No funding to set-up a drug detox and rehabilitation facility in Dubbo will be promised in the NSW budget due to be handed down on Tuesday, comments from state member for Dubbo Dugald Saunders suggest.
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"There's no point just going and building a 24 bed residential facility if that is not going to be the best answer," Mr Saunders said.
"We've heard arguments supporting that sort of an idea and we've heard arguments supporting detox at home, rehab at home and a mix of everything.
"You ask five different providers in that space what's going to work best and you'll get five different answers.
"It's not just 'build a building and people will come and it'll work'."
Mr Saunders' comments come after experts from a range of fields told the government's ice inquiry there was a significant lack of suitable services to treat and rehabilitate residents battling drug addiction in country communities.
The inquiry is due to report back to the government in October and Mr Saunders cautioned against a rushed response to the evidence given at its Dubbo hearings.
"If you do something too quickly it doesn't work and we've seen that happen before," he told the Daily Liberal.
"There are cases where residential rehabilitation does happen. In Brewarrina there's one, on the Central Coast there's another one, in Orange there's one... they work in certain circumstances but they don't work in every circumstance."
Issues such as who would run a proposed detox and rehab facility, who would fund its ongoing operation and the federal government's role also needed to be worked out before commitments could be made, Mr Saunders said.
"Part of the remit of the special inquiry is to find out exactly what's going to work and why, and where.
"If we don't get it right it could be a very expensive disaster. I don't want that to happen."
Until the inquiry wraps up "there's really not much more that can be committed to", Mr Saunders said.
"My belief has always been that there will be a need for some sort of support, it's just a matter of how that happens," he said.
If a drug detox and rehabilitation facility is not built in Dubbo it is unclear what would happen to the $3 million the federal government has promised to spend on building one in the city.
The ice inquiry heard some ice users would rather be dead than live without the drug, 12-year-old kids were using the drug, mothers were prostituting themselves to buy ice, police officers have been assaulted by ice users and the rate of methamphetamine hospitalisations in the Western NSW Local Health District was 40 times greater than the NSW average.
