Page 523 - Week 02 - Thursday, 22 February 1990
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appropriate choice of full time or respite care. This would reduce full time institutionalisation where this is inappropriate and so on, and ensure the accommodation needs of people. So the Labor Party was fully committed to this before it got into office. It did not seem to deliver the goods in office.
Under Mr Berry's ministership - and one should not be churlish - Labor did allocate $150,000, but as Mr Humphries aptly said, and to paraphrase his words, this was "a bit of a tease". It was not enough to get an institutionalised care system going and it was not enough to fund a 24-hour crisis service. But I am happy to inform the house that in recent days Mr Humphries and I have discussed - and we have exchanged formal correspondence - the pressing need for psychiatric day care for young adolescents and young persons in the Territory, and the pressing needs of institutionalised care in the mental health area.
I assure the house that Mr Humphries has discussed it and he and I are dealing with the issue as quickly as we can, embracing, if possible, the meagre funds that were allocated to it in the budget and ascertaining whether we can convert current resources. We have been discussing, for example, what to do with some of the empty facilities at Hennessy House up at Calvary Hospital. There are active, positive discussions going on with the community.
I assure Mr Berry that we have the right and correct motives, that we are moving towards the issue and I trust that, in Mr Humphries' absence, I can speak for him in saying that we are committed, as soon as funds permit, to getting a proper mental health service for the Territory.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Assembly adjourned at 5.26 pm until Tuesday, 20 March 1990, at 2.30 pm
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