NSW: Normie Rowe continues fight against heroin

AAP General News (Australia)
04-09-1999
NSW: Normie Rowe continues fight against heroin

SYDNEY, April 9 AAP - Entertainer Normie Rowe today continued his assault on government
bureaucrats, claiming they were running for cover from the heroin crisis destroying families.

"It's about time that governments and the bureaucracy started to get in touch because
what's going to happen, there will be a war and the war will be on Australian soil and it will
be between Australians," Mr Rowe said.

"There will be people, they'll get so passionate about this and so desperate," he told ABC
Radio.

"For God's sake, this society is going crazy."

Mr Rowe spoke out on the issue yesterday after being convicted of assaulting a man his
teenage daughter had "hooked up with" when she took to the streets and began using heroin.

With the help of her parents, the teenager has since weaned herself off the drug.

Today, Mr Rowe told ABC Radio he was disappointed the media had only taken an interest in
the battle of parents trying to rescue their children from drugs because he was such a
high-profile person.

"The great shame is that it's taken me to get any sort of reaction from people like you and
people like Alan Jones and ... all those other people," Mr Rowe said.

When his daughter, who was 13 at the time, ran away from home, Mr Rowe and his family
immediately contacted the Department of Community Services.

But despite knowing where she was, Mr Rowe said his hands were tied.

"I wanted them to give us the right to go in and have a look at the squalor conditions in
which she was living," he said.

"We just couldn't get her back, we weren't allowed to go and take her out of there."

Mr Rowe urged all parents in the same situation to contact their local member of parliament
and demand they not be afraid to represent their constituents.

He said the the current laws did not support parents.

"It's terribly sad because parents just feel totally unable to do anything about the demise
of their kids.

"The ability for parents to deal with it has been rescinded on a constant basis by people,
social engineers, who have developed these policies of child rights and all this sort of
thing," he said.

"They're hampered in every way by government and rotten bureaucrats that I just think
should all lose their damn job as far as I'm concerned."

Mr Rowe was yesterday convicted and fined $500 in Ryde Local Court for assaulting Geoffrey
Bailey on January 28, 1998.

AAP cmm/jo/kr

KEYWORD: DRUGS ROWE

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