How Australia’s Third Largest Church Became Drug Reform Activists
This week I spoke with Uniting NSW and ACT’s head of advocacy, Emma Maiden. Uniting is the community services arm of The Uniting Church in Australia, the third-largest denomination in the country who are known for their progressivism and community work. Uniting have been running the medically supervised injection centre in King’s Cross for nearly 20 years and in 2016, passed a motion to support the decriminalisation of drugs. I talked to Emma to find out what they’ve been up to.
It’s interesting to hear that a church organisation is campaigning on drug reform — can you tell me a bit about how that works?
I think what's really interesting about Uniting and its faith is how they really try to act out the good that they want to see in the world and make an active contribution to that. They see real synergies with people who are activists. They’re kind of like ‘well, you’re doing it because you want to contribute to the greater good and that’s why I'm doing to it too I just have this additional overlay of Jesus and God’. They're very good at all of that.
In relation to drug law reform, it did come out of a member of the congregation in the ACT whose son died from a drug overdose and she became very passionate about the issue and campaigned for many years within the church. In 2016, they took it to the synod, which is the big decision-making body, half expecting that it would be a bit of a dry run and it wouldn't get up and it did which shocked a lot of people.
People obviously understood this is an issue that should be important to the church. For them it’s about the dignity of every human person and that there is no lesser in somebody who happens to be struggling with drug dependency. Because of the double-take that people do when they hear that a church is campaigning for drug law reform, I think they also really felt like this is something that they could actually make quite a difference in.
Because of the medically supervised injecting centre, they had some credibly in that space. We wouldn't be seen as people kind of bumbling in with good intentions.
And how successful would you say it has been so far?
Well, I do feel that the dial is beginning to shift. We’ve got a lot more attention on the issue in the last couple of years and I think we've brought it more into the mainstream, although lots of people have played a huge role in that.
In terms of the actual changes to policy obviously the ACT is going great. They're well down the path towards decriminalisation.
NSW has had the ice inquiry, the upper house inquiry into rural and regional treatment services, of which I think 10 of the 11 recommendations were supported in principle by the government. We've seen the music festival deaths inquiry and the introduction of amnesty bins. Obviously, we would have like to have seen something different to that but I think, although it's not a great first step, it is a step towards pill testing.
But if it was a clock, we’re not even at 5 past the hour yet. There’s a lot more to be done.
So you think this is just a very slow-moving space with really incremental change?
I think without luck, yes. Sometimes there is luck in the campaigning space. There can be moments that you can seize and leverage to accelerate the process of change and only time will tell whether we get that with drug law reform.
The political landscape is really where a lot of our effort is focused. MPs. Getting them to understand that this is an issue that their community cares about, that this isn't an issue they should be scared of. A lot of them are very supportive of more treatment which is great but you need to translate that into action.
In terms of decriminalisation, you need to get them thinking differently about people who use drugs and what the role of society is in relation to people with drug dependency. Is it just to lock them up? No, it’s about being compassionate and having a health-based response. A lot of MPs that we talk to are worried that their community would backlash if they were to support decriminalisation so we have to show them that that is not true.
And are you gathering information, doing primary research to evidence those points?
We’re just systematically trying to meet with every single MP in the NSW parliament and have those one-on-one conversations about the issue, guage where they're at, and then try to get local groups of people who care deeply about the issue to forge a long term relationship with their MP.
You might have, in an initial stage, a few people who have come together to introduce themselves as the local Fair Treatment campaigners. One person might tell their story, perhaps a parent or a brother or sister or someone with lived experience themselves. Then a couple of months you come back with someone else to tell their story.
I don't think many MPs have met many people who have found themselves with drug dependency issues or had loved ones with drug dependency issues. It’s trying to get them to understand that this is somebodies child, this is somebody who you should care about.
The public policy approach we are currently taking is one based on fear and one that isn't based on compassion and best practice.
And have they been receptive to those tactics?
We’re in the early days of doing that but meeting MPs locally is just so much more powerful than going into Macquarie Street and having policy wonks or advocacy people, experts, spin doctors or whatever. That has a place but connecting MPs with real people with real stories, that is part of our theory of change.
Has the pandemic slowed things down in the drug reform space?
I actually think that COVID-19 has shifted the dial on a lot of treatment models. Things like take-home methadone have never been done before now. You always had to go to the clinic, take it there. That's all changed. There’s a whole lot of treatment models that have been fast-tracked that are working, that give people with drug dependency more dignity, allow them to have greater control over their lives and greater stability too.
There's a whole national advocacy piece that’s happening to government to try and say, look, these are the innovations that have happened during COVID that we really think we should stick with them. If we can get that happening, that's exciting.
In terms of treatment, although there are shortages everywhere, they are particularly acute in rural and regional areas. I'm hoping that we might be able to see building treatment services and creating permanent, quality jobs be a part of the COVID stimulus.
So there are some opportunities to shift the dial in COVID. Like in any campaigning, you’ve got to make the moment work and there are moments in COVID that help. The government having a lot less money is actually also an opportunity. Reducing prison populations, reducing the intervention of the criminal justice system would mean money back in the treasurer’s pocket. I think there are opportunities for us in COVID despite it being such a terrible situation for everyone.
We are still doing a lot of zoom meetings with MPs. That interaction can still continue to happen. It’s not as personal but it still works.
It does feel like things are moving. Last year you had Alan Jones joining calls for decriminalisation. To me, it seems the thing that needs to happen, and this goes to your point about MPs being scared to back these policies, is shifting the everyday attitude or understanding of drug use and the suffering that is caused by lack of good policy. Do you feel that aspect changing?
I'm not sure. I wish I had some money to do some polling. To be honest I still think parents are really scared of drugs and their kids. That fundamental fear is holding back a lot of change. How do I discourage my children from taking drugs if I can't tell them they’ll go to jail? Like all parental fears, generally, the reality is that you can't do much about it. Having that threat there is not likely to make much of a difference.
There’s a messaging guide that's going to come out that we’ve worked on with some others. I'm really hoping that the whole sector can get behind this and get talking in a different way. I think sometimes we’re not helpful to our own cause in the way we talk about this issue. Celebrities coming out and saying ‘I’ve done this, or I've done that’ doesn't take the fear away and actually often doesn't help in terms of shifting people.
I still think its seen in ‘mainstream Australia’ as kind of a fringe issue but I would like to have a benchmark. I sometimes think in terms of public debates. We had the marriage equality debate and those electorates that voted against the plebiscite, that's where I would really like to know what people’s views are and fi we can shift them. If we can shift those people then we can shift anyone.
I always worry about the bubble. I do try and talk about it to friends who are not in my political circles when I can and I often find that flight to fear is still the most common reaction.
What do you think would need to change?
I think the change to the mental health approach is a good model in terms of shifting public sentiment. I would love to see — and you see this in the US — a lot more high profile people talking about recovery or managing to turn their lives around and the importance of the support they got. That's quite different from saying ‘I used to drop ecstasy when I was 20’. Having people willing to talk publically about the troubles they've had and how they've managed to get to the place where they are now, I think that would help.
We see a lot of influencers talk publically about battles with mental health problems and I think that has helped the public become more sympathetic and get more understanding of the complexities involved and be less judgemental. I think that kind of approach could help.
There have been good things, like the recovery walk that Exodus does later this month which is focused on people celebrating their recovery.
More media champions would be good too. Most of the media coverage around drug dependency is so sensational and if you compare that to coverage now of mental health issues, it’s quite different. You do feel there has been a shift in the philosophy and the moral values that the media apply in the way they cover mental health stories now and I think we need a similar shift in relation to people with drug dependency issues.
There’s the AOD Media Watch group who are trying to make inroads in that regard.
I want to ask whether you’re hopeful for the future? Is change just around the corner or will it take a long time?
I think it’s a long road. I am an optimist but I do think this is a long road. I don't think it’s going to be a predictable path either. It’s going to be windy in that we might jump to some things and not be able to shift others. If you were going to plan the stepping stones toward decriminalisation, more treatment would be there, pill testing would be there, community-based pill testing would be there, medically supervised injecting centres would be there, more de facto decriminalisation, drug courts, diversion, all those things are on the path but I don't think you can plot out the linear steps.
I think it’s probably going to take us a bit by surprise but I do think as a sector it is really important that, despite our disappointments, we don’t jump to the end. We let ourselves have those wins along the way even though they're not 100% of what we want. Otherwise, it’s just a very long lonely road, right?
We’re really proud of the work that we do but we are very conscious that, despite the medically supervised injection centre, we are relatively new to the space. We always want to work with and honour the decades of work that many long term campaigners have put in. We just want to try and help shift the debate as much as we possibly can and we’re in it for the long haul. Which hopefully we won't need.
