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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2017-09-26 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

Riverland Ice Forum

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (15:38): Today, I rise to speak about a scourge that is creeping its way into the electorate of Chaffey, but more importantly it is a scourge that is creeping its way into today's society, and that is the use of and addiction to crystal methamphetamine, known as ice. It is having a huge impact on the Riverland and the Mallee communities.

On Sunday, along with Project Ice Riverland, I assisted with the Riverland ice task force in organising a public forum in which we introduced the Matrix program to the local community. We invited PsychMed, headed up by Dr Quentin Black, to come to the Riverland and present the matrix program and to give the community an understanding of the benefits that it would have in a regional community.

He was ably assisted by Dr Phil Townshend, a clinical psychologist. We also had some Lived Experience Workers come up who had been impacted by the scourge of ice addiction and the impacts that it has not only on families and communities but on South Australia as a whole.

Project Ice in the Riverland is a collection of government and non-government organisations and community members. The forum is focused on exploring a potential solution to ongoing drug and alcohol uses in the Riverland, discussing the latest research and interventions and learning about the new pilot program addressing ice addiction. Through the public forum, we called out for the community to be a part of this process and the new Riverland drug action group is to be formed.

Recently, the Leader of the Opposition, Steven Marshall, member for Dunstan, travelled to the Riverland to announce that, if the Liberals were elected in 2018, the Riverland would have a community-based rehabilitation initiative called the Matrix program. This initiative has been running in metropolitan Adelaide and early reports suggest high levels of participant engagement with great success. The outpatient program could be supported by inpatient rapid detox beds in the Riverland region. The Matrix program has been used in the United States for more than 30 years and combines practical training for escaping addiction with frequent structured social support and the regular rewarding of participants' achievements.

In the Riverland, the pilot program will include supported detoxification, primarily in the outpatient setting, and participation in an intensive program involving regular attendance throughout the week. It is about keeping addicts and those people impacted by ice addiction busy. It is about keeping their minds active and giving them the best support possible so that they can rehabilitate and come out at the other end. It is about support from psychologists and recovered consumers. It is about those recovered consumers lending a hand and telling their story to give hope to those people who have been impacted by the scourge of ice. There will be ongoing random urine testing to provide verification of efforts to stay clean and rewards for those clean urine samples.

The Riverland has been overlooked for holding meetings by the state and federal government ice task forces. The issue is having a compounding effect—increased ice use to domestic violence, homelessness, mental health issues. The list goes on. It is having a huge effect on small regional communities. Small Riverland communities in Chaffey are being touched on a day-to-day basis by the scourge of ice and ice addiction. Many hundreds of people attended the public forum held in 2015 at the Chaffey Theatre. We also had a public forum at Lameroo in the Mallee that was attended by many hundreds of people. Those forums are about the community engaging and the community lending a hand. They are about a community that is being engaged to help those who have been overcome by this illicit drug.

The feedback from the events was that 87 per cent of the people surveyed in the Riverland and Mallee do not believe that there are enough services or resources to tackle drug use in the Riverland. The state government recently announced that they would have 15 rehab beds in regional South Australia. Where are they? Where is the funding? Where are the wraparound services that are going to support those rehab beds? As I see it, so far, it was spin. It was an announcement with nothing backing up that announcement. Again, I applaud the Riverland community, the Mallee community, for its engagement and its willingness to help.

Time expired.

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