Premier Jacinta Allan promises decision on second safe injecting room in 2024

Will Melbourne get a second injecting room and where will it be? Months on from the completion of a key report, there are still no answers on the controversial facility.

A decision on a second safe injecting site in Melbourne will be made this year, according to Premier Jacinta Allan. Picture: Jason Edwards

Premier Jacinta Allan has promised Victorians that a decision on Melbourne’s second drug injecting room will be made this year.

But Ms Allan has refused to confirm whether her government still has plans to push ahead with the highly controversial facility.

In July 2020, the former Andrews government appointed former Victoria Police chief commissioner Ken Lay to conduct a report into a location for a second facility.

That report was to be finalised by the end of 2020 but it was pushed back so that it could examine changing drug use patterns throughout the pandemic.

Mr Lay’s long awaited report was finally handed to the government on June 1 last year. The government continues to sit on the report and has refused to say what it contains or recommends.

The safe injecting room at North Richmond opened in 2019. Picture: Supplied.

The Salvation Army building at Bourke St is believed to be one of the sites proposed for a second safe injecting site in Melbourne. Picture: Wayne Taylor

In her first sit-down television interview, Ms Allan told the ABC there would be a resolution this year but stopped short of committing to a second facility.

“I appreciate that this is a matter that we need to provide certainty on to the broader Victorian community and we intend to do so,” she said.

“I have read the Lay report. I took the time to read it in depth over summer.

“It’s a good report, it’s a strong report. We do need to have some further discussions with colleagues.”

In September last year, the state’s preferred provider of a second facility, Cohealth, called for the report to be released.

“Every month that we wait for a CBD overdose prevention service, another person dies needlessly,” a cohealth spokeswoman said at the time.