Caleb Bond: Flinders St injecting room undermines push to revitalise CBD

Melbourne’s CBD is on life support. The last thing it needs is an injecting room on the doorstep of Flinders Street Station.

A homeless man near the corner of Elizabeth and Flinders St. Picture: Alex Coppel.

There is no question the Melbourne CBD needs a shot in the arm.

One only has to wander around the city and sight the umpteen “for lease” signs – new ones seemingly popping up every week – and the subdued lunch trade.

Melbourne City Council has some genuine and sensible ideas to invest in and revitalise the city but they seem to have missed the one shot in the arm the city does not need – a drug injecting room.

Nowhere in the council’s expensive pitch to the state and federal governments is there an acknowledgment that an injecting room in the heart of the city, still planned by the state, would discourage people from visiting.

The Flinders St building earmarked for the medically supervised centre, bought last year by the Andrews government, was apparently chosen for its proximity to the southern end of Elizabeth St where drug addicts and beggars regularly gather.

The former Yooralla building on the doorstep of Flinders Street Station is the proposed site of the new injecting room. Picture: Mark Stewart

That the Melbourne City Council does not see that this would simply attract more unsavoury behaviour to the doorstep of Flinders Street Station and consider opposing it a top priority for restoring the city’s visitors is astounding.

While many of the homeless who gather on Elizabeth St are harmless, it is not uncommon to find discarded needles, broken wine bottles and people using drugs.

Fights, shouting and petty theft are also common.

The street itself is an eyesore. It is dirty, covered in graffiti and generally unkempt.

It is the first thing many people see when they alight the train in the city. As a gateway to the CBD, it fails at almost every turn.

A medically supervised injecting room might remove some of the blatantly public drug use from the street but it would simply attract more people to spill out, drug affected, on to Elizabeth St.

The Elizabeth St precinct is already an eyesore. Picture: Alex Coppel.

The council is right to suggest that public servants should be forced to come back to the office and the purchasers of residential property in the city should be given stamp duty concessions.

But while bringing people into the city is one thing, they need a reason to stay.

Why would an office worker want to come into the city and be accosted by someone on Elizabeth St when they could work from home, looking out the window into their garden, and then pick their children up from school at 3pm?

Just ask the traders in the area what they think.

The existing injecting room at North Richmond has attracted myriad complaints for nearby drug use and dealing.

It would be no different on Flinders St.

Melbourne City Council’s top two priorities for a city people want to come back to should be cleaning up Elizabeth St and making sure it is not further tarnished by encouraging drug addicts to the area.

Originally published as Caleb Bond: Flinders St injecting room undermines push to revitalise CBD