MP's daughter's meth struggle
One innocuous remark on an ordinary Thursday evening was all it took to awaken it.
Mick Murray calls it the "plastic head" that sometimes sits on the shoulders of his 35-year-old daughter Bree and has a face he doesn't recognise.
"I said, 'How about cleaning up the house? Come on, you're living here for nothing'. She went off her face, got right up close to me saying, 'What the f… would you know'," he said.
"I left and went to our beach shack, a fibro place in Preston Beach. I drove an hour and slept there, because I'd have knocked her head off if I'd stayed."
For Mr Murray, the straight-talking mechanic-turned-MP for Collie, the toughest part of dealing with Bree's 15-year methamphetamine addiction is remembering "she's not the same person".
"At home I say, 'Has she got the plastic head on or has she got a real one on'," he said.
"That's what it comes down to. You are talking to a person you really don't know, completely aggro when her general nature is bubbly, full of jokes, full of laughter, full of energy.
"But when she's on that stuff, she's just in your face."
Bree Murray was an elite hockey player.
Bree was this week handed a 12-month suspended jail term for possessing 28 ecstasy pills with intent to sell or supply.
She remains in Bandyup Women's Prison awaiting trial on more drugs charges.
The future used to look bright.
An elite hockey player, Bree represented Australia at under-16 and under-21 levels and spent two years playing professionally in Japan.
"The joys of watching her play in the State colours, Australian colours, was just immeasurable, but the pain on the other side is just as hurtful," Mr Murray said.
Drugs crept into the frame when Bree was still in her playing days and Mr Murray still does not know how it escaped the notice of sports doping authorities.
He also does not know how the discipline and motivation that took her to the top levels of sport has comprehensively failed to prise her out of the drug's grip.
"On one of our sit-downs, and we've had many of them, I said, 'Bree, why?' She said, 'Dad, my head says no but my body wins over my head'," Mr Murray said.
The Murrays' battle was a private one until Bree was charged four months ago and her father's public profile ensured it hit the headlines.
Since then, Mr Murray has been amazed by how many people, from prominent businessmen at functions to constituents via email, have told him he is not alone.
He hopes to give strength to other families by headlining Labor's campaign for a Statewide, co-ordinated "crystal meth action plan" to stem the flow of the drug and provide better support.
The drug's devastating effects, on Bree and her immediate family, including mother Anna and three sisters, are well known to Mr Murray.
"Bree's got the concentration span of a gnat. She'll fiddle with things for hours doing nothing, or sleep for 20 hours, 24 hours on the trot or be awake for three days straight," he said.
"Or she'd come in and change everything in the house. For 20 years in the pantry the sauce bottle has been on one side and salt and pepper on the other. The whole pantry, everything on every shelf, has been moved. It must take hours.
"Or you go out and you come back and your furniture's shifted around. It drives the wife mad.
"And, of course, there's always half a dozen phones. They swap phones quick as, because people in that world, they just jump a cog. Get a new phone."
As disruptive as it is having Bree around, it can be worse when she's gone.
"She'll walk out the back door and you won't see her for a week," Mr Murray said.
"One time this year it was for three months. We didn't know if she was alive or dead."
Mr Murray's hopes for the future are pegged on a positive court outcome and four application letters Bree has written to rehabilitation clinics.
Although Mr Murray has pledged financial and moral support, he has vowed that he will not organise it.
"She's got to do that herself, so it's her decision-making process," he said.
"Sometimes you look back and think maybe that was part of the problem.
"We did too much."
