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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Wednesday, 30 June 2004) . . Page.. 3061 ..

organisations providing resources, including a number of web sites such as the Reality Check web site.

Earlier this year I again promoted National Board Shorts Day run by Here for Life. Here for Life is an organisation dedicated to raising awareness and education of youth suicide and self-harm and National Board Shorts Day is one of its major fundraising activities. I usually participate in that on the theme of ‘Life is a beach—but not for all’. This year, it raised over $45,000 nationally to help support young people, especially in rural communities, and deal with problems that they experience.

Here For Life and other organisations like Reach Out have for some time been providing resources and raising awareness on youth suicide and depression. Some of the resources these organisations provide are amazing and excellent examples of how well community organisations can do when they are well supported and funded. We hear constant testimonials particularly about the work of Reach Out and how it has helped so many isolated young people deal with their issues and to continue their lives.

It is ironic that this motion comes after the government is, for the first time, funding a full-time youth suicide prevention officer and a range of suicide prevention initiatives. It appears that money for these projects is set to decrease over the next four years. There has been an increase this year for an establishment cost, but that money appears to then dwindle into the future. We have already spoken today about the high level of youth unemployment, which I think is a key factor in the levels of depression among young people. So this is not the time to be decreasing funding for suicide prevention initiatives or to be walking away from supporting young people in the things that they want to do and helping them contribute to the community.

The original motion called on the Assembly to “acknowledge the progress that the ACT Government has made in addressing mental health issues”. To echo Ms Tucker: yes, some progress has been made but, clearly, it is not enough. If genuine progress were being made, we would not have the alarmingly high rates of youth suicide and self-harm. Hopefully the initiatives in this budget can help turn that around. There have been increases in spending on mental health, but maybe there are other things that we should be doing, such as supporting organisations in the community to go further and targeting enough funds to support people on the ground and in our hospitals.

I would like to touch briefly on the government’s “road to wellness kit”, which is given to inpatients when they have been deemed well enough to leave hospital and to their families and carers to provide them with links to the community about what community support there is. When I tried to obtain a copy of the “road to wellness kit”, I was told that copies had run out and that a new lot was being printed. It is obviously a resource that is needed in the community. Far too often we see a cycle of people coming into hospital, going out of hospital and then coming back into hospital because the support they need in the community just is not there or they are just not finding it. Hopefully the “road to wellness kits” are being reprinted and are going to everybody who needs one and that it is not just a case of “It was a great idea once, but we don’t have the ability to follow it through.”

This motion also states the obvious—that is, better knowledge of management of mental issues is an important foundation for sound mental health. It is clear that we have

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