Caleb Bond: CBD injecting room on Flinders St is the worst place the state government could choose

If junkies are the first sight people get when they alight the train on Flinders St they will stop coming and the CBD will never recover.

If the state government is serious about revitalising Melbourne’s CBD, it must immediately scrap plans for a second drug injecting room.

The response from city businesses has been emphatic – you put this thing opposite Flinders Street Station and it will discourage people from coming in to spend their money.

That is the last thing Melbourne needs.

The government has, unfortunately, been a handbrake on the CBD when it should have been championing our great city.

Density limits – that lasted too long – discouraged people from going to bars, restaurants and pubs.

When those limits were finally lifted last Friday evening, it was like someone flicked a switch.

The city was full. People were everywhere. I saw more traffic going through the city than I have in six months.

Melbourne felt like it was getting its buzz back.

A man openly injects drugs into his leg only a few hundred metres from the safe injecting room. Picture: Jason Edwards

That will hopefully only get better when we can take our masks off this weekend and people start returning to the office.

But if junkies are the first sight people are met with when they alight the train on Flinders St, they will stop coming in.

That section of Flinders St, and Elizabeth St around the corner, are bad enough as it is.

On any given day you can watch people shooting up, swilling wine from the bottle or engaging in borderline violent arguments.

Discarded needles and broken glass are common.

The surrounds are dirty and unkempt. And this is supposed to be the gateway to the city.

The former Yooralla building, bought by the government last year at a cost of $40.3m, has been earmarked as the preferred sight for another injecting room because of its proximity to Elizabeth St where many drug users already gather.

But it doesn’t take a genius to work out that putting a place to use drugs near somewhere that people already use drugs would only attract more drug users.

And sure, it might stop some people from shooting up on the street and discarding their needles on the footpath.

Drug use in Lennox st Richmond, just outside the injecting rooms. Picture: Alex Coppel.

But once they step outside of the injecting room and on to the street, we still have to deal with their drug-affected behaviour.

You can still find plenty of people shooting up outside the Richmond injecting room.

I understand that no one wants an injecting room on their doorstep and there is no “good” place to put one, but if the government is hellbent on opening another, Flinders St is possibly the worst place in the state to pick.

Our city needs investment and, more importantly, it needs confidence.

Businesses have been battered not only by the longest cumulative lockdown in the world but the continued absence of customers as they work from home.

They need to feel like their trade will return to normal and that the state government is with them, not against them.

Until Daniel Andrews commits to not opening an injecting room in the heart of the CBD, it will be hard for businesses to find that confidence.

Originally published as Caleb Bond: CBD injecting room on Flinders St is the worst place the state government could choose