The Greens are calling on ACT government to set up a safe injecting site before year’s end.

“In cities like Sydney and Melbourne, safe injecting rooms have been operating for years. But despite Canberra at times recording the highest rate of drug-induced deaths per capita in the country, we still don’t have one,” says leader Shane Rattenbury.

“A commitment to investigate a safe injecting room was hard-won by the Greens in the last Parliamentary Agreement – but Labor dragged their feet for most of the term, having done no work on this while holding the portfolio.

“It wasn’t until three years in, after a cabinet reshuffle handed the drug-harm reduction portfolio to Greens Minister Emma Davidson, that this critical work finally began with a review into how, not if, but how this work would happen.

“The fact is, this reform is 30 years overdue. Every delay, every review, means more preventable overdose deaths – and that is simply unacceptable.

Rattenbury has written to the health minister offering the Greens’ support for a collaborative, cross-party approach to making the sage injecting room a reality.