A disgruntled somebody appears to have dumped a whole lot of syringes in a bin 2 doors away from the drug-injecting room in Kings Cross, and then phoned the Daily Terrorgraph to come and see what the dreadful druggies were doing to the area. If s/he wanted to be just a bit more convincing, perhaps s/he should have stuck the needles in a bit of chuck steak and drawn a bit of blood so that they looked like they’d been used, instead of dumping sparkling clean obviously never used syringes in the bin.
Not that the discrepancy between a vista of sparkling clean syringes and the alleged health threat of dirty contaminated needles worried the Terror at all as they ran with the story like a drunk at Pamplona: a big picture of the needles in the bin, and a story opening thus:
THESE are the photographs that shame the so-called “safe” injecting room in Kings Cross – dozens of syringes spilling from a bin in a public street.
At best, the photographs prove critics’ claims that the taxpayer-funded centre is a honeypot that attracts and keeps drug addicts in the area.
At worst, they show that centre staff are exposing the public to potentially deadly blood-tainted needles by showing no care in their disposal.
The bins overflowing with syringes have stood for three days on a footpath at the rear of the Kings Cross Medically Supervised Injecting Centre in Kellett St – in the path of pedestrians and school children.
The Terror’s story claims that the owner of a neighboring restaurant, who asked not to be named, phoned the council the day before to complain about the syringes as an ongoing problem that was a threat to his business. (The Terror obligingly named his restaurant even though it refrained from naming him). The story also acknowledged briefly that the injecting centre told them that the needles were not theirs and that they have a policy of removing any discarded drug paraphernalia found on the street, but that didn’t stop them slanting the story to cast doubt on the injecting centre’s claims. The Sydney Morning Herald noted how the message was pushed even harder in the Terror’s opinion pages:
“It’s been said before, but it needs to be said again and again until it is done – this place needs to be shut down now,” said the Daily Telegraph newspaper in an editorial.
That editorial appears to be now unavailable online, since the SMH, ABCNews and others pointed out the simple rebuttal by the clinic’s director, Dr Ingrid van Beek:
“It would appear likely to be a stunt,” Dr van Beek said.
“None of the many syringes had actually been used. They had been taken out of their packets, the caps were removed, and they were strewn on top of a garbage bin.
“There were no traces of blood or drugs in any of the syringes. They were most certainly not syringes used by drug users.
“They were also not the brand of syringes distributed in this area.”
On ABC Radio 702, Dr Van Meek told Richard Glover that she was not accusing the Daily Telegraph of setting up the photo themselves, but suspected that a third party had done so and called the newspaper. Radio 2GB notes that the newspaper denies setting up the photos, and then rather sniffily notes that:
“Managers of the centre say the syringes pictured in the paper were not from the injecting room, despite being directly outside the building.”
They then quote the Terror’s editor getting on his high horse:
“Editor of The Daily Telegraph, David Penberthy, has told 2GB’s Chris Smith a safe injection room is a great euphemism.
“Talk about tarting things up. It’s the most unsavory, physically and mentally damaging lifestyle you can lead and here we are as taxpayers underwriting it,” he said.”
The outrage over the centre being “taxpayer-funded” is also a card played by others:
” NSW opposition leader Peter Debnam, who has previously called for the closure of the injecting room, held a press conference on the back of the Telegraph’s revelations earlier today.
He denied the conference was knee-jerk reaction to the story and said he had no information about its veracity.
“I’m aware some people are questioning the Telegraph story today, that’s not an issue I have any information on at all.
” … I’m [discussing injection rooms] today because it’s another opportunity for me to repeat my opposition to a tax-payer funded injecting room.” “
The critics here are disingenuously eliding the difference between state-funded and taxpayer-funded. The NSW Government does fund the centre, but it does so using money seized from criminals – not tax money. And should that matter anyway, when despite the continuing objections of a few locals, most residents and businesses in Kings Cross support the injecting-room as beneficial to the area?
” NEARLY three-quarters of local residents and businesses support the injecting centre at Kings Cross, reporting a significant decrease in public drug use and rejecting the idea it encourages people to inject drugs.
Support was strongest among residents and businesses who were in the area before it was established, providing further evidence of the success of the centre, which has dramatically reduced overdose deaths. “
Prohibition increases the costs of obtaining drugs and creates the need for ‘taxpayer funded’ syringes in the first place as users have to economise given the inflated prices they pay for the stuff. Regulation begets subsidy and more regulation.
Legalise drugs and then there’d be no need for subsidised syringes and injecting rooms. And if it were legal, drug users wouldn’t all need to flock to special areas. What say you, Peter Debnam?
There was a time when the Young Liberals would be contradicting the State party on this but alas the takeover by the troglodytes is complete.
Hear, hear. You’d also knock over a lot of crimes against property if people didn’t have to steal to afford smack and comparable drugs. The libertarian solution is the most elegant and rational.
Psssst! look over here.
Just kidding.
The War on Drugs is socialism gone mad. Not surprising to see that that Utopian Eschatologist Andrew Bolt has written so much on it.
And when can we see your membership of the NSW Liberal Party as part of the libertarian putsch, Mister Soon?
I oppose the heroin injecting room also.
I do support French cognac, Spanish sherry and Scotch malt whisky degustation rooms to be provided by every local government area, to enable those suffering from alcohol problems to ease their terrible suffering off the footpaths.
Now there’s a policy proposal worth considering…
Drugs should be legalised and free to users.I suggest users should be put on a continuous intravenous drip of the drug of their choice until they have expired.This would stop them robbing my fucking place,and free up a hospital bed for someone that is really sick.
Andrew Bolt a socialist? God I love them Libertarian young fogeys!
Well, I live in the Cross – near the injecting rooms too – and I support the existence of the injecting room whole-heartedly. In fact if there are any heroin users here or anyone contemplating taking up heroin (I’ve never tried it but I’ve read my Burroughs and I’ll heed his warning, thank you) please please please use the injecting rooms! I do not appreciate people using drugs on my front doorstep, nor does my land-lord. Starfting the day skipping over used needles and someone’s vomit isn’t nice.
But I can live with it. It doesn’t irritate me more than ooh, say, Bush Blair and Johnny Howard – to put things in perspective.
What I suspect is driving this campaign on the part of the Terror etc is real estate property values. I think there’s a few people out there who’d prefer to see Kings Cross far more gentrified than it is.
And for the benefit of the Daily Terror and any other interested party there is a free 24 hour hot-line supplied by the City of Sydney council for anyone to who isn’t game to clear away the needles:
1800 633 353
There’s also a little blurb here on the flyer worth reproducing for total smart arse value:
Jason, I thought Prohibition was a cornerstone of liberalism: a tax free drug/grog industry!
I don’t believe that a “third party” was responsible. I’m totally of the view that the Telegraph connived in setting the scam up. Just when you think that we’ve plumbed the nadir of journalistic vileness, along comes the Tele to prove that there’s still a way to go.
David Penberthy is probably the most loathsome piece of wombat’s do to edit the Tele in a long while.
The irony is that the Tele’s new online format allowed readers to instantaneously – and overwhelmingly – rebut the contrived crapology they published with the exception of one lone poster who demanded that “all of the injecting rooms be closed down.”
Ingrid van Beek has my vote for Australian of the Year.
??? Sorry Christo I don’t get ya.
My point is simply that there is no better illustration of the law of unintended consequences (which conservatives like Bolt are fond of deploying against, say, sole parent payments) than Prohibition.
Geoff, I wanted to make it clear that van Beek was on record rejecting any claim on her part that the Terror set up the photos.
I think that it is a very judicious move on her part, and felt it likewise behooved me to make her position clear. No point in giving the Terror a “falsely accused” hook on which to hang further aggrieved outrage.
Well, Jason, if you have an industry that is illegal you are not going to declare any income therefrom, right?
Therefore it makes it so much easier to operate without any government scrutiny whatsoever: a perfect liberal commercial situation.
Where this theory falls flat and reveals my ignorance is how money-laundering comes in. Doesn’t the taxman get a cut of laundered money? Sorry, I’m not an accountant or a drug dealer.
As for the law of unintended consequences, I don’t think that only socialist policies are subject to that. I think (hope!) that Howard’s IR “revolution” will be a perfect example… : )
Are the police investigating this? There are several laws which have been broken – fraud and public endangerment spring to mind.
silkworm, I imagine Monica Attard of Mediawatch has had a huge smile on her face all day, and if there’s any charges that ought to be laid she’ll tell us all about them on Monday night.
Although I imagine it could be difficult to establish who actually put the syringes in the bin in order to bring charges, unless the silly sausage who couldn’t be arsed to sling a bit of cowblood around was also silly enough to leave a nice clear print on the syringes collected from the bin by the injecting centre.
“The risk of contracting HIV or Hepatitis C from a publicly discarded used needle is extremely low. There has yet to be a single case in Australia of a member of the public acquiring HIV or Hepatitis C from a needle stick injury.”
In fact, probably impossible more than a half hour or so after the needle is discarded, dependent on the amount of blood present on the external surfaces of the needle. A syringe filled with infected blood in the airtight vacuum is different but the odds on discovering such a syringe is about 1 in 10,000,000 of discarded syringes, let alone contriving to have it accidentally inject itself into your bloodstream.
Where infection does occur, it’s either via immediate vein to vein transfer in injecting drug use or, in occupational settings, where a healthcare worker draws infected blood and accidentally “sticks” the needle immediately thereafter.
Apart from that, risk is pretty much zero.
Unreasoning fear is much more infectious
David Penberthy, trashing ‘unsavoury, physically and mentally damaging lifestyle’ habits?
Heh.
hey christo
I went over to the blog on the smh site and most people would agree with you, and I’d agree too. Yes, the centre is much needed. Gentrification is responsible for this massive assault on heroin users and streetwalkers. Streetwalkers are also being systematically ran out of town in not only dark back streets a long way off William St, but also just off the corners at William St too. I’ve personally witnessed this. New rich residents aggressively lobby police and clovermoore to get rid of the whole lot of us. I don’t know what a burroughs is and for years didnt contemplate trying heroin, but did a couple of times, used it again regularly and well you’ve got the obvious. WE have a right to be treated with humanity and dignity. Of course we don’t have rich mates at town hall and macquarie street to make the cops persecute our enemies like our new rich adversaries do. Really, just leave us alone. Anyone concerned about this “problem” should examine the total failure of probitition. Decades ago heroin and morphine could be got from a local pharmacy quite affordably on prescription.
Exactly, PC.
Is this the same David Penberthy who famously called Woomera & Villawood “Five Star Asylums” and later, under duress, confessed he’d made up the story and never been to either?
Yes, Clover Moore has been up to a lot of silly stuff recently too, what with restrictions here there and everywhere – only x number of shops allowed in this vicinity, no spruikers and so on. Don’t blame everything on the gentry! I don’t mind oxford st/the cross being the way it is. I like some anarchy in my neighbourhood! People who want to live on the north shore – well, go live on the north shore.
Must have been a slow news day for the Telegraph.
It is however the only newspaper available in Sydney which is small enough to read on the train!
No, SATP, this is a REGULAR news day at the Tele.
Some other train-sized newspapers in Sydney, for steve:
Financial Review
Sydney Star Observer
Most of the Cumberland Group local papers
Green Left Weekly (though I wouldn’t piss on it let alone pay $3)
And they’re still at it.
So far there’s only three comments to today’s continuation of the story: two from locals – one resident, one nurse at St Vincent’s – who both want the injecting room to stay open because it has improved the area immensely and saves hospital ER resources by minimising overdoes. The third comment tells us that Jeebus saved him from the dreaded ganja weed way back when and that’s what the drug addicts really need, which is probably a genuinely held belief despite being sadly way oversimplistic.
The Tele is asserting this morning that “local residents” have “slammed claims of a stunt” without, of course, disputing the fact that it almost certainly was a stunt. Why a bunch of unused fits, not from MSIC stock, suddenly turned up conveniently adjacent to MSIC premises remains an urban mystery.
Meanwhile somebody called Larissa Cummings (who “broke” yesterday’s non-story) is fantasising about how the MSIC has brought drugs to the Cross and ruined Darlinghurst Rd which was apparently a hooker, drugs and sleaze free zone up until two years ago – a bit like Killara with more neon maybe? – when the wicked old MSIC arrived.
She’s obviously smoking something.
Our posts crossed, Geoff. Thanks for letting me know about Cumming’s latest effort.
Goodness her style is clunky. First get in the whinges and outrage, then plop in an emotionless couple of paragraphs detailing the MSIC’s rebuttal for a faux sense of ‘balance’, then get excited again as the article concludes with what’s closest to the Terror’s heart – how is all this affecting moneymaking in the area?
She’s writing by penberthy’s numbers, isn’t she?
Couldn’t believe the crap in yesterday’s Tele, which actually outdid the rubbish in todays. How about this line “The community’s verdict is unanimous: The clean-up of Kings Cross and the trial of the MSIC has failed.”
Which is strange, considering 3/4 of local residents actually support the MSIC.
Can I suggest that anyone associated with a political party/trade union/other group, ask their group if they’d like to pass a motion supporting the MSIC, or do other supportive things?
Cristo, so you’re a local too – I live in Elizabeth Bay. In case some people don’t know, part of the campaign against the injecting centre is this:
(i) a lot of businesses in Darlinghurst Rd (which the MSIC is on) have gone bust and there are lots of shops for lease
(ii) the existence of the MSIC is somehow to blame or is correlated with this
(iii) it should at the least move from its current location
I’ve tried to work out how (ii) could be true, and it’s quite difficult to do! One idea is that the MSIC makes the area a honeypot for users – but the local police have stated that the MSIC doesn’t make the area a honeypot. More reasonable ideas are that
a. lots of local hotels have been converted into apartments, so there aren’t nearly as many tourists,
b. rents might have gone up a lot (there are heaps of pubs/poker machine joints etc),
c. existing businesses weren’t meeting the market. Blinkys, a photography/photocopier shop, which was next door (or nearly next door) to the MSIC, closed down maybe 6 months ago. It didn’t offer the processing of photos in digital camers, plus it was dark, dirty and dinghy.
Dinghy? I meant dingy! My first thought is that Blinky’s wasn’t meeting the market. Apparently it’s owner has complained about the MSIC.
Of course they have, Sacha. They’re a business owner, an entrepreneur, almost godlike in their divine wisdom! If their business failed, it must be somebody else’s fault!
As a matter of interest Christo the ATO does not care whether your income is legal or not as long as you declare the income and pay the taxes.
There was a case, not that long ago, of a drug dealer that outraged many people. He was allowed a tax deduction for drugs/cash stolen from his backyard. The ATO wanted to tax him on the proceeds of his illegal activities, so the court held he was entitled to the tax deduction as any other business would be if their takings or stock were stolen!
You may also be interested to know that have an “Occupation Guide” for workers in the sex industry outlining what deductions they can claim.
Yes, and the ATO are quite assiduous in pursuing illegal operators in the sex industry for taxes.
They might have changed tack over deductions, though – aren’t they taking the AWB to court over the tax deduction they claimed for bribing Saddam?
Mark,
there was talk the ATO may review their claims for deductions for.
The reason AWB may be pursued is that the bribes paid are made specifically non-deductible by sections of the Tax Act.
It is even more interesting to note this amendment was made in 2000.
” The Government is introducing this measure to support global moves to discourage bribery in international business transactions” according to the second reading speech. It also only applies to bribes AWB made after 1st July 1999.
I’m not sure how hard the ATO will pursue this. I am thinking they will probably settle, along the lines of settlement ala Gerard Industries!
Blaming the injecting room for the current property and retail business downturn is absolute bullshit.
The Cross has looked like a war zone for the past couple of years due to the road/footpath works. These works were massive (in scale and duration) and have now only just been completed.
Retail rents have been going nowhere for years (since the Olympics). Despite cheaper rents, most of the Banks have all moved down the road to new buildings at Potts Point (and those that haven’t are trying to move out). Meanwhile, Mega developments like the new shopping centre at Bondi Junction haven’t helped. The local Chamber of Commerce would be going nuts.
I’d bet that Debnam’s team has something to do with the syringe set up. Like the Terrorgraph, this lot don’t give a fig about saving lives, or the damage their populist bullshit causes.
I reckon the fact that a lot of hotels have closed down is a pretty plausible explanation for the empty shops…
tiny tyrant’s right – the footpath treatments and roadworks were disruptive for a long time…
Not to mention the fact that small businesses in general have been finding the going tough. Double Bay also has lots of vacant shops at the moment but they haven’t got a convenient injecting room to blame though. Other suburbs in the area are suffering similarly from competition from the Bondi Junction Westfields and the economy generally.
“Double Bay also has lots of vacant shops at the moment but they haven’t got a convenient injecting room to blame though.”
Poor dears.
Lordy. Has Double Bay really sunk that far? Aren’t there enough plastic surgery altered women to keep the boutiques alive? Quelle horreur!
It turns out the syringes belong to…
…a diabetic cat called Trotsky.
You couldn’t make it up.
They don’t call this postmodernity for nothing.
Thanks for the update, Bill – I missed Media Watch this week and had despaired of Monica getting stuck into this story.
I’ve been sitting here trying to think of a smartarse one-liner and I’m totally blank. It’s just too weird a twist. You’re right – you simply couldn’t make it up.
One thing that wasn’t made clear on “Media Watch’ (though it does show up in the transcript) is that the Trotsky story was a “City Hub” scoop – which presumably accounts for the fact that Fairfax has pretty much ignored it.
“City Hub” is a monthly free-to-street newspaper covering the inner city, targeted at the 20-35 demographic., and it’s a bit of a coup for them to have taken News Ltd down.
Good on them.
At last it wasn’t a bag of ice picks.
I gather Trotsky’s still unavaible for any comment that doesn’t include the promise of dangled prawn tails.
Trotsky has done a photo op with City Hub (he’s on the cover with a pick – nice eponymous historical analogy touch – sticking out of his shoulder, looking slightly zoned). He’s presumably in negotiations with Harry M re comment.