Page 3852 - Week 12 - Thursday, 30 October 2014
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This work led to the November 2009 public consultation on those issues through the framework paper. At the same time, a specific forensic mental health options paper was released. The paper, together with feedback from stakeholders and the public, underpins the forensic mental health amendments presented today.
In August 2012 the Attorney-General and I released a paper titled “First exposure draft of the Mental Health Amendment Bill” for public comment. Early in the review we had agreed that proposed amendments to the Mental Health (Treatment and Care) Act 1994 would go through a two-stage exposure draft process so that the community and stakeholders could be confident their contributions had been taken into account. This two-stage exposure draft process and public consultation was complemented by meetings with stakeholder groups, briefings to members of the Assembly and an iterative process with the review advisory group. The time taken for the review compares with contemporary reviews in larger jurisdictions that have been considering a similar magnitude of change.
A number of people have shown considerable commitment to the review process. I would like to thank some of them today: David Lovegrove, representing the Mental Health Consumer Network, who has provided a significant amount of input throughout the review; Simon Vierek, representing the Mental Health Community Coalition; representatives of Carers ACT; Linda Crebbin, first as the Children and Young People Commissioner and later as President of ACAT; Helen Watchirs and other representatives of the Human Rights Commission; Ron Cahill for his support when Chief Magistrate; representatives of the ACT Disability, Aged and Carers Advocacy Service, Advocacy for Inclusion, Legal Aid and the Youth Coalition of the ACT; John Hinchey as the Victims of Crime Commissioner; Dr Peggy Brown as Chief Psychiatrist and later Director-General of ACT Health; my colleague Simon Corbell who initiated the review as Minister for Health and who has continued to support it in his role as the Attorney-General; all of the staff involved in the mental health policy unit at ACT Health who have worked tirelessly and very collaboratively with the mental health sector more broadly, who have attended the meetings, who have written the submissions, who have drafted the cabinet submissions, the bill and the framework papers and who have genuinely sought to address all of the issues that have been raised through this extensive process.
The amendments included in this bill will come into force 12 months from the date the bill is passed. This will allow time for a comprehensive education and training program for stakeholders, for production of plain language documents and for services to build capacity to implement the new provisions which do create a very different mental health legislative framework here in the ACT.
In recognition of the level of change that is being implemented, I will introduce a second bill, to be called the Mental Health Bill, in early 2015. As mentioned, the second bill will provide a framework for transition to new the act. Provisions for the secure mental health unit will be proposed in a separate bill. To enable agencies to embrace the change, a comprehensive implementation is planned, including a framework and skills for assessing decision-making capacity.
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