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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (19 November) . . Page.. 3756 ..

Mr Berry: This has never been moved before.

MR HUMPHRIES: Motions like this are moved virtually every week. We have had censure motions galore. We have had threats of no-confidence motions. We have had this motion today. I very much doubt that it is going to be the last, if the last 12 months have been any indication. I would say to members: If you think it is important to have these no-confidence motions, reserve them for occasions when they have some meat. There was so little meat in this motion that Mr Berry had to move an amendment, find something else to tack on, so that he would have something to get his teeth into when he got to the motion itself. The original terms of this motion are so paltry, to use a word the Greens have used today, that Mr Berry had to add something in order to be able to contribute to the debate.

Mr Berry made no comment, nor has anybody else for that matter, on any of the other items in the three prongs of Ms Tucker's motion. Incidentally, the motion makes no reference whatever to mental health. This is supposed to be a motion about mental health, about how the Chief Minister had mishandled mental health issues. The words "mental health" do not appear in the motion at all.

Ms Tucker: Who says it was about mental health?

MR HUMPHRIES: You said it was about it the day after the attack on the windows at this Assembly. You said it was about Mrs Carnell's mishandling of mental health issues. That is what you said. Go back and read your comments in the paper and look at the comments on the news.

I have not heard anything of substance on this motion. I am at a loss to work out what the substance of it is. I am not sure whether it is to do with not having infection control procedures in group houses, or about not waiting until the Social Policy Committee had reported on mental health services, or about there not being room at Hennessy House, or about Government support for deinstitutionalisation - I understand that that has been criticised, but I am not sure whether that is the basis of the motion - or about Mrs Carnell not having enough time to attend to mental health issues. What I do know is that we have here a singular lack of conviction on the part of Ms Tucker as to what it is that she is moving as the basis for this motion of no confidence.

My party has a proud record on the question of management of mental health issues. I do not mean by that that we have solved the problems of mental health in this Territory. Clearly, we have not done that; nor did the Government which operated for nearly four of the last five years before we came to office last year. There are still, let me make it quite clear, almost intractable problems in the mental health area. I regret those, and I regret the fact that we and previous governments have not succeeded in overcoming them. But I will say, notwithstanding that, that our record on mental health issues is pretty good. It was the Liberal Party which established in government the mental health crisis service that has been discussed today. It was the Liberal Party which substantially built the new psychiatric unit at Woden Valley Hospital.

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