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Bipartisan support for Australia’s supervised injecting facility: a decade in the making

Marianne E Jauncey, Ingrid A van Beek, Allison M Salmon and Lisa Maher
Med J Aust 2011; 195 (5): . || doi: 10.5694/mja11.10815
Published online: 5 September 2011

To the Editor: This year marks 10 years of successful operation of the Sydney Medically Supervised Injecting Centre — Australia’s only supervised injecting facility (SIF). It is one of 90 such facilities globally, with SIFs operating in eight different countries for up to 25 years. Legislation to lift the trial status of the Sydney centre was passed in the lead-up to the recent New South Wales state election, nearly a decade after the centre opened. Despite not having explicitly supported the centre while in opposition, at the Centre’s 10-year anniversary event on 6 May 2011, the newly elected Liberal–National coalition government signalled its willingness to contribute to bipartisan support of the centre.


  • 1 Sydney Medically Supervised Injecting Centre, Sydney, NSW.
  • 2 Kirketon Road Centre, Sydney, NSW.
  • 3 Cancer Council NSW, Sydney, NSW.
  • 4 The Kirby Institute, Sydney, NSW.


Correspondence: mjauncey@sydneymsic.com

Competing interests:

Lisa Maher has received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council and the National Institutes of Health.

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