Page 4109 - Week 14 - Thursday, 25 October 1990
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sharp, nasty points off a Canberra Times article which was balanced and well reported. Mr Berry tried to convert that journalist's script into a suggestion that it was an attack on the Government.
Mrs Grassby: Boomerang again.
MR COLLAERY: And, of course, we hear those hollow calls from the other side that it is a boomerang. That is another term that we first gave to them.
Mr Deputy Speaker, this model that we are developing, particularly for those with severe psychiatric disturbances, will be complemented by the proposal announced by my colleague Mr Humphries. The mental health crisis care service will mean that at any time of the night or day intervention is available for those people who are troubled, emotionally and severely, by a trauma, a deep event in their lives. Those of us who have worked in the community sector know what terrible grief, or a terrible trauma, or a terrible breakup can produce at any hour of the night or day. People need to be cared for. That has been a long-felt need, and people will be cared for in a facility that will probably be adjunctive to the casualty area of one of our hospitals. Certainly it will be a stand-alone concept, where there are skilled professionals on hand to provide immediate intervention. They may well be on overnight contact, so that the best and most appropriate professionals can be brought in to deal with those traumatic situations.
That will save lives. Hopefully, it will decrease the advent of suicidal situations and, certainly, where young people are concerned, it will provide for one of the most heartfelt needs this community knows. I need not, in this Assembly, enlarge upon the issue of youth suicide, because to do so is to give it a currency which we all know can relate in peer behaviour. But I am sure all members appreciate how deeply many parents in this community feel at this stage, particularly those who have been struck by a tragedy within their own family circle.
Mr Deputy Speaker, this facility was one that we pressed very strongly for during our budget-Treasury negotiations, and Mr Humphries and I are very pleased to have a role in bringing this service to our community. We have a community that did not have a 24-hour mental health crisis intervention service. Can you believe that a Federal government, which nationally is presented as having mollycoddled us, did not provide that for us during its tenure here? And can you believe that we still do not have a hospice? But our Government, even given our parlous financial situation, is moving towards the creation of that much needed hospice for the dying. These are social justice initiatives taken by an Alliance Government that the Opposition constantly paints as ideologically to the right, as conservative and reactionary. Government members are putting the lie to that.
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