Page 1386 - Week 05 - Thursday, 18 June 2020
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non-government organisations have been experiencing an increase in contacts and requests for mental health information, help and support, with related anxiety, unease and confusion at the current situation.
I have been working with the Coordinator-General for Mental Health and Wellbeing and I am very pleased we have been able to deliver a $4.5 million whole-of-government mental health response to support our community as COVID-19 develops. This funding is to expand our government acute mental health support services, as well as giving over $2.5 million of additional funds to community mental health organisations to support their existing services to meet the increased demand from the Canberra community. This will enable the government to expand HAART—the access mental health and home assessment acute response team; extend PACER—the police, ambulance, clinician emergency response service—to operate 7 days a week; and to create two Canberra safe haven cafes to create a service which allows for mental health diversion from our emergency department.
The additional funds for the community sector are being provided to organisations such as Lifeline Canberra, Menslink, the Way Back Support Service and OzHelp, as well as Canberra’s LGBTIQ+ community through A Gender Agenda and the AIDS Action Council ACT. There is also increased grief and loss counselling in recognition of the significant challenges the public health restrictions, hospital and aged-care visiting rules and bushfires have had on people and families across the Canberra region during this challenging period.
The government has also been working with non-government organisation partners to develop the $7 million community support package to best meet increased service demand for emergency relief. This has included providing coordinated food relief and support for vulnerable members of our community, increased support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations and services, and additional supports for more than 40 NGOs in the health sector in diverse areas ranging from alcohol and drug services to palliative care. Helping our non-government healthcare organisations shift to telehealth service provision models has been a high priority to ensure that we continue to support all members of our community who need help at this time.
Overall, the government has provided community support and economic stimulus packages totalling over $350 million. I detail all these things because it is entirely relevant to underline how much work the government has done to support the community through the range of challenges during this really difficult period. That is an important context in relation to this bill.
The Greens understand that when the Public Health Act was written in 1997 no-one envisaged a pandemic of the proportions we are seeing around the world today. The act was simply not designed for a health minister to declare a public health emergency for such an extended period. No amount of watching science fiction movies would have had anyone think that for public health reasons we would try to keep our entire local and global population inside for months on end. When the compensation clause in the Public Health Act was inserted it was not envisaged that the legislation would be used to declare a global pandemic that would literally affect every single person in our community for perhaps six months or more.
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