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

Before I commence my remarks this evening, I would like to congratulate Senators Nash and Stephens on their contributions to this debate and acknowledge in the gallery Carol Franklin, who is an advocate for people with severe disabilities in Western Australia and does a fantastic job.

On 16 January this year a good friend of mine, the then member for Victoria Park and Premier of Western Australia, unexpectedly announced his resignation as Premier and his retirement from public life. Geoff Gallop was first elected to the seat of Victoria Park in Perth’s inner southern suburbs in 1986—the year that I moved to Western Australia. In fact, Geoff was one of the first people I met when I moved there. Geoff quickly became a strong advocate for his local area. He emersed himself in the day-to-day life of the seat of Victoria Park, studying the history of every suburb of that quite well established and old electorate—old in terms of the establishment of the suburbs rather than necessarily the residents of it—and really became the voice and the face of Victoria Park.

Geoff became leader of the state parliamentary Labor Party some 10 years ago in what could only be said were fairly challenging circumstances—not long before we faced a very difficult state election. I think Geoff, in facing that election, surprised everyone except himself with his ability to connect with the Western Australian community, his ability to communicate a message to that community and his ability to campaign and provide a very clear vision of where he thought our state should go. In 2001 Geoff was elected as Premier, and he was re-elected in February last year. Geoff was leader of our party at a state level for some 10 years.

As Premier of our state I think Geoff should be remembered as a brilliant and quite innovative leader who certainly left my home state of Western Australia in a far better state than when he first entered public life. He will be remembered for his commitment to creating long-term sustainable economic growth in Western Australia and his concern that our growth should not just be based on the current resources boom, and his commitment to the provision of infrastructure development in Western Australia—for instance, the development of the train line between Perth and Mandurah.

Geoff is the only person who had a vision to develop new tertiary hospitals in the northern and southern suburbs in Perth—where the sick people are—rather than in the inner city, where you currently find most of our important tertiary medical care. He will be remembered for his decisions to protect Western Australia’s unique environment and reform our education system, and for his commitment to developing our resources industries. Geoff did all of this with the support of his intelligent, creative, very certain and sure and dedicated partner, Bev, and their two sons. Geoff and Bev’s partnership is one of true devotion and equality and is something to be admired.

On 16 January, when Geoff announced his retirement, not only was it a shock to all of us in the Labor Party but also it was actually very touching and probably a tribute to the contribution he had made and the standing in which he was held that even the Prime Minister interrupted his well-known January break to make what I thought were some quite thoughtful comments on behalf of the government. The former Premier of Victoria Jeff Kennett came out and talked about the way Geoff announced his retirement as being an enormous contribution to public life. I thought that the remarks of former Premier Richard Court were very sensitive. Even the current Leader of the Opposition, Mr Matt Birney, was also quite sensitive and I thought he handled the issue quite well. He did not seek to score any political points, which is something good.

When Geoff made his announcement he revealed that he was being treated for depression. This is not easy confession or revelation to make when you are in public life. As many of us here and those living with depression would know, it is not an easy thing. It can be very debilitating. There is no one set of symptoms and no one way of diagnosing or treating this illness. It affects different people in very different ways. No doubt the stresses and time pressures of politics certainly would have helped to contribute to and exacerbate Geoff’s depression. But it is the true mark of someone to actually reveal that that is what they are being confronted with. It would have been very easy, as Mr Kennett said at the time, for Geoff to announce his retirement due to the well-heralded and often-used family reasons rather than be fully open and honest.

I would like to place on the record my enormous debt of gratitude, thanks and respect for Geoff Gallop and all that he has contributed, both to the Western Australian branch of the Australian Labor Party—a contribution that I am sure he will continue to make in a different guise after he has dealt with his current challenge—and to the development of our state. Geoff’s resignation highlighted one of the greatest challenges facing our community. It is a challenge that I have discussed in this place before—that is, the challenge of mental illness and how we address it as a community. The statistic most often used when discussing mental illness is that, at some point in our lives, it will affect up to 20 per cent of our community; up to one person in five.

As I have mentioned before, I live in the inner northern suburb of Mount Hawthorn, where we are having a very lively debate about the provision of mental health services in our own midst. In fact, on 14 February, the Town of Vincent is set to consider yet again an application by the health department to have a step-down facility for what will now be 16 residents—it was originally going to be 20—for intermediate care after their sustained intensive treatment. It will be an intermediate step-down facility for up to 16 people at a time to use before they are sent home to their families, or sent home on their own in some cases. It is often a criticism of our health systems no matter where we are that we give people the intensive treatment they need—perhaps not as many of them as we should because of the pressures that we face—and then we just send them home without the support they need to be reintegrated as successful members of our community.

It has therefore been my view that the proposal to develop Hawthorn House into a step-down facility is one that is worthy of our community’s support. Hawthorn House will be based at the old Hawthorn Hospital, a community based hospital that has been a health facility in the Mount Hawthorn area for over 70 years. Local residents are used to it being a health facility—it is just going to be used for something different and will be addressing a different kind of health need. Of course, addressing that different kind of health need brings with it all of the stigma and the really nasty edge that we sometimes find in our society when we are trying to deal with these complex issues.

Members of this place would be aware that quite some time ago there was an agreement signed by the then Commonwealth government and the various state governments of different political persuasions about deinstitutionalisation, which would mean getting rid of the dramatically big institutions as the only recourse for the treatment of mental illness and providing a variety of care for those with a mental illness. It was accepted at that time that mental illness is an illness like any other. It appears in different guises and affects people in different ways, as Geoff Gallop has pointed out. Therefore, we should have a variety of treatments.

I would like to place on the record that, if we accept that statistic of 20 per cent, in my local suburb of Mount Hawthorn it would mean that up to 750 people will be affected at some point in their lives by mental illness. I would think, therefore, that it is appropriate that all levels of government—local, state and federal—actually help our community to address this significant need. I would like to also place on the record my congratulations to our WA health minister, Jim McGinty, for pushing forward and creating these community based facilities—something that state and federal governments signed up to in 1992. All political parties have been a bit remiss in actually putting our money where our mouths are since then and actually providing the facilities our community needs. I would also like to congratulate the five councillors that we need who will be voting for the proposal on 14th. (Time expired)