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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Wednesday, 3 March 2004) . . Page.. 671 ..

they have the required skills and equipment to deal with someone who may be physically violent.

I would like to repeat some comments sent to me by the police consultative board, which has been attending to the issue of police connections with people with mental illness. It supports very strongly the manner in which police carry this out. The words I have from the consultative board are that ACT Policing are seen by most respondents to their questions as handling difficult clients exceptionally well. The comments received included that ACT police are brilliant with psychotic clients, managing to get them to hospital with their dignity intact; extraordinarily good, with a high professional standard of behaviour; very sophisticated in their negotiating skills; and non-judgmental, very sensitive and good at calming clients down.

That is not always the case, of course, but that comes through fairly strongly. Sometimes police performance is seen more as the way in which a particular officer handles the issue but it is significant that, on the advice I have here from the board, in the past five years the Office of the Community Advocate, who has responsibility for people with mental problems, has not had one complaint about the police. I think that that says a deal.

Police attendance beyond that described by Ms Dundas also occurs under MOUs with Calvary Healthcare, the ACT Ambulance Service, and ACT Mental Health. ACT Policing uniform members may be requested to assist with the transportation of patients from various sources, including Calvary Hospital to the Canberra Hospital.

ACT Policing’s view of that is that the most appropriate manner of transporting people in a planned circumstance—where it is known that it is going to happen—should be determined following consultation between police, the crisis assessment team, and the ACT Ambulance Service. If patients need to be sedated, they should be transported by the ambulance only to ensure appropriate supervision.

In the absence of any propensity for violence, ACT Policing proposes that the transportation of patients between health facilities be treated as a health issue, not an incident requiring intervention. Let me stress that there is no small number of circumstances in which that police uniform is important. It denotes a level of authority and certainty that action will come if something does need to happen and in many circumstances it is preferable perhaps that that uniform be there.

Nevertheless, I take Ms Dundas’s point that where a marked car pulls up outside someone’s house it can cause distress. There are circumstances in which some people with a mental illness will react very unpleasantly, perhaps violently, when they see a police vehicle. Balance is needed. If time permits, an assessment needs to be made as to who should handle it, whether it be the police or someone else.

ACT police, when dealing with people suffering a mental illness, seek to maintain the dignity of the person. To this end, transportation by a police vehicle should be avoided if possible, unless there is a significant risk of injury to either the person or to any other person. I think that that is one of the thrusts of Mr Smyth’s amendment. This concept is very much part of their background and their training.

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