Melbourne City Council candidate Jennifer Yang says she’s willing to go to court to stop injecting room
A budding candidate for Melbourne City Council is vowing to go to court in order to quash any chance of the new drug injecting facility being built near the Queen Victoria Market from going ahead. Here’s why.
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A Melbourne City Council candidate has vowed to go to court if needed to quash a new drug injecting facility being built near the Queen Victoria Market.
Jennifer Yang, a former Manningham mayor and federal Labor candidate, says her Back to Business team will “take action by any means necessary” to oppose the state’s preferred location for a second city injecting centre.
“If necessary, we’ll take this battle all the way to courts,” Ms Yang said.
“Let there be no mistake. We’re here for the people and businesses of Melbourne first, second and third.”
Melbourne City Council voted against the facility — which would provide drug users medical supervision while injecting heroin or other substances — being located at Cohealth Central City on Victoria Street.
It has said another location will be sourced, something Ms Yang said her team would get right.
“We’d be insisting that disqualifying criteria should include being next door to the biggest tourism centre of Melbourne, and being close to a concentration of vulnerable social housing residents put at risk from the location,” she said.
She also accused Lord Mayor Sally Capp — who narrowly defeated Ms Yang in 2018 — as being a “handmaiden” of the government this term.
The site of the injecting room has turned into a political weapon during the council elections, with several candidates opposing the use of a location next to the Queen Vic Market and vulnerable residents.
Ms Yang said the state Department of Health and Human Services had shown recently it could get “very important things very wrong”.
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