Jacqui Lambie will introduce a bill into the Senate that gives parents of children addicted to drugs the power to force their offspring into mandatory treatment facilities, just one day after revealing her son’s battle with ice.
On Monday the independent senator for Tasmania disclosed that she had kicked her 21-year-old son out of home less than three months ago because he was stealing and behaving strangely.
“I shouldn’t have to live under those conditions,” she said on ABC’s 7.30 program. “He was becoming erratic and I just had no idea what he was going to do next. So for the safety of myself and somebody else that’s in the house, the best thing to do was to ask him to leave.”
On Tuesday she described the horror of seeing a loved one battle addiction.
“You’re looking into their eyes and there’s nothing there,” she said on ABC radio. “It’s the most awful, awful thing. It’s like you’re looking at your son, but it’s not your own son, and that in itself is heartbreaking. So you’ve got to detach yourself from the situation, and that’s the most difficult thing.
“Nobody else is calling the shots but me, so it’s going to fall on my shoulders whichever way it lands. That’s how I see it. I’m his mother, he’s my responsibility.”
Lambie will introduce a private member’s bill into the Senate that will allow parents place their children in involuntary rehabilitation programs.
“I’m hoping that the mandatory [element] will go for six months,” she said. “I’m prepared to open that up for discussion.
“I’d like the private member’s bill to go through. I’d like it if I had the support of the Coalition to do this.”
The social services minister, Scott Morrison, was sympathetic.
“I feel for Jacqui; it just must be the most horrible of things,” he said on Macquarie Radio on Tuesday.
The government had a “strong will” when it came to tackling the scourge of ice, but would not be drawn on its policies before the release of the full report of a taskforce into the problem, headed by a former Victorian police commissioner, Ken Lay.
The taskforce released an interim report in July which, among other things, called for an improvement in early intervention, treatment and support services.
Lambie admitted that Australia does not have the facilities to enact her mandatory detox program at the moment, but put forward a solution.
“We have detention centres out there that haven’t been used for quite some time,” she said.
“We can convert them over. The places are already there and I’m quite sure we can make it very cost effective. Because what we spend on it early on compared to what it’s going to save society in years to come will be absolutely worth it. It will be priceless.”
Lambie revealed that her son had a drug problem when speaking against a government bill that would stop welfare payments to sufferers of mental illness who had been charged with a serious crime.
