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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Wednesday, 30 June 2004) . . Page.. 3056 ..

the effort. So we cannot acknowledge that progress has been made by the ACT government.

I have discussed the delay of the plan. I think it is important when you look at the government’s plan—this is the plan that it is using to address mental health issues—there are no tangible targets and time lines. There are a few examples, such as that somewhere between July and September 2004—this is action plan No 2—there will be the eestablishment of an interdepartmental implementation group. A couple of study groups and planning groups have to be established some time this year. But, in the main, there is no target or time line that says, “We are going to try and achieve something special here in reducing the impact of mental health on our community.” The paucity of initiative in the budget and the lack of action in the action plan mean that I do not believe that we can support paragraph (4).

Why do we not aim to reduce the rate of suicide, for example? I am sure if we all sat around the table we could come up with a target that we can work towards together. Why do we not aim to reduce the workloads of case managers? Ms MacDonald was berating the federal government because she could not find any federal mental health initiatives in the federal budget. The government has left its funding for mental health at about seven per cent again, apparently, which is exactly what has happened in the ACT. The total health budget for mental health in the ACT budget is about seven per cent. I think it is the pot calling the kettle black if we are going to try to force all the blame onto the federal government when mental health is one of the services delivered through state and territory health systems. We need to be careful about passing the buck.

We need a decision to be made, as Ms MacDonald said, on whether we should be going to world best standard. To do that, you need to spend between 10 per cent and 12 per cent to reach world best standard. Jurisdictions that are spending the most, like the Scandinavian countries, are spending as much as 14 per cent of their health budget on addressing mental health issues and they are the ones who are making a difference. Where is the target to reduce the case workload? Our caseworkers have between 32 and 40 cases. Again, in our policy I have said that over four years we aim to bring the workload down to 12 clients per mental health case manager. What we have to do is have real targets, put some real bucks in and make sure that we achieve what we are setting out to do.

The interesting thing is this was launched in May. The budget in May has something like $600,000 worth of initiatives for mental health. To the government’s credit, in the 2002-03 budget $1.6 million has been allocated and in the 2003-04 budget, $1 million. In the 2004-05 budget, unfortunately, I can find only about $665,000 worth of new mental health initiatives. How the government can release an action plan and then not fund it is beyond me—unless the lack of funding is an acknowledgement that there is no action in the plan. The excuse we got at estimates was, “Oh, we put the money in last year’s budget,” which is perhaps an indication that the plan should have been out in time for last year’s budget for expenditure.

There is no money to back up any mental health action plan in the ACT. If you need any proof that this government is not interested in mental health, I think that is it. We have a plan that was funded in last year’s budget. Before the consultation, before the final draft went out and before the community had their say, the government was either intent

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