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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Tuesday, 29 June 2004) . . Page.. 2941 ..

There are other issues of concern in the health area. Let us go to mental health. Recently, the government tabled its mental health action plan, but there is no provision for action in the plan. Indeed, I think that it raises more questions than it answers. The level of service provision in mental health is static. Nothing is budgeted for that will show an increase in service to those who are most in need.

Mr Speaker, if you look at the number of occasions of service for community-based and extended care service, which is where the majority of the work is done, you will see that the target for 2003-04 is 175,000 occasions of service and the target for 2004-05 is exactly the same—175,000 occasions of service.

It is quite interesting that if you go to the measure of throughput in the hospital, that is, real patient separations—that is one measure, but it is not the best measure—you will find that the target was 1,400 in 2003-04. The estimated outcome, with the injections of cash in the second and third appropriations, actually came down to 1,200. According to the notes, the underachievement was related to staff recruitment and retention difficulties and, with adequate staffing, the throughput is expected to rise in 2004-05.

Where will this adequate staffing come from? Is the government going to invent it? The government is still in dispute with the nurses and others workers are still not happy with what they have been offered. I think that it is presumptuous of the government to announce that, particularly as Mr Corbell, quite embarrassingly, was ordered last week by the AIRC to withdraw his letter of final demand. I do not think that threatening the nurses that you will take their back pay off them if they do not agree by a certain date facilitates good staff relations. It is no wonder that there are staff recruitment and retention difficulties if they do not work in a climate that values them. We all hear the words “Yes, we value our staff” used, but when it comes to the raw end of negotiations it is the staff that feel the ire of this department.

I think that we are all quite aware that the government’s approach to mental health services is failing. Members have heard me talk constantly about that for the last two years. There has been a significant number of suicides of people in the care of Mental Health ACT—one a month for almost the last two years—but the action plan does not contain clear action, definite action, defined action, that would go anywhere towards alleviating this situation.

Those most in need rely on the psychiatric services unit at the hospital. There was a report in May of last year to the effect that the unit does not work, that not only is it a threat to the safety of the patients, but also it is not good for staff in occupational health and safety terms. The government immediately allocated $350,000 to do up the psychiatric services unit. Mr Speaker, we received today the quarterly report on progress with capital works. If you look at that report you will see that says that after the allocation of $350,000 the upgrade was to be completed in June 2004. That would have been by tomorrow as tomorrow will be the last day of June 2004.

It may be a good bet that tomorrow we will see a press release from the government saying that $350,000 has been spent, patient safety has been increased and staff are happy because working conditions have been improved. The only problem is that at the end of March only $20,000 of that $350,000 had been expended. We have said that the

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