Page 1521 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 6 June 2007
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The case is even clearer in mental health. The ACT government needs to invest more in providing both clinical and non-clinical mental health services that people can access before a mental illness becomes acute and hospitalisation is unavoidable. The Mental Health Council's Not for service report, released in 2005, rated the ACT as one of the poorest performers in the country, finishing seventh out of the eight states and territories in terms of per capita expenditure. The funding increases we have seen for mental health over the last two years have gone some way to addressing this poor rating. But, coming from such a low base, we have only just begun to address the significant unmet needs in mental health care in the ACT.
The ACT has a long way to go to honour its commitment to meet the national mental health reform targets set out in the 2006 COAG national mental health plan, and to meet the minister’s pledge, made in August last year, that by 2012 the ACT's mental health expenditure will be 12 per cent of the total health budget, that is, proportional to the mental illness disease burden. This budget takes the proportion to around eight per cent. That is a good start. But, again, the funding increases for mental health over the last two years have been overwhelmingly directed to acute clinical services. Solving the ACT's mental health crisis is not about building prisons, prison mental health services or multimillion dollar psychiatric units. The solution lies in providing services to help people with a mental illness stay well, equipping them with basic living skills and helping them to reconnect to their family and community.
If the ACT government is to improve significantly its delivery of hospital services and to reduce emergency waiting times even further, it must also invest heavily in improving access to primary care, commit even more than is in this budget to managing chronic disease, and invest in linking primary care and community-based health services. I am also strongly of the view the best health policies and programs are consumer led; that is, where health consumers and their carers are engaged with governments as valued partners in the development of health policies and programs. Consumers and carers are best placed to let governments know where the gaps and wrinkles are in the system, and who is performing and who is not.
Consumer participation ensures that those working in the system remain patient focused. Their considered input is invaluable. So it is disappointing to see that very little funding has gone in this budget to increased consumer and carer participation in the ACT government’s health policy development and implementation. I am aware that health consumers are actively engaged with some ACT committees, but health consumer representative organisations continue to be poorly funded, limiting their ability to provide advice to government. I urge the health minister, in future budgets, to direct appropriate funding to the various ACT health consumer organisations, to formalise the way in which government engages with health consumers, and to ensure that our health system truly serves those for whom it exists, the health consumers and their carers. In fact, I urge the minister to ensure that our health system serves all of the people of Canberra, regardless of income or where they live. It is not good enough for the government to say that it does not have enough money to deal with both acute care needs and preventative and community health programs. We do have enough money. It is where you choose to spend it that matters, and that requires vision. Sadly, I am afraid to say, that is lacking in this budget.
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