Melbourne set for second drug injecting room near Queen Victoria Market

The North Richmond trial will be extended for three years, with another site added near the Queen Victoria Market.

A security guard outside the safe injecting room at North Richmond community centre, which will have its trial extended by three years. Picture: Wayne Taylor

The Andrews government will establish a new drug injecting room near Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Market, as well as extending the existing trial in North Richmond for three years.

The move has opened up a split between the police association, which says the North Richmond facility has caused a spike in crime in the area, and their incoming Chief Commissioner Shane Patton, who appeared alongside Premier Daniel Andrews to offer support for the extension of the trial.

Mr Andrews said his government’s decision to keep the North Richmond injecting room open had been based on the findings of an 18 month review chaired by drug and alcohol harm reduction expert Professor Margaret Hamilton.

Professor Hamilton’s review found that in its first 18 months, the facility had received 119,000 visits from drug users and saved at least 21 lives.

Mental Health Minister Martin Foley said that since it opened in June 2018, people had injected themselves with drugs at the facility 144,000 times, with a total of 4,350 individual clients using the facility.

Mr Andrews and Mr Foley said the panel had recommended setting up a second facility at cohealth Central community health centre on Victoria Street between Swanston and Elizabeth streets in the City of Melbourne, to take pressure off the North Richmond injecting room and further reduce drug harm in the community.

Between January 2015 and September 2019 there were 51 heroin-related deaths in the City of Melbourne.

Mr Andrews, who reversed his government’s policy on injecting rooms in the lead-up to Northcote by-election battle against the Greens in late 2017, said he had taken “some convincing” to establish the trial.

The new facility will be located near the Queen Victoria Market.

“But when you have expert after expert, law enforcement, ambulance service, doctors, people who have spent their entire life providing drug and alcohol support to a very vulnerable group of people, and then of course when you hear stories of families that will never again be whole … you have to rethink things,” he said.

Police Association secretary Wayne Gatt said the decision to not only extend the North Richmond trial, but set up a new CBD facility, was “deeply concerning”.

“Our members, who police the immediate precinct around the Richmond North facility, have emphatically told us that it’s directly responsible for a spike in a whole raft of crimes in the area, including theft, burglaries and drug use in vehicles,” Mr Gatt said.

“These concerns, which have repeatedly been echoed by the local community, are validated by crime statistics.”

However, soon-to-be Chief Commissioner Patton said local police were “supportive of the trials”.

“It’s stopping people dying. That’s what it’s about,” Mr Patton said.

“We’re very comfortable with the medically supervised injecting room trials continuing.”

The government will need to pass legislation in parliament to establish the second site.

Mr Andrews also announced a $9m investment in the area around the North Richmond facility for “neighbourhood renewal”, including significant improvements to the nearby public housing estate, upgrades to landscaping and open green spaces, playgrounds and community rooms, and extra lighting.