Page 2133 - Week 06 - Thursday, 8 June 2017
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We are pleased that this budget starts the work to establish a dedicated office for mental health, as committed to in the parliamentary agreement. The office will identify and work to close the gaps in our mental health system, and improve service delivery and coordination, to ensure that all Canberrans can access the help they need. We know that one in three Canberrans will need a mental health service in their lifetime, and we must make sure that our system serves them well, intervening early, not just when they are at their most vulnerable.
Once fully established, the office for mental health will work towards a suicide reduction strategy, including the adoption of targets. We have targets for reducing road deaths and other preventable health issues, and the Greens believe we should do the same here, and adopt a suicide reduction target of 50 per cent by 2025.
The $23 million in new funding for mental health services in this budget prioritises areas of increased coordination, suicide reduction and a renewed focus on children and young people.
The wellbeing of students is a grave concern across the ACT, and both the Greens and Labor took an increase in school psychologists to the election as a key commitment. It will be important to ensure that school psychologists work with government and community experts in the field to develop a system-wide school referral process.
As part of a parliamentary agreement commitment to justice reinvestment, specifically to reduce recidivism by 25 per cent by 2025, the Greens are pleased to see progress on the establishment of a specialised drug and alcohol court. The court will assist people to truly address their addictive behaviours and divert them from custody.
The evidence is clear that our current approach to illicit drug use has failed people with addictions and our community as a whole. If we can treat the source of the issues, by helping people get through their drug or alcohol addictions, we can stop the cycle of crime and improve the quality of life for those individuals, their families, and the broader community. This model is successfully running in many other jurisdictions, including in Auckland, where I saw it first-hand last year. The Greens have the courage to back these new, evidence-based approaches which tackle the causes of crime and treat alcohol and drug addiction like the health issues that they truly are.
In line with the parliamentary agreement, this budget provides for new approaches to community engagement in the territory. Training ACT public service staff in community consultation is welcomed, along with the commitment to hire a participatory democracy expert and prioritise diversity in community consultation to ensure that the collection of voices heard is representative of our community. The Greens believe that consultation processes must be structured to ensure that the public’s contributions will meaningfully influence the government’s decisions. The government must also communicate with participants about how their input affects decisions.
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