Yarra City Council has reversed its long-standing support for the location of the North Richmond safe injecting room, voting to formally advocate for the state government to move the facility.
The last-minute decision was made during an at-times heated council meeting on Tuesday night. A surprise alternative motion that was not included in the public council documents ahead of the meeting, moved by independent councillor Evangeline Aston, passed 6-2, effectively tearing up the council’s previous position.
The safe injecting room on Lennox Street in North Richmond, which sits on the high-rise public housing estate, and is next to Richmond West Primary School.Credit: Simon Schluter
Yarra Mayor Stephen Jolly told The Age on Wednesday the council wanted the injecting facility moved from its current site at the North Richmond Community Health centre, which sits next to Richmond West Primary School and a high-rise public housing estate.
He suggested new locations could include Victoria Street or near St Vincent’s Hospital, which are both within the Yarra local government area, although these sites were not part of the formal motion, nor discussed at the meeting.
“Putting the supervised injecting facility next to a primary school has been probably the greatest public policy disaster in recent Victorian history,” Jolly said during the meeting.
The council is simultaneously facing a second major health controversy in the municipality. On Tuesday, The Age reported Jolly was also publicly fighting community health provider cohealth’s plans to close its clinics in Collingwood and Fitzroy, threatening a “worst-case scenario” occupation of at least one of the sites.
Jolly is also separately facing a charge of unlawful assault, and is expected to be re-elected mayor for a second year on Wednesday night. If re-elected, the firebrand self-described socialist mayor will lead the council in the lead-up to the state election next year.
Jolly was a long-time advocate for the injecting facility, which opened in 2018, but said without any other similar facilities elsewhere in Melbourne, the burden on the immediate neighbourhood of North Richmond was too great. He also said there were not enough outreach services for the drug users it brought to the area, who were frightening locals.
“I was very involved in the fight, literally very, to get supervised injecting facilities. And we all were really excited … when that one was set up.”
The vote rewrote a key plank of the council’s “Advocacy Roadmap”, a document intended to guide its lobbying efforts ahead of the November 2026 state election in the marginal seat of Richmond, which Labor is keen to take back from Greens MP Gabrielle Di Vietri.
Inside the medically supervised injecting room in Richmond.Credit: Penny Stephens
The new motion, backed by the “Yarra For All” majority bloc, calls on the state government to “move the North Richmond [Medically Supervised Injecting Room] (MSIR) to a more appropriate location”. It replaced the initial wording, which only called for permanent funding for “trauma-informed outreach services” to manage the drug-affected people causing concern in the neighbourhood.
The vote comes just two months after The Age revealed the MSIR’s operator, North Richmond Community Health, had admitted it “initially failed to adequately address community safety concerns”.
Chief executive Simone Heald told The Age on Wednesday she was disappointed by the council’s motion.
Heald said she was “really surprised” by the move, revealing she had a “very productive” meeting with Jolly in September where he “expressed his support of the injecting room”.
“I don’t recall that being part of our conversation,” she said, referring to the idea of moving the facility.
Heald acknowledged the challenges of the site’s proximity to the school and homes but said the location was chosen because the drug market had “been here for a very long time”.
“The reason it’s here is because of what was happening before,” she said. “The MSIR was created as a result of the drug market.”
She said her team remained committed to the work and had recently formed an expert advisory group with government services and community members to “continue to strategise how we improve the amenity” and safety.
Greens councillors Sophie Wade and Edward Crossland, who voted against the motion, argued it was a “major change” to a decade-long council position that had been “sprung on the community” without consultation.
“The people who feel like they’re aggrieved by a status quo, they’re the ones we’re going to hear from … but the ones who think that the MSIR is good have the right to be heard, and they should have been here tonight,” Wade said.
Wade on Wednesday lodged a recision motion over the vote, which needs three councillors’ support to revisit the vote. Crucially, the sole Labor councillor, Sarah McKenzie, was not in the chamber for the vote on Tuesday night and arrived shortly afterwards, making her position on the matter unclear. McKenzie is all but confirmed to be Labor’s candidate in the state election taking on Di Vietri.
Di Vietri on Wednesday called the motion a disgrace and “a thinly veiled push to shut down our community’s hard-won and world-leading overdose prevention centre”.
She said the MSIR was established because of pre-existing drug use in the area.
“I would know – I lived 50 meters away before it existed and watched deals and drug use on my doorstep daily,” she said. “Any deaths that result from shutting down this service will be on the mayor’s hands.”
The MSIR has managed more than 10,000 overdoses without a single death since it opened. The state government abandoned plans for a second facility in the CBD last year.
Opposition mental health spokeswoman Emma Kealey said opening the facility next to a primary school meant it was destined to fail.
“I don’t know of anybody, apart from premier [Jacinta] Allan, that thinks it’s a good idea to have an injecting room next to a primary school.”
Minister for Mental Health Ingrid Stitt has been approached for comment.
With Rachel Eddie
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