DELAYS in implementing healthcare measures including the National Mental Health and Wellbeing Pandemic Response are leaving Australians without urgently needed support, Federal Australian Labor Party MP, Emma McBride, believes.
Speaking in the House of Representatives yesterday, the registered pharmacist said, "there is a gap and lag between announcements and delivery, and this is hurting Australians".
McBride noted that a recent Senate Estimates hearing was told the National Children's Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy announced in Aug 2019 will not be finalised until Jun 2021, while details of the Productivity Commission's report into mental health are yet to be published, five months after it was submitted.
"Before coming to this place, I worked as a pharmacist, for much of the time in acute adult mental health inpatient units," she said.
"Every day I saw firsthand circumstances of people's lives that led to mental health crisis, emergency and acute admission.
"I was part of a team stretched and at times buckling under the strain of growing demand and scarce resources.
"Minister, I'm not sure if you know what it feels like to be part of a team where you see someone who needs help, and you know that help should be available, but in a wealthy country like Australia we can't provide it.
"Minister, why do we have this narrowcast view of health which means that vulnerable people in acute crisis, particularly in regional and remote Australia, cannot get the help they need when they need it?
"Teams are under extraordinary strain, and people are discharged to the circumstances that made them sick.
"I've seen people discharged to caravan parks and to caves.
"Why, in a wealthy country like Australia, in the middle of a pandemic, is the only safe place for someone sometimes a public hospital bed? It's just not right.
"The Productivity Commission report gives the chance to address the issues at the cause---the underlying problems of unemployment, education, housing, the burden of which is carried disproportionately by those in our society who have the least. Where you are born, live and grow up in Australia matters.
"This is urgent; it matters, I know you are genuine and you care.
"What we now need to see is action."
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