Going soft on the idea of a second injecting room will make it easier for the government to sell a permanent North Richmond fixture

The state government appears to be quietly backing away from a second CBD facility, with insiders saying Daniel Andrews is personally off the idea.

Just two weeks after a final report on North Richmond’s injecting room was given to the relevant minister, the government is set to make the facility permanent.

Legislation to establish Victoria’s first ever permanent supervised injecting room is likely to be put to parliament this week.

It means the North Richmond injecting room trial, which began in 2018, will end and the facility will become a permanent fixture.

The move will anger many locals, business owners and many families of children who attend the neighbouring school.

Debate about injecting rooms is set to be put to parliament. Picture: Jason Edwards

Since the facility opened in 2018, police and ambulance triple-0 call-outs to the street have more than doubled.

The centre has been visited more than 346,000 times, and more than 6300 overdoses have been managed.

An initial review of the facility recommended extending the trial by another three years and setting up a second safe injecting room in the City of Melbourne.

The latest review was completed by John Ryan, who in 2020 was appointed chair of a new panel charged with reviewing the injecting room.

The state government is set to make the North Richmond injecting room permanent. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

Characteristically, the report remains secret.

It can only be assumed that Mr Ryan’s most recent report recommends making the facility permanent.

Sources close to the facility say the details of the report have been widely circulated inside government since December.

And legislation has been in the pipeline for months.

Surely MPs called to debate the proposed legislation, when the time comes, should have the opportunity to see the review.

As should the community, if public debate is to be encouraged.

The North Richmond facility opened in 2018. Picture: AAP

The government says it will be released publicly in the usual way.

At the same time it sets about making North Richmond a permanent facility, the government appears to be quietly backing away from a second CBD room.

There are serious concerns about what a CBD site would do to city tourism and its attempt to bounce back from being decimated by the pandemic.

Government insiders say Daniel Andrews has personally gone soft on the idea.

His commentary around the room has been noted in recent weeks.

“It’s about who is coming into the city, where in the city, how many (people),” the Premier said last week.

“All of those things are different today than they were, and therefore choosing a site that is appropriate or indeed choosing whether there will be a site – all of that is on the table.”

The report into the North Richmond injecting room remains secret. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

Scrapping the second site, or at least moving it from the CBD, will be much easier without former ministers Martin Foley and Richard Wynne no longer around the Cabinet table.

Politically, going soft on the idea of a second room will make it easier for the government to sell a permanent North Richmond fixture in the court of public opinion.

The legislation should sail through both houses.

Another piece of legislation – the new human source management laws – set to go before the upper house this week could be a much harder sell.

And it will force the government to work with the crossbench in what could be the first of many challenges of this parliamentary term.

The source management laws have already passed the lower house, but with concerns they could create another Lawyer X scandal, should be seriously debated in the upper chamber.

The legislation gives police the authority to register those with privileged information, including lawyers and journalists.

But legal experts have criticised the legislation as “sloppy and incompetent”.

There are fears the legislation would make it easier for police to register secret sources, despite the High Court urging a scandal like Lawyer X never be repeated.

What the government has to agree to in order to sway votes in favour of the Bill, remains to be seen.

And another thing …

The government has this week dismissed concerns about a collapse in operational volunteers within the CFA.

Curiously, despite volunteer numbers steadily falling for more than a decade, it is blaming Covid in part for an almost 10,000 reduction in numbers.

People are retiring earlier post-Covid, and many industries and volunteer organisations are facing workforce challenges.

That may all be right.

There has been a steady fall in the number of volunteer firefighters for more than 10 years. Picture: David Caird

But CFA insiders are warning of serious trouble ahead without urgent intervention to avoid the potential collapse of the service.

Emergency Volunteer Awareness Campaign director Garth Head was a former principal adviser to the Bracks government for Police and Emergency Services.

He says a minimum level of operational volunteers was set at 40,000 to enable simultaneous response to emergencies, allow for rotating crews to avoid exhaustion, and maintain local response service in each local brigade area.

And while the CFA insists it has never needed to draw on its full pool, the crisis will need to be addressed.

As Mr Head says, one only needs to look to the 2002-03 fires in the northeast and Ash Wednesday fires that required the entire force in order to respond, rotate crews and continue to provide local service coverage.

Victoria has also needed to import firefighters from overseas and interstate as well as use large numbers of the ADF in recent years.

Increasingly Victoria is becoming less than self-sufficient while CFA operational volunteer capacity continues to fall.

Shannon Deery is Herald Sun state politics editor.