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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Wednesday, 3 March 2004) . . Page.. 673 ..

Ms Dundas’s motion calls on the police minister to require that plain-clothes police and unmarked cars be used wherever possible when collecting a mentally ill person. I think that is good practice, but the reality is that there are probably so few unmarked police cars used operationally that the effect of that probably would be quite negligible, even if they were all tasked immediately with going to the assistance of somebody with a mental illness. That is why I have proposed my amendments.

First and foremost, we have to understand that that must be where operationally it is actually possible. Obviously, plain-clothes police would be used for surveillance. I assume that major crime squad officers, detectives and so on are now getting out more and more in unmarked cars rather than marked police cars, so the operational part of the fleet that would actually be available for immediate response to a call for assistance probably would be quite small.

The other thing would be that, if you had a disturbance reported at a house, unless the police were made aware of the fact that a mentally ill person was involved in what was going on, they may not actually know until they arrive that they are facing somebody with a mental health crisis rather than just a domestic dispute, a break and enter or a fight in a street. There are a number of problems with the whole ability to dispatch a police car to those situations.

That being said, the other problem that I have with the motion is that if you actually do require that the unmarked car go first and it is further away than a patrol car or marked car, especially one which is quite close, you may be putting the mentally ill person and/or the community at greater risk. Unfortunately, on some occasions the immediate response, the quickest response, is the best response, particularly where violence, weapons or threats of self-harm are in place.

The best person to send would be somebody from the crisis team, somebody from the CAT team. If the CAT team is not available, it will contact the police or ask for assistance. Often the community goes straight to the police in the first place. My great fear would be that requiring a response that operationally delivers a slower service may be worse for the person in the long term. I think that there is a case for saying that we must leave that judgment to the police and we must ensure that other ongoing police operations, whether they be protection, surveillance, undercover work or a major crime investigation, are not compromised at the same time.

That will take some balancing. If the life of somebody with a mental illness is at risk, we need to get somebody there as quickly as we can, but the day-to-day function of the police is not primarily to deal with those with a mental illness. Perhaps that is a debate that we need to have further. I think that it is a debate that we are going through as a community. I understand that about 6.8 per cent of the ACT health budget is devoted to mental health. The national average is about 7 per cent. Some of the more progressive countries are spending between 12 and 14 per cent of their health budget to achieve best practice in dealing with mental illness. The debate will evolve and, as a community, the debate must evolve.

I think that the point that Ms Dundas has made is a good one. I think it is a good idea but, in terms of practicality, I am not sure that there are that many cars available to respond, I

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