Well thank you very much Major Watters, Assistant Commissioner, my parliamentary colleagues, ladies and gentlemen.
It';s very appropriate that today';s announcement is taking place at the Fortitude Valley Police Citizens Youth Club because the contribution of the police forces of Australia through the federal police and the police forces of the various states of Australia is fundamental to any success that we';ve had over the last few years in beginning to turn the tide on the drug challenge. And I want to start my remarks by paying tribute to the work of the men and women of the various police forces all around Australia. It';s not easy and these ladies and gentlemen deal with it at the coalface. They see the consequences, they have to break news to families of incidents and tragedies that are the result of drug abuse and we can';t pay too warm a tribute to the work that the police do, not only here in Queensland, but all around Australia and I';m delighted that the Assistant Commissioner and a number of his colleagues are here today.
Brian Watters and I have been doing this double act now for quite some time in different parts of Australia and neither of us has lost any enthusiasm. And like Major Watters, I get encouragement when statistics come out, such as those that came out a couple of weeks ago in New South Wales. We don';t say, oh the problem is solved and the tide has finally turned, that victory was within our grasp. But what we can say is that the cynics who said a tough on drugs strategy had no hope of success could well be wrong because we are starting to see a turn around. We do know, for example, that the number of people dying of heroin overdoses is continuing to fall. Since 1999, there has been a 67 per cent drop in heroin related deaths of people aged between 15 and 55 years. Now that';s not just one year, that';s over now a number of years and the indications are, and they';re backed by some of the anecdotal experience, that there is beginning to be something of a turn around.
Now not all of it is due to the Tough of Drugs strategy, some of it is due to supply changes, some of it is due to changes in use of drugs, all of those things, but quite a bit of it is due to this concerted drive that we have led at a federal level now for a period of four or five years. And the Tough on Drugs strategy has now (inaudible) about a billion dollars at a federal level invested.
And we';ve always had as our objective three things. We';ve had as an objective, of course, the law enforcement side of it, catching the criminals who traffic in human misery and no punishment, in my view, is beyond being appropriate as far as they';re concerned in terms of jail sentences and so forth. And we are seeing more effective law enforcement, there are more resources, there';s great co-operation and whenever a major seizure takes places you see the federal police and customs and the state police working in unison, working together to make sure the right result is achieved. So law enforcement';s the first thing.
The second thing is rehabilitation. We are not tough on drug users, we are tough on the habit, we are tough on the criminals but we do extend, through rehabilitation, a helping hand for those people who want to kick the habit and that helping hand is best expressed in many of the programmes that I';m announcing today and we';ve had as part of that helping hand, we';ve had the diversion programme which is run in co-operation with state governments where essentially the state governments provide the facilities that the police and the criminal justice system and we provide additional resources for rehabilitation and we basically say to people who begin to get caught up in the criminal justice system through drug use, you just pause a moment and make a decision #8211; do you want to go down that path and end up in jail and the life of crime and you';re going to end up with your life being a ruin? Or are you going to do something about it, get a hold of yourself, go into rehabilitation? And if you want to do that well we';ll give you help. That';s the philosophy of the diversion system. It operates a little bit differently in different states. They';ve got a lot of co-operation between the state governments all around Australia and the Federal Government once again and here of course again the police services have played a very major role.
And the third element of course is education. I remember when we put that booklet around several years ago it was sneered at, you know, the cynics and so forth, the people who thought this whole idea of zero tolerance or tough on drugs, whatever description you want to use, I don';t mind, either message gets the point across, people said oh that';s a waste of money. Actually, it';s turned out to be a real success and it gave many parents in Australia who had difficulty talking to their children about drugs because they couldn';t communicate all that well, it was a trigger point, it was an encouragement, it landed on the kitchen table #8211; oh it probably landed on the front doorstep #8211; but it was brought into the kitchen table and people started talking about it. We actually conducted some research afterwards and it indicated there was a very large percentage of people, said as a result of that they started talking to their children about drugs in a way they hadn';t done so before and that is so very important and we also, I also note with interest, that the whole programme surrounding that booklet and the promotion of it actually won an award from the national advertising body as being the best public information campaign on a health related issue during the rest of the year in which it was released. So from that humble beginning, can I say to you Major that that was actually an extremely valuable booklet and it';s an indication that these public health programmes can work. We';re actually very good in Australia at doing that and let me draw attention to another public health education programme some years ago under a federal government of a different political persuasion, so I';m being very even handed and that is the campaign that was conducted in relation to HIV Aids in the 1980';s, was extremely successful because we have a capacity in this country, I believe, to do those sorts of campaigns extremely well an we shouldn';t be shy of blowing our own trumpet as a nation at our success.
So that';s the philosophy behind all of this and I really am so pleased to see some tangible and hard to refute field evidence that the battle is slowly, ever so slowly being won.
But what I';m announcing today is about $18 million in grants under the Tough on Drugs for community organisations. And this is to provide treatment for rehabilitation and support for people affected by illicit drugs. And since 1998, we';ve provided for these sorts of programmes over $123 million to 200 projects. In Queensland, eight projects will receive funding. They include the Teen Challenges Drug Overdose Visitation Project, which is a collaborative initiative with the Queensland ambulance service, and this project will receive $210,000 and these funds will be used to provide support services for teenagers recovering from a drug overdose.
The We Help Ourselves new therapeutic residential programme on the Sunshine Coast will receive $1.3 million to attract women and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people into treatment.
And the Mirikai Youth Dual Diagnosis Support Programme on the Gold Coast will receive $223,000 to take, manage and provide treatment options to young people with substance abuse and mental health programmes.
What we do with this programmes is we treat expressions of interest and proposals from non-government organisations all designed to help people cope with the drug problem, to help them rehabilitate themselves and these are but three examples of the eight projects that will be funded here in Queensland and the total number of projects to be funded around Australia out of this $18 million will be $64.
This is an on-going programme. It started in 1998 for a period of four years, we';ve extended it for another four years and I';ll be extremely surprised if it doesn';t extended after that #8211; that';s not a budget promise, let me say, but it';s still a while into the future. But it is one of those things that we as a nation have to keep driving away. You don';t get immediate returns, it';s very slow and for a long period of time people sneered at it and they said he';s wasting our money, you should basically give up and legalise everything, adopt a total harm minimisation approach. I mean, it';s not that I suggested why people shouldn';t be helped, quite the reverse, I think people who have a drug problem have got to be helped. But we persevered with this and I think we have got the balance right.
We are still very effective in law enforcement. We want to help people who want to help themselves, with a little bit of persuasion in relation to dangling the options in front of them at the appropriate and most awkward time in their life. And finally and very importantly, we really want to give parents persuading their children not to start. The strongest possible message that comes out of all of this is don';t start in the first place because if you don';t start drugs in the first place, you';ll never have a problem and you won';t have to make a choice between minimisation or being (inaudible) or going cold turkey, or any of that, you won';t have any of that challenge if you don';t start it in the first place and there';s nothing than deciding at a very young age that illicit drugs is not for them and if we can get more and more young people through their parents, if the schools doing the job of community organisations then we';ll be a much better country and there';s nothing more important to continue to fight against the scourge and the evil of drugs which inflicts so much misery on so many people.
And I want to thank Brian and the members of his council and again the police and the customs and everybody who plays a vital role very particularly and specially because of the nature of today';s announcement the non-government organisations play an incredibly important role in this crusade. Thank you.
[ends]