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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 10 Hansard (23 September) . . Page.. 3148 ..

MR SPEAKER: Order! This is not a dialogue.

MR BERRY: Mr Speaker, here we have a paper which goes to a whole range of issues concerning mental health services in the ACT, but not the important ones - not the key ones such as the appointment of the Director of Mental Health Services, something that Mrs Carnell has not been able to manage for yonks.

I also notice that there is no mention in this document of available beds within the hospital framework. Does that mean that there are fewer or more - - -

Mrs Carnell: The same.

MR BERRY: The same? So, there is no advance on the need to provide more services to the community by way of critical care beds. Mrs Carnell will argue that we are trying to refocus the mental health services and do it in a different way; but, at the end of the day, critical care beds are very important in that context. Mrs Carnell, in her report, does mention that there will be private beds provided by Calvary Hospital, not by the Government - at no cost to the Government, I suspect - at the Calvary site. The difficulty with that is that that is not where the waiting lists are. The waiting lists and the struggle to gain access to beds within our hospital system are within the public system. It is all right to boast about somebody else providing a private service; but I would much rather see in here a boast about how Mrs Carnell had delivered part of her promise - one or two or three or four or more of those 50 beds in our public hospital system she promised at the last election. In this paper there is not one mention of them. Those are the issues which concern people out there in the community.

Mr Speaker, I see mentioned in here that on 26 March the Chief Minister launched for comment an issues paper on the review of the Mental Health (Treatment and Care) Act. She could not even get that right. It is late and well and truly overdue, Mr Speaker. These are important issues that need to be addressed with care. But they need to be addressed on time and with a bit of expertise; otherwise people out there who are concerned about the quality of mental health services in the Territory become quite agitated, and rightfully so.

Another thing I find interesting about this ministerial statement on mental health services in the Australian Capital Territory is that there is absolutely no mention of discussion with the Mental Health Advisory Council. I cannot see it mentioned anywhere. Did it play a part in this?

Mrs Carnell: Of course they did. They organised the launch.

MR BERRY: What did they do?

Mrs Carnell: They were at the launch. They organised the launch.

MR BERRY: They were invited along to the launch, Mrs Carnell said. Is that not good! Invite the Mental Health Advisory Council along to the launch. So, everything is decided, and then, when you have it all sewn up, without the assistance of the Director of Mental Health Services/Professor of Psychiatric Services/Associate Professor

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