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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 10 Hansard (25 September) . . Page.. 3290 ..

MS REILLY (continuing):

The report sets out a number of instances where the Government has taken action. There is no suggestion in the report that the Government has not taken any action at all to change the way the service is delivered in the ACT. I think it is unfortunate that some of this action seems to date from crises, that there does not appear to be any sort of framework or action plan to bring about changes. It took crises of various types at various times and the commencement of the Social Policy Committee's inquiry to get any action, and that is unfortunate. We have been lucky in the sense that, in the dissenting report put in by Louise Littlewood, she sets out quite well a number of the changes the Government has made; but there is no suggestion from the committee that it did not recognise those changes.

We were very lucky that the bureaucrats who came to talk to the committee were quite open about what was happening in the service. We talked earlier this year to the people working in the crisis assessment team, which I think now has a slightly different name but is doing the same work. We found out about the changes that were happening, that the service was not being delivered in the way it had been previously, and that has been acknowledged.

I was surprised that the Minister for Health and Community Care felt the need to make another statement on Tuesday about mental health services in the ACT. What was the concern? What was she trying to put forward to the community, when this report was due on Thursday? It was listed in the Assembly business and it was known that the report was going to be delivered. I think it would have been preferable for the Minister to wait for this report to come out and to give careful consideration to its recommendations.

I must admit that on Tuesday I was also gravely concerned to find that the Minister does not seem to understand the difference between a psychologist and a psychiatrist. She also seems to have problems understanding the difference between the position of Director of Mental Health Services and the Executive Director of Mental Health Services. I think this needs to be clarified. We have an executive director, who is working extremely hard and making a number of very positive changes for ACT mental health services, and his work is recognised both in the report and in other remarks that have been made. But there is still a legal position of Director of Mental Health Services, and it is not healthy for the community to have this on a month-by-month basis. This needs to be cleaned up immediately so that we can get some certainty in services in the ACT. In relation to understanding the difference between a psychologist and a psychiatrist, I am sure that there are many medical dictionaries that could be consulted on this matter.

One of the issues about the delivery of services in the ACT is that previously there has been much concentration on hospital-based services. One of the things that we examined when we went to look at services in both Victoria and South Australia was the shift that they have made in those States towards more community-based services. The other thing that we noted when looking at those services was that the ACT has not been a big spender on mental health services, if you look at it on a per capita national basis. We are down towards the bottom of spending in this area in Australia. I know that this is being addressed in some way; but I do not think we have gone far enough in looking at what will be the impact of gaps in mental health services if we fail to recognise where some of the need is.

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