Ruth Webber (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

For those of us who are used to doing the late night shift when some of us speak, it will come as no surprise that yet again I rise to speak about the issue of mental health. I rise to speak about three different aspects of it, although I plan to make a brief contribution. The first issue I will raise is about the stigma that we still apply to the issues of mental health. That was really brought home to me today when I saw the front page of the newspaper from my hometown, the West Australian. My good friend Geoff Gallop was here in Canberra recently to see his best friend, Tony Blair, and the headline with a picture of Geoff seeing Tony was ‘Gallop out of exile’. We all know that he made a very public announcement of his retirement from public life due to an illness that confronts all of us. But when the only major daily newspaper in Western Australia sees the retirement from public life due to illness as an exile, it tells you that we have a very long way to go in beating the stigma attached to these things. In fact I think there is a significant role for the media to play in helping those of us in public life to combat that stigma.

The second issue I wish to raise is that in April this year another West Australian, who has made a significant contribution to not just combating the stigma of mental health but campaigning for the rights of those who suffer from that illness, Keith Wilson, will end his tenure as chair of the Mental Health Council of Australia. He commenced that role in November 2002 having previously been an advocate—as he still is—on behalf of not just consumers and carers but also service providers in Western Australia. He is still actively involved with the WA mental health council. As we will not be meeting in this place in April I thought it appropriate to place on the record my regard for Keith’s hard work, his tenacity and his commitment to that advocacy role, the way he along with other people who have played a prominent role in public life have used the profile that they have to try to advocate for and further the cause of those suffering from mental illness.

Keith has made a unique contribution as someone who was not only a minister for health, and therefore has experience at that hard decision-making end of service delivery, but also the carer of an adult son with mental illness. I know he has made a significant contribution as chair of the Mental Health Council of Australia and that he will be missed by that organisation. I also know that organisation is incredibly robust and will continue on its way. I want to place on record my congratulations to Keith for the hard work that he has done in his time with the Mental Health Council.

The final issue I want to raise briefly is an issue that I have raised in this place on a number of occasions. It is the issue of the establishment of Hawthorn House in the suburb of Mount Hawthorn in Perth as a step-down facility. As those who have followed this tortuous debate would be aware, Hawthorn House will be established in the old Hawthorn community hospital as a step-down facility, as I said, for those who have suffered from long-term depression and who need that intermediate care after intensive treatment and before they return to life on their own or with their families and supporters. So it was proposed that an existing health facility would be used.

Unfortunately the community campaign that built up against the establishment of Hawthorn House was another example of the stigma attached to and the lack of understanding of the 20 per cent of the population who suffer from mental illness. It was thanks to the tenacity of the Western Australian health minister Jim McGinty—who even his harshest critics would have to admit is a fairly tenacious fighter—who committed to seeing through the long-standing commitment of governments from all sides to these facilities being based appropriately in our community. This was against the wishes of the majority of the councillors in the town of Vincent.

Mr McGinty announced with much fanfare in December, after the council had been considering the matter since April last year, that if they did not hurry up and make a decision he would take the decision out of their hands to the Western Australian Planning Commission. That application was duly lodged, although I must say it also sparked the town of Vincent into some kind of action. They decided—probably still against the wishes of those on the council, but with politically better judgment—that they would in the long run support the process. So the WA Planning Commission has finally announced that the establishment of Hawthorn House can go ahead—something that should have been a straightforward decision and something that political parties on both sides and governments of all persuasions have supported since 1992.

It seems to me that if we are to be serious about basing these facilities in our community we need to come up with a process that means that people with a mental illness are not held hostage, such as happened with the five councillors from the town of Vincent. We need to come up with a better way of making those decisions. It was in a discussion with Keith Wilson that we explored the idea that perhaps there is a leadership role for the Western Australian Local Government Association to take on whereby they can work with our state government in Western Australia to come up with a model for consultation that will streamline this process and allow for proper community consultation for the development of these community based facilities without 12 months of stigma, sledging and neglect as occurred with those five individual councillors.