But missing from the fine print in Labor’s risk-averse budget was money for a smaller but equally problematic issue facing Premier Chris Minns. That is,the politically fraught area of drug reform.
NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey received a tap on the back from Premier Chris Minns after delivering the budget.AAP
In another election promise,Labor committed to holding a drug summit at some stage in its first term. Rather than responding to the former Coalition government’s lengthy $11 million inquiry into the drug ice – which included a recommendation to decriminalise drugs found in quantities for personal use and pill testing at music festivals – Minns wants Labor to hold its own summit.
Clearly,some of the findings of the special commission of inquiry,established in 2018 by former premier Gladys Berejiklian on the back of rising rates of ice addiction in the regions,were not to Labor’s liking.
Minns’ election promise was not only a back-to-the-future measure,mimicking the summit announced by Bob Carr in 1999 when heroin was killing people on the streets of Sydney,but also buys NSW Labor time to delay tough decisions around drug reform.
NSW Labor made the same promise of a drug summit ahead of its ill-fated tilt at state government in 2019. However,Minns’ timing was very different. Labor’s promised drug summit in 2019 predated the sweeping findings of the Coalition’s ice inquiry.
Dan Howard,a preeminent law professor and former NSW crown prosecutor,led the 14-month ice inquiry,hearing harrowing evidence of the impacts of drug abuse on families and communities,before producing a final report in 2020 that made 109 recommendations.
In May 2021,as Howard grew increasingly frustrated over the Coalition’s inaction on his findings,he described the inquiry as one of the most important achievements of his working life. “I find it ironic and a little sad that the thing I’ve put my very all into has achieved so very little,” he said at the time.
Eventually,after two years and eight months,the former government responded to Howard’s report,but when it did,the Coalition stopped short of supporting the decriminalisation of drugs as well as pill testing. In a sign of how divisive the issue was,the government conceded key recommendations would not be implemented before the March election.
Former attorney-general and now opposition leader Mark Speakman knows how hard it is to embark on drug reform. He desperately tried to drag his cabinet colleagues over the line several times,including with a proposal for a three-strike drug possession policy. Outspoken right-wing stalwarts,former police minister David Elliott and ex-deputy premier Paul Toole,were having none of it.
Not one to usually rock the boat,Speakman could not help expressing his disappointment when he fronted budget estimates last year,bemoaning that he had spent “hundreds of hours” trying to make progress on a response from his own side.
Just as the Coalition found drug reform close to impossible to land – even after a wide-ranging special commission of inquiry – a drug summit,and its recommendations,will be hugely divisive for Labor. On one side of the debate is the socially conservative Minns,while on the other side are leading members of the Left.
Frontbenchers Rose Jackson and Jo Haylen have long been in favour of drug law reforms,and both were part of the parliamentary patrons of the NSW Labor for Drug Law Reform during the last term of parliament. Other Labor cabinet members share the views of Jackson and Haylen.
Jackson made an early intervention this year when she told an international conference that NSW was lagging other states on the issue of drug reform,and called on her colleagues on both sides of parliament to support a trial of pill testing.
She was slapped down for freelancing,with Minns saying:“We’ll make the decision about drug law reform and any other policy changes in NSW. MPs are entitled to their view,but it’s collective decision-making.”
Minns has already preempted such collective decision-making,ruling out decriminalisation in his first term,insisting he does not have a mandate. He has also ruled out pill testing ahead of this summer’s festival season despite pleas from drug reform advocates,including the Uniting Church.
The absence of specific funding in the budget for the drug summit was not lost on sole Legalise Cannabis Party MP Jeremy Buckingham. In the finely balanced upper house,where Labor needs the support of the Greens and two others to pass legislation,Buckingham’s vote is crucial.
Minns will undoubtedly face bitter internal divisions over drug reform,but the political sensitivities extend beyond his own side. Labor needs Buckingham far more than he needs them,and Labor’s ability to pass legislation in the upper house could well be determined by how they deal with drugs.
Alexandra Smith is the state political editor.
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