The Greens’ Amanda Bresnan has made a novel proposal to head off objections by prison guards to a needle and syringe program.
delegates of Corrections staff should be given the opportunity to visit and observe prisons in Europe that successfully run needle and syringe programs, in order to better understand what is proposed at the AMC.
“Corrections staff are key stakeholders and it’s important that they are given the chance to talk to their peers who have run similar programs elsewhere,” Ms Bresnan said.
“It is common practise for government to take a delegation to examine services that they are considering implementing or replicating, including if this is overseas. In July 2008, a team funded by ACT Health travelled to the United Kingdom to observe the structure and operations of established Nurse Walk in Centres.
“Corrections staff should be given the opportunity to visit overseas needle and syringe programs, so they are actually seeing how these programs work on the ground.
Why should anyone get their snout out of the taxpayer funded travel trough?