Former premier Jeff Kennett has been replaced on the safe injecting room review panel, as the Victorian government backtracked on its promise to ban ice from the Richmond facility in Melbourne’s heroin hotspot.

Margaret Hamilton has been appointed chair of the review panel after Mr Kennett resigned in disgust last month to protest Labor’s ‘red shirts’ rorting scandal.

Professor Hamilton has 45 years of experience in the drug and alcohol field in clinical work, education, training, research and policy.

Harm Reduction Australia, which has campaigned for pill-testing nationwide, listed her as an advocate on its website.

“The only way to think sensibly about drugs is to ensure that we pursue humane and ethical purposes: to keep people alive, allow for differences of view and choices and as far as possible, in every way, reduce the harm associated with drugs,” she is quoted as saying on the Harm Reduction website.

The New Daily approached Prof Hamilton for comment.

Regulations released to the North Richmond Community Health centre on Tuesday, and seen by The New Daily, revealed that “any drug of dependence” would be allowed in the facility despite previous assurances that only heroin would be tolerated.

Users will be limited to bringing in no more than the threshold for personal use.

“The prescribed amount of an injecting centre drug is an amount of a drug dependence that is less than a trafficable quantity,” the regulation said.

Anyone on parole, bail, or the subject of any other court order prohibiting drug use will be banned from the facility.

On 3AW radio on Wednesday, Mental Health Minister Martin Foley said users would be required to provide their name and age, and disclose which drugs they had on them.

“Overwhelmingly, all the advice is that that will be heroin. But given that most of the drug users sadly are poly-drug users and are addicted to a range of things, the best advice was that we should cater sadly to all of those drugs,” Mr Foley said.

He admitted allowing ice was a “change of position based on experts’ advice”.

The Richmond centre will not provide illegal drugs and only adults can use its facilities. The centre has already been handing out a million syringes every month.

Construction on a makeshift ‘transition’ space began in the Lennox Street health centre on Monday, before it opens in June.

It will include two consulting spaces, an injecting room with 15 to 20 booths, a medical monitoring room, and aftercare space.

“So after you’ve had the medically supervised injecting, you then proceed into the next part of the facility where there is follow up, counselling, support and oversight to make sure that you are well,” Mr Foley said.

A permanent and dedicated space will not open until mid-next year. It will stand on its own on the south end of the centre, next to Richmond West Primary School.

It will swallow up some public parking spaces, but staff parking will become public parking to reduce the impact on the community.

The neighbouring primary school supports the trial, with hopes it will “significantly reduce the visibility and impact of drug use” nearby, a statement said last year.