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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Thursday, 24 June 2004) . . Page.. 2725 ..

There is a fairly simple instance that I will address before discussing the more complex one of mental health funding levels. When government changed hands, Mr Smyth is on record as making the comment that the Liberals proposed a forensic facility as part of the hospital, which he argues he never has, and Hansard can find no record of that. That was, it seems, as other members have said tonight, sourced from a document provided through the media, along with Liberal Party policy documents, that the minister presumably was asked to respond to. At first glance one might imagine it was draft Hansard, but the use of Mr Smyth’s first name and the lack of headers and footers on the page make it obvious that it is instead a fairly informal record of a speech or interview. It is interesting that there is just one reference to the facility at the hospital in a document which clearly made the Leader of the Opposition appear inconsistent, but all other references on Liberal Party documents are to a prison.

I can see why Mr Corbell might seize on that for point scoring but, clearly, if he took that more seriously he should have, and would have, looked more closely and more widely at what Mr Smyth was saying. The fact that, when given the chance to correct the record on this matter, he did not do so demonstrates that we are dealing with an enthusiasm for making a political point and perhaps mocking other people. That is an approach shared by both sides of this house that creates an antagonistic atmosphere and wastes a lot of time.

I do not, as Mrs Dunne has suggested, see that there was a deliberate fabrication. I have not seen evidence from her to prove that, anyway. Nonetheless, it is concerning that such an approach leads to misrepresentation, as it can do, particularly in a minister who has bigger responsibilities to the parliament and the community. The issue of mental health funding—how much we allocate per person in the ACT for mental health services—is new in this debate, and in some ways puts the most coherent case.

As I understand it, the minister received advice in early February, in the form of a possible question brief, that in 2000 and 2001 the ACT had the lowest recurrent expenditure per person for any state or territory on mental health services at $67. (Extension of time granted.) This figure had increased to $83 when government changed hands. Given that there were no specific questions on the issue in that week, it is certainly conceivable that the information at the bottom of that brief was not read or absorbed.

I accept also that the national comparative figures in 1999-2000, where the ACT at $67 was so much lower than the other states and territories, would be much more memorable. I accept that a possibly inadvertent use of the wrong figure, once it was reinforced by inaccurate briefing notes provided by the department for a speech, could seem to be unquestionable. Certainly it was a conveniently low figure that allowed the government to present itself as making a significantly greater sudden improvement to mental health funding than it did in reality.

It seems to me that Mr Smyth was quite strenuous in challenging that figure, despite the fact that the minister took such delight in attacking him with it. I am alarmed that there was no alarm in the minister’s office that Mr Smyth kept coming back to it, particularly as it only made the Liberal Party look bad if they could not prove their case. It seems that there was no query from the office, and it was the department that alerted the minister to

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