that strikes the right balance between supporting people who use drugs with the needs of the broader community,” Allan said.

“We could continue for years to search for a location. We’ve chosen to take action now, putting in place a statewide action plan that will save lives, that will support people right across the state and also build for the future.

“This now puts a line under a second injecting facility in Victoria.”

Salvation Army commanding officer Brendan Nottle said he had mixed emotions about the announcement, having offered the charity’s Bourke Street location up for an injecting room.

Nottle said he wanted to remind Victorians that drug users are also human beings, “rather than us continuing the situation that we currently have in the CBD, where it’s ‘us and them’.”

Mental Health Minister Ingrid Stitt said she didn’t want to waste time continuing “a divisive debate within the CBD that only serves to further stigmatise people”.

Every possible site has been beset with community campaigns against it.

Lay found there was broad support for a CBD facility, but said businesses and residents were nervous about safety, amenity and the challenges thrown up by COVID-19.

Australian Hotels Association chief executive Paddy O’Sullivan said Melbourne’s pubs and hotels supported the decision not to go ahead, while Police Association secretary Wayne Gatt said the announcement was pragmatic.

Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry head Paul Guerra said CBD businesses did not want an injecting room nearby but did want vulnerable communities cared for under Tuesday’s package.

“It’s a good outcome for business, it’s a good outcome for tourists, and it’s a good outcome for the safety perceptions in the CBD as well,” Guerra said.

Three mental health ministers and two premiers have hesitated over the policy to establish a CBD injecting room, which was announced by then-premier Daniel Andrews in June 2020 on the recommendation of Professor Margaret Hamilton. The government later commissioned Lay to conduct a report.

Heroin-related overdose deaths in the City of Melbourne have escalated in the years since.

There were 24 deaths in 2022 – the highest figure in a decade – which put the City of Melbourne ahead of all other local government areas, including the City of Yarra, which is home to the North Richmond facility. Ambulance callouts also reached 158 in the local government area in the year to June 2022.

The Salvation Army’s Brendan Nottle had offered the charity’s Bourke Street location as a potential site.Credit: Justin McManus

As part of Tuesday’s announcement, the government said it would turn the Yooralla building into a $36.4 million health hub run by cohealth, and 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 package expands pharmacotherapy placements by 1500 at up to 30 locations around the state. But Victoria has almost 10,000 fewer pharmacotherapy placements than NSW, according to a separate review into the North Richmond site by John Ryan, that was released last year.

Ryan, the chief executive of the Penington Institute, which advocates for treatment for drug users, said the government needed to boost its responses as a matter of urgency without a second injecting room.

“The evidence tells us that we can cut the number of overdoses and deaths when people have access to a medically supervised injecting site,” he said.

Ryan’s review found the existing facility had saved up to 63 lives and safely managed 6000 overdoses.

The Allan government also announced that St Vincent’s Hospital would help run the North Richmond facility, which had been managed by North Richmond Community Health.

Lay said the government should trial a discreet CBD site with just four to six booths, with broader support services acting as a “gateway” to engage vulnerable people.

The bigger and permanent North Richmond site has treated more than 300 people for Hepatitis C, provided more than 800 with opioid replacement therapies and referred more than 3340 to other health and housing support programs.

Opposition mental health spokeswoman Emma Kealy said Allan’s announcement was the right outcome after years of uncertainty.

“The real-world consequence of Labor’s indecision is four lost years where meaningful steps to reduce drug dependence and harm could’ve been taken, including through increased support and rehabilitation services,” Kealy said.

The Keep Our City Alive campaign of CBD residents and businesses, which supported a second injecting room, said lives would continue to be unnecessarily lost to overdoses.

Allan said it was a hypothetical when asked if she accepted more lives could be saved if a second facility was opened on top of the “statewide action plan” she announced.

Victorian Alcohol and Drug Association chief executive Chris Christoforou said the government’s important announcements were offset by the decision not to proceed with the 2020 commitment.

“Fear and stigma continue to cruel good public policy,” Christoforou said.

The association welcomed the development of a statewide alcohol and other drug strategy after decades of “piecemeal” reform and funding for pharmacotherapy, Christoforou said.

The Greens said Allan’s announcement was a “spineless captain’s call” that would cost lives.

“Labor under Jacinta Allan seems to be back-tracking on any progressive reforms introduced under Daniel Andrews,” the Greens’ Melbourne MP and new party leader, Ellen Sandell, said.

Dr Nico Clark, the former medical director of the North Richmond facility, said he felt the government had become nervous despite the report finding broad support for a CBD facility, because of the stigma around heroin use.

“There was an opportunity to overcome that stigma, and it looks like the government has lost its nerve to continue building on the good work it has done in Richmond,” Clark said.

But Sharon Neven, who lives near the North Richmond injecting room, said she didn’t want CBD residents to have the “same burden we live with”.

“What about us? What is the government going to do about us? It is unfair.”

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