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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Wednesday, 30 June 2004) . . Page.. 3067 ..

I might begin my speech by going through a few of the things that have been said and then do a general wrap up. I do not think I need to add anything to what Mr Stanhope said. He was well across the issues and I believe he quite adequately addressed the amendment that Mr Smyth put up.

Mrs Dunne spoke about the issue of a friend who is in desperate need of case management. I have never denied and I will never deny the need in this area. I do not believe that the amount of money put into mental health services will ever be enough. Until such time as we can find the cause of mental health problems, truly address the issues and find a solution, we will never have enough money to deal with the day-to-day issues of people who are affected by this illness.

I know that there are always examples of where the system has fallen down. Mrs Dunne’s friend and Mrs Dunne should continue to lobby for case management. We need to have extra case management. I think the old adage of the squeaky wheel gets the oil is one that certainly applies in the case of mental health funding and, in fact, in the case of any funding for health issues.

I appreciate that Ms Dundas brought up the issue of the Here for Life program. The aim of this excellent program is to try to prevent youth suicide. This issue, which unfortunately has been burgeoning in the last few years, causes no end of personal pain for the families who have lost young family members due to youth suicide. Here for Life and other community groups are doing excellent work.

Both Ms Dundas and Ms Tucker talked about the issue of unemployment and how it relates to, I suppose, a general feeling of malaise within the community. There are no short-term answers to that. We just have to keep working at those issues.

Mr Smyth referred to the figure of 15 per cent in my motion. I did check that figure. It is my understanding that it is a combined national figure, and I understand that it comes from the ABC program that I mentioned earlier in my speech.

Mr Smyth also made the comment that mental health is dealt with by state and territory governments, and that was his justification for having a go at me for talking about federal funding for mental health. While state and territory governments can make a contribution, the federal government has the prime responsibility to fund mental health research as well as other research. As I said before, finding out why people have mental health issues is much better than people having to continuously go through the cycle of needing acute care. So I make that suggestion to Mr Smyth.

I will deal first with the amendment put forward by Mr Smyth. I think Mr Stanhope addressed fairly well the issue in paragraph (4) of Mr Smyth’s amendment about lack of progress. During similar debates in this place I have referred to the situation when the Liberals lost government and what has happened since the Stanhope government came to power. They are two quite different things—like chalk and cheese.

When I was a new member of this place—I had been here for about a year—I decided to organise a trip for members of the health committee to look at mental health services. I made that decision after seeking a briefing from Mental Health ACT. I am very pleased

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