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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 5 Hansard (3 May) . . Page.. 1391 ..
MS TUCKER (continuing):
a mental illness. He wrote about his condition and how it formed in him. He wrote about the right to give informed consent and about the right to be treated with respect at all times.
Bob took this activism to the wider community sector through his role as secretary of the ACT Council of Social Services and as an active and valued member of ACTCOSS' Health Policy Resource Committee where he strongly represented the view of mental health consumers.
In his partner Margy Wylde-Browne, Bob found someone who was not afraid of his illness, who understood the support that he needed, and gave him an unconditional love that he returned. With Margy and her son Jesse, Bob became an integral part of a joyful family and believed that he had found a real and profound contentment. Bob's death on 15 April is all the more tragic for the short time they had together, and the family he has left behind.
At the funeral, Jonathan Millar, for whom Bob was a very dear friend and guide, said:
Throughout the time I have known Bob he has worked passionately and thought creatively to try and effect social and environmental change. But he also believed there was another way to turn our planet's woes around-by living life with joy and love. He didn't see that as a particularly hard task for all of us to achieve, because for him, loving purely and simply was a pretty easy thing to do. So he worked on two fronts-through love and through activism. He would want us to do the same.
I believe that we should try to learn how to live with, and love and care for, people in every space the mind can take us. As individuals and as a society we need to understand that the qualities that can send us over the edge or cage us in constructions of our mind, the traps of despair and the exultant delusions, are the things that make us human. They are part and parcel of our creativity and our spirit.
Bob's coffin reflected his impact on the world. Despite the unarguable grief and loss they faced, it was a brave, positive and exuberant creation by his friends.
A Bob Beatty Sustainable Energy Fund has been set up with the Commonwealth Bank, but Bob Beatty's sustainable energy also lives on in the hearts and minds of an enormous number of people who have shared his life.
MR MOORE (Minister for Health, Housing and Community Services): It was with much sadness and a great sense of loss that I learnt of the death of Bob Beatty on Easter Sunday at the age of 46, and I will be responding to Ms Tucker's motion on behalf of the government.
Those of us who had the pleasure of working with Bob or just knowing him through his extensive involvement in a wide range of activities in the community have very fond memories of a very special person. Bob was an advocate and a very active person in the local mental health community. He had the ability to pass on his enthusiasm as he worked tirelessly to stamp out the stigma associated with mental illness. He was personally involved in enhancing the quality of life for many people affected with a mental illness.
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