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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Wednesday, 30 June 2004) . . Page.. 3065 ..

legacy of the Liberals in relation to mental health—the lowest level of funding, commitment or recognition of issues affecting people with a mental issue of any government in Australia.

We have travelled significantly over the last 2½ years. We have redressed that situation and we have increased funding significantly. Yet, in an environment where Ms MacDonald wishes to raise for debate within the Assembly issues around progress—the development of a mental health strategy and specific funding for suicide research and recognition—we have this unavoidable determination to simply decry that progress, to cover up the lethargy and the lack of attention that was the legacy of the Liberal Party.

The amendments really should not be supported. Certainly, they are not consistent with the spirit of the debate that Ms MacDonald has generated. Essentially, when one looks at the amendments that have been proposed, one can see that they do nothing really other than seek to make some very partisan political points.

In the context of the amendments, I think this point needs to be made: where is the Liberal Party’s mental health strategy and policy? Where is the mental health strategy of any other party in this Assembly? Where are the details of the policy? Where are the details of the policy that they are going to take to the election? Where is the history of their achievement in relation to mental health? Where is the acknowledgement of their complicity in reducing the ACT to the lowest funding and the least performing jurisdiction in Australian in relation to mental health?

It is a bit rich of the Liberal Party—in fact, I am amazed at the effrontery—to come into this place and moralise about a lack of commitment to mental health. The legacy of seven years of Liberal government was to deliver to the people of the ACT a mental health system that was the worst in Australia and that was under-funded to a greater degree than any other place in Australia.

We have been in government now for just over 2½ years. We have begun to address those wrongs. We acknowledge the shortfalls, we are working to redress them and we have provided significant additional funding across the board for mental health in the ACT. We have begun to undo the damage that we inherited and we will continue to do so. We will increase funding incrementally.

We recognise how fundamentally important it is that we address the full gamut of issues that affect people who suffer from a mental condition. This is something that is fundamentally important to Labor governments; it is something that we have concentrated on. As I indicated yesterday during the debate around the budget, some of the decisions that we took in relation to the funding of public hospitals were affected by our determination to commit funding to all the areas, such as mental health, disability services, respite care and reasonable pay rates for our nurses, that the Liberal Party simply neglected and simply did not fund.

That is our record of achievement, and it is a record of achievement that is unmatched in this place by any other group or party, and certainly by the previous government. It is a record that we are proud of; it is a record that we are happy to stand by, acknowledging that there is still an awful lot more work to be done. We know that and we will continue to increase and improve not just funding but the provision of services with the partners

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