7. Legislating for Opal
The Opal rollout has happened without any legislative base. The vast majority of petrol retailers have elected to provide Opal on a voluntary basis. This level of community support for an initiative is outstanding, but it has reached limits. There are three remote roadhouse petrol retailers in the Central Australian who will not voluntarily change over to Opal and the NT Government has stated it will not compel them to do so. This policy is having a negative impact of the wellbeing of regional and remote communities, especially over the WA border at the community closest to the most western of these retailers.
The spectacular gains made through the Opal initiative are fragile because of the lack of resources put into the remote communities to address the underlying issues. This can be seen from the occasional outbreak of inhalant abuse such as that suffered in Hermannsburg earlier this month. The basic circumstances that promoted inhalant abuse are still unchanged. Enforcing the Opal roll-out through legislation would be one way of ensuring that at least this aspect of the strategy was stable in the long term.