Page 1277 - Week 05 - Thursday, 4 June 2020

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Mr Milligan also made the point that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are more likely to experience mental health challenges and are probably less likely to get treatment as well. With the focus on mental health, and the focus on culturally safe services, I know that Minister Rattenbury touched on that, particularly in response to the COVID-19 response. I also wrote to Minister Hunt earlier this year, in relation to the mental health commitment that had been made around the bushfires, to encourage and ensure that culturally appropriate services would be available for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who had been affected by the fires earlier this year, particularly recognising that so many Yuin people from the South Coast had come to the ACT and were in need of support.

Whenever there is trauma like that, whether it is bushfires or COVID-19, for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people particularly, who have that experience of intergenerational trauma, that is a compounding factor. It is absolutely critical that services that have that cultural understanding, that have that deep understanding of the impact of intergenerational trauma, are available for them.

I thank Mrs Dunne for bringing the issue to the Assembly. Obviously, we are not supporting her path forward on this. We need to be really clear about our commitment, the amount of investment that we have made and the amount of focus that we will continue to put on our response to mental health in the community. We take these issues very seriously. I think that Mr Rattenbury’s amendment well outlines the detail of that.

MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (4.46): It will come as no surprise that the Canberra Liberals will not be supporting this amendment. The main thrust of this motion is set out in part (3) which calls on the Assembly to refer to the Human Rights Commission for inquiry and report certain matters. Mr Rattenbury went to great pains to say, “We can’t just concentrate on the adult mental health unit. That’s just an aspect of the mental health system.” Yes, we agree that that is a point. However, this is not a proposed inquiry into the adult mental health system.

I had better make it very clear. I did not read it out because I thought that as grown-up, long-experienced legislators we would have read the terms of reference set out in part (3) of the motion, but we ask for a Human Rights Commission inquiry in the following terms:

(a) the provision of mental health services to adults;

(b) the provision of mental health services to children and young people;

(d) recent reports and studies that relate to the provision of mental health services in the ACT—

and Mr Rattenbury has been so kind as to list many of those reports and studies in his amendment—

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