Deal done. On the issue that has captivated Canberra and chewed through forests of newsprint — not to mention some $38 million in taxpayer-funded advertising to sell us a tax that the government has just significantly neutered — Julia Gillard has her deal on mining profits. Crisis over.
Except if you are one of the millions — yes, millions — crippled by mental illness in this country. Your distress — as life-long sufferer Andrew Robb details in today’s Crikey — goes largely untreated and unnoticed.
That’s always been a problem with this government: it’s never known which fights to pick.
It wasn’t so much Health Minister Nicola Roxon’s unfortunate slip in calling Tony Abbott’s $1.5 billion mental health fund “crazy” that will rile carers and the sick. It was that anyone from the government had the gall to criticise the initiative at all — let alone Roxon’s instance it’s “not credible” — given the lack of attention mental health has received during Labor’s nearly three-year reign.
As one health expert said yesterday: “We cannot understand why Nicola Roxon still has her head in the sand.”
The same goes for this entire government and its policy priorities.
Nicola Roxon didn’t criticise the opposition’s mental health initiative – she had the gall to criticise where the funding was coming from, and which other health services would be cut. Surely a legitimate question.
The hyprocisy of Australia’s national and state governments towards mental health was greatly highlighted by their hysterical response to the Port Arthur Masacre and has not improved since, regardless of which political party has been in power. They just do not seem to get it. Mental health policy in Australia and the West in general has regressed terribly since the 1980’s because:-
1. No-one wants to admit that closing all longer-term services and replacing them with – well little or nothing – was a cruel sham that resulted in the untimely death of many people and the ongoing suffering of many others and their families.
2. Quality mental health services are expensive to provide and in this day of everything being either ‘corporatised’ or ‘profit -driven’, there is little interest from either political decision-makers or senior public servants in making this issue a priority. They simply refuse to see the awful human cost and the equally serious economic and social costs in failing to deal properly with the issue.
It is our national shame and it will be interesting to see if the issue of mental health manages to keep its head above the murky waters of the media during the upcoming campaign.
If you had a haircut like Roxon, wouldnt you want to bury your head in the sand as well?
All of this (article and comments) are spot on. Of course, it remains to be seen if Abbott’s ‘you beaut’ mental health policy would actually be implemented if he got into office, but thats a whole other story. As for the ALP, well, they used to be the party for the battlers, the workers and so on. Those days are long gone.
Every day we see the results of political dis-interest in this area – you only have to walk down any city street on any given day to be accosted by the poor and the homeless, many of them with addiction and/or mental health issues. Every day families struggle with this problem. Whose listening?
Can we make Professor McGorry Australian of the Year two years in a row?
Rob Gerrand is correct and this article is misleading. Roxon said Abbott had “certainly found an area of need'” but it “seems to me to be a crazy way to fund what might otherwise be a worthy proposal”. So the proposal is worthwhile but scrapping worthwhile reforms like electronic health records to fund it is not the best way to go about it.