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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 2 Hansard (28 February) . . Page.. 444 ..

MR MOORE (5.16): I thought I would take the opportunity in this debate to reflect on the fact that the Chief Minister was part of the Social Policy Committee that brought down a unanimous report on the mental health legislation. The way we managed to achieve a unanimous report on that legislation was by including in that legislation a sunset clause, which was passed by the Assembly. It was what, I think, was in some ways a double-barrelled sunset clause. It drew an end to the legislation but then allowed the Executive to extend it for another year if the new mental health legislation was not yet ready. Part of the reason for doing that was that we understood that there was a report pending for nationally-prepared model legislation. This was one of the issues that concerned Annette Ellis, who was then chair of the committee and who is now running as a candidate in the forthcoming Federal election. I have a great deal of time for the effort Ms Ellis put into that report and for the understanding she brought to it. Her work with the current Chief Minister was, indeed, part of the reason why we went the way we did.

The Federal report that we were awaiting was tabled last year, and I am interested to know what action has been taken by the Government to reassess the legislation so that it is in place before the sunset clause comes into operation. The idea was never that the legislation should come into action and the sunset clause then get extended; rather, that if the Government had been so slack that they were not ready - that was the thinking of Mrs Carnell at the time - we had to have a mechanism in place so that there would not be a situation where there was no mental health legislation. That was the danger we were facing, and I remember having long discussions with Ms Ellis and Mrs Carnell on this particular piece of legislation.

I hope that the Minister for Health, in responding to the comments made by Ms Tucker and me, or the Minister who responds on her behalf, will tell us what point we are at as far as the preparation of the new mental health legislation is concerned and comment on the consideration of the Federal report on model legislation which has now come down and which indicates that the committee was taking the appropriate action by holding back in terms of the mental health legislation. I will be very interested to hear the response of the Minister on exactly where we are at with the preparation of that mental health legislation and whether or not she believes that she will need to invoke the extension of the sunset clause that she was so keen to have in.

MRS CARNELL (Chief Minister and Minister for Health and Community Care) (5.19), in reply: As Mr Moore knows, I totally agree that the mental health legislation we passed in the last Assembly ended up going through only because we needed to do something and we were not too confident about which way to go. To some extent, the model mental health legislation federally is a little out of our hands, although the approach we will be taking is in line with the draft model mental health legislation. At this stage, however, as I understand it, there is no national agreement to go down that path. I assume that that will be a major issue at the next Health Ministers conference, and as soon as there is a national consensus along those lines we will be introducing, as a matter of urgency, mental health legislation that is consistent with that nationally agreed approach.

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