Rita Panahi: Flinders St injecting room a disastrous move for our struggling CBD

Melbourne’s CBD needs a massive economic boost, not a injecting room that will bring the same sort of depraved behaviour we have seen around Richmond.

Melbourne’s CBD needs a massive boost in investment, people and activity to return the city to its former glory.

What it does not need is a drug injecting room in Flinders Street that will attract addicts, drug dealers and the sort of depraved behaviour we have seen around Richmond’s supervised injecting centre.

Only an incompetent government would contemplate such a disastrous move.

Sadly, that’s precisely what we have; a government so inept it was the only one in the country to botch its COVID-19 response, has accumulated considerably more debt than any state and now seems determined to turn the CBD into a drug den.

What a wonderful way to welcome tourists back to the city. It’s not bad enough parts of Melbourne are uninviting and dead, with vacant shops and ill-at-ease individuals menacing passers-by, but now there’ll be a honey-pot effect luring more undesirables to the CBD.

Melbourne’s CBD has been hard hit by COVID. Picture: Jay Town

We have seen the grim impact of the Richmond facility on the local community and on crime.

Across Richmond and Abbotsford drug use and possession has soared in the past two years according to the Crime Statistics Agency. There has also been an increase in robberies, up 60 per cent, and anti-social behaviour with a 37 per cent jump in harassment, stalking and threatening behaviour.

Children at a nearby school have seen overdoses, violence and drug-addled individuals injecting each other in the neck. Some have needed professional help after being left traumatised by what they’ve witnessed. And, yet the facility is considered a success by the Andrews government. One would hate to see what constitutes failure.

Melbourne deserves better than this. The city has been devastated by multiple lockdowns and border closures with one in five retail outlets closing, according to a City of Melbourne survey.

Paramedics treat a man near Richmond West Primary. Picture: Jason Edwards

Lord Mayor Sally Capp needs to fight this proposal tooth and nail. Capp must stand up for traders, residents and CBD workers. It says something about Victoria that authorities have wholeheartedly embraced the notion of allowing the use of illegal substances, obtained illegally, at a government-run facility. Why have laws against illicit drug possession and use if you are going to apply it selectively?

Either legalise the use of these substances or prosecute those who break the law. The current half-pregnant approach is contradictory and send all sorts of mixed messages to dealers, users and the wider community. But what is clear is the state government is prioritising the interests of illicit drug users above residents and businesses who call Melbourne home.