Page 2823 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 21 October 1992
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Mrs Carnell: My notice was in before the budget.
MR CONNOLLY: I can see Mrs Carnell with her little press release saying, "Look what I have achieved". The Government is governing, getting on with the job, producing its reforms, announcing them, and then the Liberal Party think there are going to be a few political points to be taken by this sort of resolution.
Mr Humphries: Well, when are we going to see them, Terry? We have been waiting for two years.
MR CONNOLLY: So, to that extent Mr Berry's comment about playing politics is absolutely right. Mr Humphries, getting aside from his agitation on that, then went on to make some remarks that I would agree with. Particularly, I would agree with the remark that in the three years since self-government we have advanced this area of law and medicine in this Territory far more than had been achieved in the decade before self-government.
In relation to demonstrating that, I think the best document was the ACT Government's response to the Burdekin inquiry. This has been released, certainly, to the media. I cannot recall whether we released it to members, but we could make a copy available for the Opposition. It is a document on the public record. In relation to that national inquiry into mental health, the ACT Government's position was a very frank one. We did not seek to justify the status quo. We said that pre-self-government attention at the Commonwealth level to mental health in this Territory had not been what it should be; that our level of spending, as Mr Humphries remarked, was historically very low and that services were not in place. We then listed what had been done since self-government, and the list is impressive.
There was a slight contradiction in that Mr Humphries claimed credit for what the Alliance had done. At the top of his list was the 24-hour crisis service, and then at the end he made reference to the funding provision for that in the Follett Government's first budget. He says that he did it, but he acknowledges that it was in Ms Follett's first budget. I think the fairest thing we can say is that successive governments have demonstrated a commitment to reform in this area. We had a long way to catch up to get to a situation where we were approaching the level of law and medical services prevalent in the benchmark States in Australia.
In the 16 months that we have been in government a lot has been achieved. The Guardianship and Management of Property Tribunal and the Community Advocate are significant reforms which have brought the position of people with mental illness, or an intellectual disability - we must always be careful not to blur what is a very real distinction there - far in advance of the position that they were in prior to that. Again, there is our discrimination legislation, focusing on persons with a disability - something which the Commonwealth Parliament has only just got around to legislating on this year. We, at the forefront again, are focusing attention on discrimination against people with disabilities. So, our legislative record to date is significant. Three landmark pieces of legislation already have been enacted.
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