Mental Health Services

The Hon. C. BONAROS (15:39): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Health and Wellbeing a question about mental health.

Leave granted.

The Hon. C. BONAROS: Some of the state's most experienced and indeed passionate mental health experts last week attended a government-organised round table to discuss the decaying state of mental health services in South Australia and, critically—they believed—also formulate a road map to address the current crisis. They were joined by more than 60 other clinical, consumer and carer stakeholders, who attended out of a genuine concern they share about the lack of mental health services in our public health system.

The eight-hour forum was organised by the minister in direct response to dire concerns raised by Adjunct Professor John Mendoza. Disappointingly, those who attended believe they were let down again by the state government. I quote Professor Mendoza:

When a forum called to address a crisis has no agenda or running sheet, no list of participants, no means to connect people not in the room, no decision-makers, it's clear it's a snow job.

My questions to the minister are:

1. Why did SA Health CEO, Dr Chris McGowan, only attend the morning session?

2 Why weren't the local health network CEOs invited to attend, or the ambulance union, which we know is at the coalface of the problem?

3. Is the minister concerned at the breakdown of the working relationships between Dr McGowan and the LHN CEOs, which I am told was the reason why they were not invited to attend the meeting?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (15:41): In terms of the invitation list, every single LHN had representatives. My recollection was that they had between three and four representatives each. In addition to that, there were clinicians who worked in the LHNs and who were associated professional organisations. The LHNs were well represented—

The Hon. C. Bonaros: By their CEOs?

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. S.G. WADE: They were represented by their mental health leaders—allied health, nursing, medical and the like. I think I would be roundly condemned if all I invited to a workshop was executives, not the people who are actually involved in delivering the services on the ground.

In terms of the complaint about a lack of agenda, I seem to recall Adjunct Professor Mendoza—one of his comments before the event was that it was scripted, that it was going to be a scripted event. Well, the fact that the workshop itself identified the problems it saw in the mental health system and developed implementation plans that they considered would be effective at addressing them I think demonstrates it was not scripted.

I can remember the very crowded whiteboard that the facilitator had compiled as a result of the day. There was myriad issues, but there was also a strong consensus, if you like, in terms of responses. One of the clearest themes, if you like, was workforce. There were a lot of comments made about not only how to develop, recruit and retain our workforce but how better to manage them across the LHNs. These are issues that will be addressed coming out of the workshop. I believe it was a very useful stocktake of where we are a year and a half into the Mental Health Services Plan.

Of course, you only have a chance to stocktake a plan if you have got one. What we came into government with was a situation where the former government did not even have a mental health services plan. In November 2019, when we published our Mental Health Services Plan, it had been a seven-year hiatus without a plan. So we are not going to apologise for having a stocktake on a plan in a context of a COVID pandemic. Labor should be ashamed that mental health was such a low priority they didn't even have a plan for it.