Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In March 2005 I had the privilege of meeting with a constituent, Jan Kealton, who met with me to talk about the tragic circumstances that led to the death of her son. Her son, James Henry Jacobs, a 29-year-old schizophrenic, had been shot dead by police on 25 March 2005. Circumstances transpired such that James was shot by a police officer whilst he was wielding a 30-centimetre-long hunting knife. Police were responding to a call of an attempted carjacking and James was the person identified as being responsible. When police approached him he was wielding this knife. Those officers, I am told, fearing for their own safety, shot dead James Henry Jacobs.

When I spoke with Jan it became very clear that, like any situation, there are a number of versions of the event. I do not intend to rake over this issue in the House tonight. I highlight it because it goes to the very core of an affliction in our community that this government has done something towards addressing but which still remains a very large problem with very many widespread ramifications and, unfortunately, still, a lack of action that will actually address it in the long term.

Jan Kealton highlighted to me that for someone with schizophrenia, seeing a police vehicle approach and being instructed by them was the very kind of activity likely to exacerbate feelings of paranoia and concern a schizophrenic would have. It was suggested to me that James Jacobs being confronted by police on that evening, as he was, would have led to—and reasonably could have been expected to have led to—the reaction that he had. Unfortunately, many police are simply untrained in how to deal with those who are mentally ill in our community. Being untrained, they put themselves in harm’s way and, understandably, have a desire to protect themselves. No-one would dare to question that, but perhaps with a bit of extra training and perhaps with a more reasoned approach it might be possible to spare the lives of both police officers and those who are schizophrenic or are suffering some kind of other mental illness, such that situations like this, which occur far too frequently in the Australian community, could occur much less frequently and would result in far fewer deaths at the hands of police or others in these kinds of circumstances.

I took the time recently to meet with Jan Kealton to take her through the government’s recently announced $1.9 billion mental health package. Jan Kealton was quite buoyed. Finally she felt there had been some traction at a federal and a state level in dealing with these issues of mental health. Having cared for a mentally ill son, Jan told me of the circumstances that families have had to put up with, where there simply has been a lack of adequate services to deal with mental health for way too long. It is very clear that in Queensland mental health in-patient and crisis services are continuing to be placed under extraordinary strain. This package will go some way to addressing that, but it is still not enough.

Based on an ABS survey in 1997, we know that approximately 20 per cent of the Australian population will have some level of mental illness. That means that in a city like the Gold Coast, with a population of 500,000 people, approximately 100,000 people will have mental illness, whether over a prolonged period or for a short period of time. You can also reasonably assume that at least half of the Gold Coast population will in some way be touched or affected by mental illness either through a family member or someone that they know. We have a situation in this country where mental illness still remains the issue that a lot of people do not want to talk about. We can talk about cancer and about all other forms of physical ailment, but a lot of people still fail to address a problem that is widespread and that often does lead to tragedies and loss of life—the problem of mental illness.

I was touched recently reading an article in the Gold Coast Bulletin about the mother of a girl who had been injured when she was five years of age. This young girl had been hit by a car at five years of age and had gone into a coma for quite some period of time. She is now in her 20s. At the time of the publication of the article she had spent six months being restrained, sedated and locked down in the Gold Coast Hospital in Southport.

It really is an indictment of us and of state governments that this seems to be the best that we can offer Australians who have special needs with respect to mental illness. It is an indictment that the best we can offer a young lady who was growing aggressive because of her mental illness—even someone with a lay knowledge of mental illness, such as myself, would probably suggest it was from frustration, or something like that, from a girl who has an IQ of about 55—is to sedate them and to imprison them for six continuous months. She was placed together with drug addicts and schizophrenics and people like that who, according to this girl’s mother, have had a demonstrable impact on this girl’s behaviour so that, six months into it, her behaviour is worse than it was at the beginning. And why is this lady being forced to live like this? Because of an absence of services in the community that could provide her a transition to achieve the care that she needs, but also to live in the community if that was appropriate.

I welcome this $1.9 billion package from the federal government. It is very clear that when it comes to those areas of responsibility that the federal government has, this $1.9 billion will go a long way: increased access to psychiatrists and psychologists under Medicare to improve detection, treatment and management of mental illness; additional funding for mental health nurses to work with psychiatrists and GPs to better coordinate care and treatment; improved services for people with mental health problems that are linked to drug use; and funding for care coordinators to help people with mental illness to better manage their daily activities. The funding will ensure that we have improved mental health services in rural and remote areas and more telephone counselling and web based services to improve and increase the availability of support and information, as well as funding for new respite care places, particularly for elderly parents who live with and care for children, including adult children, who have a severe mental illness or intellectual disability.

But my concern is that at a time when the Howard government is putting some $1.9 billion into tackling this widespread problem in our community, rather than seeing state governments step up to the plate, rather than seeing matching increases in state government funding, what we actually see is a decline in state government services for mental health. And if the problem was not big enough already, now, at a time when the federal government is putting record funding into mental health, state governments turn and walk away. At a time when the Queensland state Labor government has more money than ever before, it is shirking its responsibility. To give you an example, an article from the Courier Mail in January this year said:

MORE than 150 full-time medical positions in Queensland’s mental health facilities are unfilled, despite the State Government allocating millions of dollars to hire more workers.

…       …            …

The vacancies are spread across the state and are nursing, medical and allied health positions, with the longest vacancies in Charleville and on the Gold Coast, where two allied health jobs have been unfilled for four years.

It is not good enough. State governments must match the funding increase the federal government has provided if we are truly going to start to make inroads into addressing this problem which afflicts so many.