Page 1279 - Week 05 - Thursday, 4 June 2020
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extended period and that was explained away by a failure in the system of ordering a new lock or ordering a repair for a new lock. Those sorts of things should not go on for weeks. If you order a repair to a new lock in the mental health unit today and it has not happened tomorrow, the system should elevate it so that someone says, “We really need this lock fixed.”
It is a symptom of everything that is wrong. They were prepared to let a lock go unrepaired for weeks and nobody in the system escalated it. We would never have known about that, except that some brave person said, “Enough is enough.” The system is just not good enough, and all the backslapping and reworking of this motion do not take away from the fact that there are people in this town who are not getting the service they need from the mental health system. There are children in this town whose parents are taking them interstate because there is no-one and nowhere for them to go.
The minister has come into this place and said, “Oh, yes, I’m really very sorry that it’s taken so long to build the acute adolescent mental health system. We put a stop on it so that we could consult again.” What about the kids who self-harm? What about the kids who suicide? What about the kids who are inappropriately housed in the adult mental health unit or in a general ward?
Let’s talk about the people who are inappropriately housed in general wards. The person who bravely went to the ABC was suicidal. He was put in a general ward. This is not appropriate. We heard it the other day in the COVID committee, “Oh, well, if the AMHU is full, we put people in general wards.” That is not good enough. The hospital is already under pressure. We heard evidence recently that it is at 90 per cent capacity, and more even, during the COVID crisis.
We cannot be putting mental health patients in general wards, because people who should be in medical wards should be in those wards. Every time we do that, you displace somebody else and you house somebody inappropriately. This is why we need an inquiry.
The Minister for Health said, “Oh, well, we can’t ask the Human Rights Commission to do this. It would be too difficult and I’m not really sure how we would do it.” It was fine back in 2011 to refer to the Human Rights Commission a thorough inquiry of Bimberi, which came up with more than 100 recommendations—maybe 200; I cannot remember now. It was fine then, at the drop of a hat, to transfer an inquiry to the Human Rights Commission. Since then, the Human Rights Commission have taken an interest in Bimberi and have done their own self-referred inquiry into other aspects of Bimberi.
It is not unprecedented for this Assembly to refer matters to the Human Rights Commission. In fact, it was the idea of the Greens that it should happen, in the case of an inquiry into Bimberi. It is an appropriate place for us to go. If the minister wants to quibble about the time frame, I am happy to have that discussion. But the minister has not come up with a more expansive time frame. If the government were serious about it, that is what they would do.
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