RECORD OF PROCEEDINGS - Queensland Parliament ...

496 Queensland Mental Health Commission Bill 7 Mar 2013
Mr KING (Cairns—LNP) (12.29 pm): I am very pleased to rise in this House to speak to the
Queensland Mental Health Commission Bill 2012. First I pay tribute to my parliamentary colleagues
on their contribution to this bill, in particular the member for Logan and the member for Stretton who
gave very personal recounts of experiences with mental illness.
I wish to refocus the debate back on why this bill is so important, which is because mental
illness is such a huge issue in our community, particularly in my electorate of Cairns. In the middle of
2011 I was working as a journalist and I was contacted by a Cairns father Terry Carmady who wanted
to tell his family story. Terry’s son John Mark Carmady did not say goodbye when he left his parents’
home on the afternoon of 25 May 2011. It was just a couple of hours before his beloved Queensland
side were due to take the field against the blues in the first of the State of Origin clashes that year. His
father, Terry, thought it was somewhat strange that his 23-year-old son walked out of the house
without a word of farewell. Terry shrugged his shoulders and thought that John Mark was going to
one of his regular sessions at the gym. An hour or so later, about 5 pm on this Wednesday evening,
John Mark, the 23-year-old young man, sent a text message to his ex-girlfriend. John Mark asked her
to tell his family that he was sorry for what he was about to do. John Mark committed suicide shortly
after he sent that text message. His family buried him on 1 June 2011. He was 23 years old.
During the many hours I spent with Terry Carmady and his family talking about his family’s
ordeal, they showed me the order of service booklet from John Mark’s funeral. It featured an array of
snapshots from his young life. There were photos of him smiling proudly in his soccer uniform as a
boy and another showed him posing with his brother and sister in a family portrait. Another showed
him wearing his beloved Queensland State of Origin jersey as a teenager. There was even a photo
taken at the hospital shortly after his birth alongside a certificate to announce his arrival into the world
on 13 April 1988—coincidentally the same day and month as my sister’s birthday.
I never met John Mark, but looking at those photos was absolutely heartbreaking. He was
smiling in every single photo. His family described him as a fresh-faced larrikin. They gave him the
nickname ‘Sunshine’ and his mates gave him the unusual nickname of ‘Junior Burger’. His brave
family and friends will carry the burden of his early death for the rest of their lives. I was and will
forever be humbled by the Carmady family’s bravery and willingness to speak publicly about their loss
in the hope that it can help others.
When meeting the Carmady family, they told me that just a few months earlier John Mark
himself was consoling a friend, a peer, through her grief after her brother, another friend who was
aged in his twenties, killed himself. The suicide of John Mark was followed in Cairns by further tragic
news when, at just 13 years of age, Declan Crouch took his own life in a lonely pocket of dense
swampland at Machans Beach. I have spoken to Declan’s mother, Ruth Crouch, on numerous
occasions since her young son’s death. I, too, commend her bravery in speaking up about the issue
of youth mental illness and suicide and in launching a public appeal for awareness to improve
services and support in the Far North Queensland region. I commend the health minister for providing
emergency funding for the youth mental health program called the Time Out House in Cairns, for
which Ruth Crouch has been a passionate advocate. This emergency funding will allow the service to
seek a more sustainable long-term funding model from all levels of government.
These personal encounters with this type of tragedy and many more over the years have led
me to lend my full support to this bill and the establishment of the Queensland Mental Health
Commission. The commission will ensure government, non-government and private sector services
will work together to support people living with mental health issues and to minimise harm to people
living with substance misuse issues. The commission will also operate—and I think this is an
important function of the commission—as a centre of excellence around mental health and substance
misuse issues and take a coordinated, integrated, whole of life span approach to care and support.
The bill also provides for the appointment of a Mental Health and Drug Advisory Council to advise the
commission on mental health and substance misuse issues to make formal recommendations to the
commission about performance of its statutory functions.
With its complex community make-up, high rates—among the highest in the state—of mental
illness and traditionally low levels of support and services, Cairns and the Far North Queensland
region will benefit greatly from the establishment of the commission and other measures contained in
this bill. It is vitally important for so many people right across Queensland, particularly those in my
electorate of Cairns. I commend the bill to the House.