Page 2737 - Week 09 - Thursday, 25 August 1994
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I know that members have been expressing concerns about the process, which is going on at the same time, sponsored by the Commonwealth, for model mental health legislation for the nation. I think some members are aware of a discussion paper that is about to be published. I would like to table copies of it. I have 17 copies available for members. Mrs Carnell and some other members may have seen this. While this is only a discussion paper about the model exercise, it is pleasing to see that they did have the opportunity to see the ACT Bill in its final form. That is the Bill that had been through the process of the committee and approved by the committee. The references throughout this discussion paper to the ACT Bill are, in my view, very satisfactory. Indeed, with all due modesty, as the Government Minister behind it, I could say that they are glowing in some cases. It has been picked up as a model. Madam Speaker, for the information of members, I would like to table the model mental health legislation discussion paper published by the University of Newcastle's Centre for Health Law, Ethics and Policy, funded by the Commonwealth Government. I think it takes away some of the concerns members may have had.
I thank members for their cooperative approach. This is a significant day in self-government. We have finally been able to deal with this difficult issue; in the consequential amendments Bill, we are finally putting to rest the last vestiges of the Lunacy Act of 1898, as it applied in the ACT; and we are moving the legislative framework of mental health into the twenty-first century. Mrs Carnell is correct in saying that a challenge remains to ensure that we can properly resource the issue. It is a challenge not just for me, as Health Minister, but also for my colleague Mr Lamont, as Community Services Minister, because there is a continuum of problem from Community Services through to Health. I hope that the Government will prove to be up to the challenge. I am confident that the cooperative approach we have had will do it.
Again I thank members very much for dealing with such a difficult issue so well. I thank all the officers who have been involved over a lengthy period. I thank the chair and members of the committee, who took seriously what could easily have been a partisan debate in which we threw rocks at one another and went out and postured to the media. Nothing gets a headline like mental health. We could have had great fun with this Bill, booting it around the house. Instead, members on all sides chose to be productive and constructive, and they came up with a compromise. I thank everyone involved in the process.
MS ELLIS: Madam Speaker, I seek leave to make a brief statement in this debate.
Leave granted.
MS ELLIS: As chair of the Standing Committee on Social Policy, I feel that I need to add a few brief words to this debate. In doing so, I would like to refer back to some comments that I made during the presentation of the committee's report to the Assembly in April. At that time I referred to the enormous difficulties, widely recognised, in attempting to formulate a reform Bill such as this. Many people had many views on how they thought the matter should be approached. It was evident to our committee that, if we attempted to please all of them, responding positively to each of their concerns, change or reform would never happen.
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