NSW Liberal Leader Peter Debnam and Shadow Minister for Mental Health Gladys Berejiklian today announced the NSW Liberal/Nationals will give mental health the priority it deserves after 12 years of false hope and neglect from Labor.

"Like every local MP, I've seen the tragedy of mental illness and the stresses on families and carers," Mr Debnam said.

"I will make funding available for community-based mental health care not just acute beds," he said.

"I believe it's critical we get funding through to support NGO's such as Lifeline which are on the ground with the experience and the grassroots contact with people who otherwise fall through the cracks in the system.

"But for four years running, Carr-Iemma Labor Government has refused to properly fund the Lifeline telephone counselling service.

The NSW Liberal/Nationals will:

• Provide critical community-based mental health services including a boost to the number of case workers and places for supported accommodation;
• Increase the number of beds for psychiatric care across NSW and improve conditions in existing units;
• Rebuild Rozelle Hospital at Callan Park as a Centre of Excellence for treatment and care of people with mental illness providing up to 400 places;
• Support non-government organisations that provide community-based mental health services focussing on early intervention and education;
• Improve child and adolescent mental health services including an additional 60 acute beds;
• Provide access and case management for prisoners with a mental illness to assist them in their transition back into the community;
• Implement the key recommendations of the Sentinel Events Review Committee assisting people with a mental illness who are at risk of suicide or committing homicide;
• Establish permanent Mental Health Community Reporting Forums to ensure consumers, mental health workers and community organisations have input into the allocation of mental health resources in their own communities; and
• Greater co-operation and co-ordination with the Federal Government through a Memorandum of Understanding to retain and boost the number of mental health workers in NSW.

"This package will provide a $396 million boost to current funding. The mental health package will be funded by cutting waste and expenditure in the backroom bureaucracy and a rationalisation of the structure of government," Mr Debnam said.

"After 12 years of the Carr-Iemma Labor Government running the mental health system on crisis management, I will take responsibility to fix the mental health system.

"I will ensure mental health in NSW is focused on early intervention and recovery," he said.

"People with a mental illness and their families and carers are currently unable to access the vital services they need, and their knowledge and input is also too often ignored.

"I am very proud the NSW Liberal/Nationals made the landmark decision last year to appoint a Shadow Minister for Mental Health in Gladys Berejiklian – and she along our NSW colleagues have put mental health on the agenda.

"That was the first time in Australian political history that any party had given mental health the priority it deserves and a specific voice at the Cabinet table," Mr Debnam said.

Ms Berejiklian said for too long mental health has been the forgotten health issue.

"NSW continues to lag behind the rest of Australia on mental health spending and the money that Carr-Iemma Labor has allocated simply hasn't been spent.

"Rhetoric and false hope are what the Carr-Iemma Labor Government has delivered in mental health.

"After 12 years of under-resourcing and lip service from Carr-Iemma Labor, this package will bring NSW into line with other states and provide access to services for thousands of people who are currently locked out of the system.

"NSW needs higher standards and better services in mental health," Ms Berejiklian said.

ENDS