Dear Premier Allan,

As leaders of churches in Melbourne’s CBD, we call upon you, the Premier of Victoria, and your colleague, the Victorian Minister for Mental Health, Ingrid Stitt, to honour your government’s commitment to establish a medically supervised injecting service here in the heart of the city. The need is urgent. 

Our churches have been here for almost as long as the city itself. Motivated by the call of our faith to love God and neighbour and our enduring Christian commitment to justice and the sanctity of life, we remain committed to ensuring Melbourne is a place that nurtures the wellbeing of all its citizens, including those most vulnerable.  

In just 12 months, we have lost 24 people to drug overdoses in our churches’ immediate neighbourhoods. The City of Melbourne has the highest number of heroin deaths of any Victorian local government area. The call-outs to ambulance services in response to overdoses here has increased nearly 30% in the last year. As those who seek to care, we are confronted with the realities of this every day. The anxiety on our streets is palpable, especially among those who are struggling to survive. 

Supervised injecting rooms, or overdose prevention services, recognise the complex societal factors that contribute to addition, including poverty, trauma and mental illness. These services recognise that some individuals may continue to use drugs despite efforts to discourage them. Drug use is often a response to trauma and abuse, sometimes at the hands of people who are meant to care for them. Some people may recover and then relapse many times over. They need our compassion, not our judgement.

We commend your government for establishing Victoria’s first medically supervised injecting service in North Richmond five years ago. Already, through this service, more than 1,000 people have been connected to drug treatment therapy providing a pathway out of addiction. In many cases this service has been life saving for those who find it difficult to access our health care system. Through this facility and its staff, disadvantaged people — some connected to our churches — have been connected to those who care about their welfare and are able to support them in a process of change, providing wrap-around support that addresses more than their drug use alone. 

While the debate surrounding the establishment of such services has become highly politically, there is no controversy when it comes to scientific evidence. Studies of more than 120 injecting services around the world demonstrate that they are one of the most effective tools in addressing serious harm caused by drug dependence in our community. According to Co-Health Fitzroy’s Dr Paul MacCartney, one of Melbourne’s leading specialists in addiction medicine, “these services work.” 

In our view, we cannot pretend any longer that that the need to provide appropriate care to those in the grip of addictions and related mental health challenges does not exist, nor that this need can be hidden or pushed elsewhere. We cannot imagine our city as one that welcomes only those who are healthy and well-resourced and leaves others on its edges. We are all diminished by such an approach. For this reason we support the implementation of our state government’s decision, made in 2020, to provide a medically supervised injecting service here in the city as a matter of urgency. 

It cannot wait.

We are open to meeting with you to discuss how we can support your government to move forward with this life saving initiative.

Sincerely,

• Rev Dr Simon Carey Holt, Collins Street Baptist Church
• Rev Rachel Kronberger, The Wesley Church
• Rev Dr Margaret Maymen, St Michael’s Uniting Church
• Pastor James Winderlich, St John’s Lutheran Church