Jacinta Allan’s big ‘I’m not Dan Andrews’ call on safe injecting rooms

Jacinta Allan and Daniel Andrews. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Crosling

Jacinta Allan has made an emphatic statement that separates her premiership from that of her predecessor Daniel Andrews on the key area of social policy.

In rejecting a second drug injecting room — the main recommendation from Labor’s official inquiry ordered before the 2022 state election — the new-ish premier has also signalled the Andrews era of crash-through politics is over.

Explaining the decision on Tuesday, Allan made it clear she was listening to the concerns of restaurateurs, traders and sections of the community about the impact of such a venue on the CBD.

“We have been unable to find a location,” she said on Tuesday, when her government finally released a 119-page report from former top cop Ken Lay.

There were, of course, plenty of potential locations.

The one most often discussed being at the Salvation Army headquarters in Bourke St, near some of the city’s best restaurants. But they were all controversial.

During his almost decade in office, Andrews moved to reshape Victorian social policy; among the most significant changes was the first medically supervised drug injecting facility (in Richmond), the introduction of euthanasia laws, the embracing of trans rights, the legalising of medicinal cannabis and the abolition of public drunkenness as an offence.

It was a radical agenda, particularly the euthanasia laws. They represented the biggest social policy change for Victoria in decades, and one that has flowed into other states which are moving to match the laws.

Andrews also knew his revolution offered a political dividend as an election strategy to suppress the Greens vote in the traditional Labor heartland inner-city seats. Labor has been fighting for two decades for control of this battlefield and the Greens already hold Richmond, Prahran, Brunswick and Melbourne.

Greens MP Ellen Sandell has made it clear the Greens will campaign hard against Labor over its rejection of the injecting facility, describing the move as “cowardly”.

Allan must have been aware of the political weapon her decision will hand the Greens, and it explains why she was keen to talk up the fact her government will invest $95m in a city “health hub” and “wrap around” drug treatment services.

In rejecting a second injecting centre on Tuesday, Jacinta Allan made a big statement about her leadership style; this is her government and she is in charge.

There is one more decision Allan needs to make to really shed the cloak of Dan — axe his multi-billion-dollar debt factory otherwise known as the suburban rail loop.