Page 2688 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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combat all forms of mental illness or to pour funding into the system to cope with people who present to the health system with a mental illness. Hearing that, perhaps the forthcoming mapping exercise will give some clearer directions, as Mr Smyth has already alluded to.
It is disappointing to note that, after eulogising that additional funding for the delivery of mental health services in the territory was to become a real focus of the Stanhope government, the reality is that it has not been matched by real growth in funding allocation to meet the specified demand. The health minister may say that the government has increased funding for mental health services by around $13 million since 2003-04. The trouble is that, relative to the overall funding commitment, analysis of the Stanhope government’s funding commitment to mental health in relation to the overall funding of the health portfolio has remained relatively unchanged since 2003-04. In fact, as a percentage of funding for the health portfolio, funds allocated to mental health services between 2003-04 and 2006-07 have hovered at around seven per cent, disappointingly, with no signs of growth whatsoever. If the government identifies that there is a significant increase in the number of Canberrans presenting to the health system, with sometimes a multitude of mental illnesses, this government has not sought to increase the amount of funding directed to tackling such a serious social and health problem occurring in our community.
A point of differentiation exists between the Stanhope government and the Liberal opposition. We saw, before the 2004 election, a need to commit more funds to cope with the growing demand for and pressure placed upon mental health services in the ACT. During the lead-up to the last election, the ACT Liberal Party committed to boosting funding for mental health services over four years. That would see expenditure rise to a level of 11 per cent of the overall health budget. We recognised that a boost in funding was vital to work towards arresting the significant impact that mental illness can potentially have across a broad section of our community. In fact, in June this year the chief medical officer released a report reaffirming the significance of mental health disorders as the third leading burden of disease in Australia—depression being the most pressing issue.
It perhaps would be enlightening to hear whether or not the Stanhope government will consider boosting the proportion of funding in next year’s budgetary process, specifically targeting real increases in support for the sector to cope with implementing further intervention strategies in the first instance to tackle mental health disorders. To use a well-worn cliche, prevention is better than cure. If we can detect and direct services at the beginning of a problem, then we do not have the compounding of that problem, thereby requiring more resources.
I add that, in recent contact with Winnunga Nimmityjah, I was shocked to hear that a significant proportion of clients presenting with any number of health concerns are also more likely to suffer a mental health illness that requires their significant and ongoing attention. Naturally, this absorbs an inordinate amount of resources of such a tightly run budget as Winnunga’s, and this is probably worthy of more investigation. As I said, I am hopeful that the mapping exercise that has been talked about in this place this afternoon will be able to identify some of these areas and help the government to better target funding where it is needed.
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