"The cause or major reason for the ACT’s nation-worst performance in the delivery of mental health services across both the community and in acute settings is money," writes columnist JON STANHOPE.
Jon Stanhope
Jon Stanhope was Chief Minister from 2001 to 2011 and represented Ginninderra for the Labor Party from 1998. He is the only Chief Minister to have governed with a majority in the Assembly.
"In the 2020-21 Budget, prepared with knowledge of the increase in demand for services and delivered at the height of the covid pandemic, the mental health budget suffered an actual cut in funding of $300,000," writes columnist JON STANHOPE
"The likelihood of an Aboriginal person in Canberra going to prison is probably determined even before they are born and, in the continuing absence of dedicated services, their fate is likely sealed at conception.," writes JON STANHOPE.
"The ACT government, it seems, has in its planning given consideration to, or at least imagined, a population for Canberra as high as 1.5 million (ie 1.1 million more than currently live here)," writes JON STANHOPE.
"The over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care or in touch with the child protection system is not seen by the government as of particular importance," writes JON STANHOPE
"As a result of the increases in Canberra house prices over the last five or six years, any family whose gross household income is below $120,000 will never ever be able to afford a detached house.," writes columnist JON STANHOPE.
"A sentence of nine years' imprisonment is reserved for crimes such as rape, aggravated robbery and manslaughter, but the hundreds of asylum seekers we've imprisoned for that same length of time have committed no crime," writes JON STANHOPE
"The data reveals that since Mick Gentleman became Corrections Minister women in the AMC are being strip searched at the rate of 30 a month, while under predecessor Shane Rattenbury it's closer to 50 a month," writes columnist JON STANHOPE.
"That respective Ministers for Corrections, Aboriginal Affairs, Women and Human Rights have benignly ignored for four years a raft of recommendations made by the inspector of corrections illustrates the low priority accorded to the needs and rehabilitation of detainees, including women, in the AMC," writes JON STANHOPE.
"An Aboriginal person in Canberra is 19.4 times more likely to be sent to prison than a non-Aboriginal person. The highest rate ratio in Australia. Without argument, this is more than a disgrace – it is obscene," writes columnist JON STANHOPE.
"It is not just absurd but wrong that the residents of Australian territories do not have the same democratic right as those of states to decide whether euthanasia should be legally available," writes JON STANHOPE.
"I worry that a decision to spend half a billion dollars on a memorial related to war is a questionable priority when, for so many Australians, life is a daily struggle to survive," writes JON STANHOPE.
