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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (21 November) . . Page.. 4096 ..

Mrs Carnell: Madam Deputy Speaker, if Mr Berry believes that, tell him to move it. We are quite happy to debate it right now. If he believes that I have acted in contempt of this Assembly, why does he not do something about it and not just talk about it, or withdraw it?

MR BERRY: I do not think I have to withdraw it.

MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: I do not think he made a personal accusation there, Mrs Carnell.

Mrs Carnell: You are not going to move it, so you must not have any facts.

MR BERRY: It is a contempt of the Assembly to ignore the legislation which is passed by it, in my view. The clear facts of the matter are that the law requires that the director of mental health services be appointed by the Minister. You must appoint one, and you have not done so. It also envisages that, in the absence of a director of mental health services, you would have an acting one, and you have not. There is also the situation of the delegations, which you just supplied this evening, and I note that you have not approved any of them.

Mrs Carnell: I take a point of order. There is a relevance issue here. For the life of me, I do not know how appointments under the Mental Health Act have anything to do with the budget that we are debating, or the Government response to the Estimates Committee, or even the Estimates Committee report, Madam Deputy Speaker.

MR BERRY: It does. There are 13 or 16 - - -

MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Berry, the challenge is there, and your time has expired.

MS TUCKER (12.56 am): I want to make a couple of brief comments. I have made a lot of comments already this week about my concerns about health expenditure. I certainly do still question the claim from the Government that record expenditure in mental health is necessarily equal to appropriate resourcing for mental health. We are disappointed with the health budget because of the priorities of this Government, and I have already made quite clear why, on Tuesday; so I will not go into that again.

There is one other point I would like to make here. It is about the funding for the hep C interferon program. It is good to see some action from the Government on this important public health issue; but, again, I am concerned about the lack of education and prevention strategies in that funding. The other comment I would make is that I notice from the Health Complaints Commissioner's annual report that he is being kept very busy and he has a lot of complaints still open. I hope that Mrs Carnell will consider increasing his resources, if that is necessary.

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