Grievance Debate

Mental Health Services Review

Ms PRATT (Frome) (15:04): Last week, two suburban men did something extraordinary, and I want to pay special attention to their actions. A lovely man, whom I have never met, called Chris Smith and another man called Sean Sykes spoke to the media about the lovely ladies in their lives. Chris Smith was engaged to Julie Seed, and Sean Sykes is the partner of survivor Susan Scardigno. With my following comments, I want to assure them that I will commit to being respectful about the experience that they continue to live with.

These two men came into the media space and spoke out against gendered violence. It was an extraordinary, touching thing for them to do, given what they are still living with, and that is the tragedy of the death of Julie Seed and the terrifying attack on Susan Scardigno. I want to take this opportunity today to reflect on the report and the review that we have been waiting for from the Office of the Chief Psychiatrist: an independent review into the care of Mr Shaun Dunk.

There is an opportunity in front of me today to speak about what the findings tell us as South Australians, what the learnings are, what we need to understand from that incident that is before the courts, and how we move forward, testing the capacity of the mental health system. We know that yesterday, SASMOA reported that people presenting to the RAH ED with mental distress are waiting up to 95 hours, which is extraordinary given the findings from this independent review, and points us to what we already knew: systemic failings in our state's busiest ED. The RAH services not just metropolitan patients, it receives and admits patients from Broken Hill, Darwin, Alice Springs and, of course, regional South Australia.

The report was quick to say that there was no evidence of any failing by clinicians, and I uphold and respect that. This is not a complaint or a prosecution of the clinicians who work hard every single hour in our mental health system. But there were systemic failures, and we did discover that the model of care that is being used at the RAH ED is unworkable and it is an inappropriate place for people presenting with extremely acute mental health issues.

The findings also pointed us towards the requirement for another service level agreement which, I would argue, is just replicating service agreements that are already in place: for example, the memorandum of understanding that exists for the mental health and emergency services steering committee which is already represented by SAAS, SAPOL, RFDS and SA Health. There is an opportunity, I think, for the signatories to that agreement to perhaps include the RACGP in more capacity—certainly, police are telling me that—and to ask whether there is an opportunity for the Urgent Mental Health Care Centre to become a signatory to that current MOU, rather than creating a standalone service agreement that just adds more red tape. We know that our fabulous and highly valued Urgent Mental Health Care Centre was unable to access the information it needed—or needs on a daily basis, perhaps, for those who present to the centre.

I continue to ask the government about the Coroner's findings into the Thredgold inquiry. I think there are missed opportunities, given that four recommendations that were handed down two years ago pointed to a need to establish a register of after-hours contact details for private psychiatrists. We heard from the minister today that there were mixed views from the profession about that.

The good old EPAS comes back to dog us all again, because the electronic recording system is still in progress in its capacity to ask the patient if they have a treating psychiatrist and to contact that psychiatrist. There is much more work to be done. With that, I conclude my remarks.