Page 2879 - Week 07 - Thursday, 7 June 2012
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The Greens also want to see greater recognition of the social determinants of health, which is recommended by major organisations such as the World Health Organisation and the United Nations, and we must broaden our understanding of what determines health outcomes.
Other areas like housing and transport also have a significant impact on health. The point we have made is that we need to look more broadly at some of the things that we need to address people’s overall health. That relates to mental health as well. In a basic sense, without having stable and secure accommodation, people’s health will deteriorate both physically and mentally.
With regard to mental health, I would like to see stronger recognition from the government about the high levels of unmet need in the community for long-term secure accommodation for people living with a serious mental illness who need 24-hour, seven-day-a-week assistance, where necessary.
The point I have made is that we want to prevent people with mental illness from going from crisis to crisis in their lives and needing constant acute care. Doing things like improving accommodation and giving people stable accommodation, recognising the complexities that come with that, is one very important way, along with areas such as employment, that will give people stability and help them to recover.
There is $4.2 million in new funding to mental health, which is very welcome, and it is one of the parliamentary agreement items. I have said that we would like to see more of this funding directed towards community-based and run prevention and recovery programs. It is recognised that if we do put more funding, once again, into these community services, that will have a very big impact.
On housing, as Ms Le Couteur has already outlined in her speech, there was $5 million in the budget—again, through the Greens agreement item—to go towards public housing. We would have liked to have seen more go into this. We do believe very much—this is the point I made earlier—that public housing is a wise investment for the future because it provides housing for people and also because it provides a strong asset for government. As I have already said, having stable accommodation is vital for people to be able to get back on their feet. We need to recognise that everyone in Canberra has the right to secure accommodation, and public housing is one of the most stable and secure forms of accommodation for people.
I was pleased to see that there is funding for design of the common ground project. This is something the Greens have supported. It provides another model or way of providing accommodation to people who are homeless and people who might come from other disadvantaged backgrounds. It has been very successful in other states where it has operated. We are pleased to see this being progressed here in the ACT. There is also some funding in there for people with disability, which is good to see, and I will go into that a bit later.
With regard to corrections—this relates to health as well—funding has been reinstated in the budget for the secure mental health facility. As I said yesterday in the debate,
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