Page 2824 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 21 October 1992
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More should be done. Of course more should be done, and we have indicated that more will be done. The Mental Health Tribunal is clearly a significant milestone. Mr Humphries acknowledged that that would be a step forward. This is the first year of costing, and the long-term costing, when it gets into full financial years, is something that governments will address in successive budgets. The fact is that this Government, in its budget this year, has set aside the funding for the first year of that tribunal. That is a clear commitment that we are advancing the law in that area.
Our expectation is that we will be in a position to expose draft legislation to this Assembly. That is the way I think this matter should progress. Obviously, reform in the area of mental health is reform of real significance and social concern. It is the sort of legislation that needs to be fully debated. Our proposal is to do what we have done with other sensitive and significant pieces of legislation, like the adoption legislation; that is, bring in a draft Bill, put it on the table in this place, and then let the Assembly either debate it through a committee, if it wants to, or debate it when the Government has had the opportunity to get back the community input and present a final and refined version.
The Mental Health Tribunal will make significant progress in addressing the rights of persons with mental illness in this Territory. The problem in the past has been, as was referred to by Mr Humphries, the treadmill that people get on between the health system and the legal system. For too long in this Territory, as we acknowledged in our Government response to the Burdekin inquiry, a public document, people have been on that treadmill. They have been unable to be dealt with properly by the mental health system. They come into the criminal justice system and their case is progressed with the sort of mechanical certainty that the criminal justice system can sometimes have, where they go from charge to committal to trial to gaol. At no point have we had appropriate mechanisms in this Territory to ensure that a person who is clearly suffering from either mental illness or an intellectual disability is diverted from the criminal justice system and dealt with in the health system. Once an offence has been committed or once an act has occurred which is treated by the law as an offence, you are on that treadmill.
Although that legislation is not yet in place, we do look forward to tabling an exposure draft of that in this Assembly. I look forward to doing that by the end of this year; so we will probably make Mrs Carnell's deadline, although we are not doing that because of any deadline that Mrs Carnell chooses to set in order to put out a media release saying that Mrs Carnell is forcing the pace here. We are doing it because we announced in the budget that we were doing it, and we have set our officials a task of getting that legislation prepared.
Although that is not yet in place, we do have, through the Office of the Community Advocate, some mechanism now where there is an office that can take up the interests of persons suffering from either mental illness or an intellectual disability and try to achieve that diversion. It is not occurring through a concrete set of legislative guidelines, but it is occurring at the moment through the good offices of the Office of Community Advocate. Ms McGregor is taking up some cases of individuals who are coming before the courts, even now, charged with offences, and bringing to the court's attention and the attention of
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