CITY DEFERS DRUG INJECTION PLAN
THE City’s youngest elected member says Fremantle needs drug injecting rooms to make families feel safe?
Speaking to the City’s proposed health and wellbeing plan 2026 to 2031, Cr Jemima Williamson-Wong told council this week that the Labor government did not support the idea, “but we don’t know who the state government is necessarily going to be made up of by the time it’s 2031”.
She said: “We know the community is upset and feels unsafe because of open drug use. Supervised drug use facilities are obviously providing public safety, drug user safety, they produce a reduction in deaths from overdose and also connect drug users to rehabilitation and support services.
“But one of the key financial outcomes is that there is a dramatic reduction in the strain on emergency services and responding to overdoses and overdose deaths. It would be interesting to see the statistics, they would have them somewhere, on how many overdoses are responded to in Fremantle.
“The cost to the state, the people, you know, etc.”
She said by 2031, this could be, “something that may suit Fremantle”.
She added Fremantle may not be the most ideal place in WA for such a facility, “but I do think we would be up there, you would want these facilities to exist where drug use already happens and we know that is Fremantle”.
WA has the highest number of overdose deaths per capita in Australia, according to the Penington Institute. The annual number of overdose deaths almost doubled between 2001 and 2023. In 2023, the number of deaths per 100,000 people climbed to 8.5 in WA.
In its 2024 overdose report, the drug policy research group records 41 deaths in Fremantle; Melville 40; Cockburn 72; Belmont-Victoria Park 45; Rockingham 54; Mandurah 67; Perth 73; and highest Stirling 119.
The Salvation Army’s 2025 social justice stocktake found that 49.5 per cent of respondents considered alcohol and drug misuse as an issue in Fremantle.
Across Fremantle’s local primary health network, the rate of drug-induced deaths was higher than the state average, with 12.2 deaths per 100,000.
Elected members voted unanimously to defer advertising the City’s proposed plan that was prompted by ‘local health data’ that showed while Fremantle residents experience, “high overall wellbeing”, they faced several challenges such as lower-than-target immunisation rates, suicide and self-harm rates, high levels of alcohol-related risk, homelessness and housing stress.
The officer’s stated the idea of injecting rooms, “was considered but has not been included in the current document as there are currently no sanctioned supervised drug consumption facilities operating anywhere in WA. Any facility of this type would require amendments to state drug legislation, making this firmly a State Government matter rather than one within local government’s remit, although advocacy in this area could be pursued in future if deemed a priority”.
Safe rooms or ‘honeypots’?
ON March 16, 2023, Cannabis party member Brian Walker moved a motion in WA parliament calling on the McGowan government to review drug injecting room evidence from a Victorian trial in North Richmond, where, “up to 63 lives have been saved”, and report back to parliament within 12 months on the potential of rolling out a similar program in WA.
Greens MLC Brad Pettitt supported the motion and said: “The evidence that he has laid out shows that safe injecting rooms save lives. As I was looking at this, I reflected on an issue that we had in my time as the Mayor of Fremantle. Obviously, there were no injecting rooms, but there were places where people could swap for clean needles. There was huge community pushback, as there always is when these things are talked about. At the time, Josh Wilson, who is now the federal member for Fremantle, was the deputy mayor of Fremantle. I remember that he and I were really strong in saying that it is important that we have these kinds of facilities in our community, because the evidence says that they actually make things safer.
“When we pushed on, we ended up using the City of Fremantle facility to get it up. There was a lot of community angst about it. As soon as that facility was established and it had been running for some time, there was absolute silence, because these places are run well and they are run professionally. All those community concerns evaporated very quickly.”
Dr Walker said: “The simple fact is medically supervised injecting rooms have been shown to save lives. Injecting rooms connect people to a general practice and a dental surgery, as well as a range of other health services. Is there any reason why we in WA would not want to see that sort of service rolled out in Perth when the evidence is there to show that it works?”
Labor MP Martin Pritchard disagreed and told parliament injecting rooms were not the best approach: “The first is that they suspect it might have what they call a ‘honeypot’ effect.”
