Good morning ladies and gentlemen, my name is Frank Walker I'm President of the Schizophrenia Fellowship of New South Wales Incorporated. I would like to extend to all participants a warm welcome to what is obviously from the packed auditorium a very popular symposium no doubt because of our charismatic special guest speaker Xavier Amador.

Over the past few years I have devoted my introductory remarks to highlighting the injustices endured by our consumers and carers and demanding reforms to our mental health, social security and criminal justice systems as well as our employment and housing policies. There is no need to me to cover that ground today because the two eminent parliamentarians who are to follow will be telling you about their proposals for reform of a mental health system.

Instead, in my capacity as president of the Fellowship I propose this morning in strong and blunt language to outline some plans we have put the heat on our federal parliamentarians in the run-up to the federal election due later this year with the object of securing from them undertakings to fight for better funding for mental health. I know some folk become uneasy at the thought of non government organisations twisting politicians’ tails but our Fellowship is unashamedly a lobby group whose prime function is to get a better deal from our consumers. Our charter requires us to tread on political toes when the occasion demands.

The sad and indefensible truth is that our representatives in Canberra have badly let down folk suffering mental illness and the time has come not only for our Fellowship but all stakeholders in the field, to use the vernacular, get into the faces of our Federal pollies, tell them what they are doing wrong and more importantly: what the electoral consequences will be if they do not mend their ways.

We appreciate that our federal constitution divides responsibility for the delivery of health services in Australia between State and Federal governments. However it is the federal government that holds the purse strings and all Australians are now aware that our health system is in deep crisis and the federal government seems disinclined to give any additional assistance to the States to resolve that crisis.

Recently the Schizophrenia Fellowship of New South Wales joined in the formation of the New South Wales Reform Alliance for Mental Health. Our partners included ARAFMI, SANE Australia, the New South Wales branch of the College of Psychiatrists, OT Australia, The Australian Psychological Society, The Mental Health Council of Australia, The Mental Health Coordinating Council, The New South Wales Association for Mental Health, the Royal Australian College of GPs and New South Wales Community Advisory Group. The purpose of this Alliance is to communicate the genuine community concern to governments both State and Federal that they have failed to provide access to mental health services. The Carr Government in New South Wales has been told that the Alliance is not satisfied with expending only 8% of its health budget in the area of mental health. The same message must be given to the Howard Government which also only spends 8% of its health budget on mental health. According to the World Health Organization, the average expenditure by developed countries on mental health services in 16% of their health budgets. According to the WHO and the US Surgeon General that expenditure is still inadequate because in terms of relative health burdens on mental health needs in developed countries exceeds 16.5 percent of health budgets.

Closer to home State of Victoria spends well above 9% on mental health services and New Zealand spends close to 12% of their health budget on mental health. Our Fellowship appreciates the governments cannot simply double their expenditure on mental health in one year. What we are asking the is that within the next five years a serious effort be made to incrementally increase funds to mental health to 16% of the total health budget. Between now and the next federal election we will be briefing our members, their families and friends of the facts and asking them personally to attend upon their local members to educate them about the appalling state mental health in Australia. Those members will be asked to make a commitment to increasing Australia's contribution from its current Third World standards to match that of comparable OECD countries within five years. We will be publicising the results so that our members and their families can be assisted in making their choice of the best candidate.

In addition will be continuing our ongoing campaign to fight for the inclusion of modern and effective medications on the pharmaceutical benefits scheme. You will recall that we campaigned successfully for clozapine, risperidone, olanzapine and aripiprizole. Our current campaign is for Risperidal Consta which is the first atypical or new generation medication which can be delivered as a depot injection every two weeks. It is particularly useful for people who are under involuntary treatment. Currently our consumers who are being forced to take medication are being medicated with the oldstyle medications with all their appalling side-effects. This is an important campaign because the pharmaceutical companies are now developing other injectable atypical medications and we hope that our advocacy will open the way to these as well. When our members visit their local parliamentarians they will be putting the case for injectable medications to be placed on the pharmaceutical benefits list as well as the increase funding.

Those who are nervous about us bearding politicians will be pleased to know that we are also developing a campaign to have federal members of Parliament join a group of friends of sufferers of schizophrenia. There are already about 20 supporters in the group.

Click here for PDF version (viewable with Acrobat Reader)