Tuesday, 4 March 2025

Ministers statements: drug harm reduction

Ingrid STITT (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Mental Health, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (12:12): On the topic of a statewide drug action plan, I do want to touch on today the important issues around drug harms – how they touch our community regardless of your age, your class, your gender or your background. While some continue to play politics around the question of providing access to health care to those struggling with addiction, on this side of the house we have been getting on with the job of addressing and reducing these harms in our community. In the context of an increasingly volatile and unpredictable drug market, this work has never been more important. That is why I am happy to update the house on the rapid progress that we have made to implement our statewide action plan to reduce drug harms.

Since announcing the plan in April last year, I can confirm that our expanded AOD outreach teams are now working seven days a week, 365 days a year, across the CBD, and outreach services have now begun in Footscray and St Kilda. This is on top of the North Richmond expanded outreach program associated with the MSIR. We have appointed our state’s first chief addiction medicine adviser. We have a new health and mental health clinic now operating from the Salvation Army site at the top of Bourke Street, helping some of our CBD’s most vulnerable residents get connected to the care they need and deserve. We have expanded pharmacotherapy through community health services around the state, and that will be commencing shortly. We have passed legislation to enable the delivery of 20 naloxone vending machines in areas of high need, and design work is well underway for the dedicated community health hub in the CBD, which will host Victoria’s first hydromorphone treatment trial. Later this year we will release our AOD strategy, the first of its kind in Victoria. Stigma, judgement and misinformation do not save lives.