Page 4118 - Week 14 - Thursday, 25 October 1990
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MR HUMPHRIES: Here he is now. He is coming back to make some more promises, no doubt, about what he will do when he gets back into government. The Alliance Government did not fall into the same trap, Mr Speaker. Our Ministers have resisted the temptation to grab headlines by throwing up half-baked ideas. We thought through our proposal and we have delivered on that promise. On 3 December this year Mr Berry will see what this Government can do as opposed to what his Government could merely promise.
The Government is aware that expenditure on mental health services over a large number of years in this Territory is low compared with the States and that some of our services are underdeveloped. Underfunding can only be redressed in the medium term as overfunding is reduced in other health areas. The underfunding will be addressed progressively and systematically - with no knee-jerk responses to complex needs. Expenditure which is not planned is expenditure obviously wasted. Mental health services in the ACT are, however, much better, compared with other States, than the dollar expenditures might suggest. This is because in most of the Australian States most of the dollars are spent on fairly outdated and inefficient mental hospitals. In the high-spending States, namely Victoria and South Australia, community mental health services are very poorly developed, and certainly less developed than in the ACT. While there is concern about our own service deficiencies, I do not think we should be exaggerating the extent of the problem.
Mr Speaker, the other day Ms Follett rose in this place and offered a cooperative approach on the part of the Opposition towards issues to deal with ambulances, and I would invite the Opposition to make the same kind of commitment in respect of this service. Every time this crisis service is attacked - and it has been attacked on many occasions and I have quotes here about when it was - people who might need to rely on that service lose a little bit of faith. They wonder whether it is going to happen; they wonder whether it is going to be enough, and they worry. That is bad. That is bad for all of us because all of us depend on a community which is better able to cope with its problems on a personal level and better equipped to deal with crises as they arise.
All of us in this chamber, every one of us, should be committing ourselves to making this crisis service work. We should be putting our weight behind it, making an effort to make that service a success, and then all of us perhaps can bask in a little bit of the glory that comes from that particular success.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
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