Healing Minds
Healing Minds
South West Sydney Area Health Service, Healing of the Minds Art Competition, Campbelltown Bi-Centennial Art Gallery
Wednesday, 17 April 2002, 1830 hours
In November 1952 I was elected the MP for Werriwa, which covered the Shire of Sutherland and the Municipalities of Liverpool and Fairfield and contained no modern hospitals, no high schools and no university. Between 1955 and my retirement in July 1978 my electorate included all Sydney's suburbs between Westmead and Toongabbie in the north and Narellan and Appin in the south. I represented suburbs that are now located in seven electorates in Western Sydney, four of them currently represented by Labor members and three by Liberal members.
On its reelection in 1974 my Government announced that, under its power to provide medical and dental services, it would construct and manage the Westmead Hospital which the Askin Government had delayed too long. The Westmead, Liverpool, Campbelltown and Mt Druitt hospitals were then constructed. I have detailed their history on several occasions at Westmead. MPs should remember that in a 1946 referendum the National Parliament was given the power to provide pharmaceutical, sickness and hospital benefits and medical and dental services.
In 1974 my Government announced its intention to establish Sydney's fourth university as part of the Macarthur growth centre. The Fraser Government shelved this plan. A decade, an educational generation, was lost in Western Sydney. This month I was honoured to receive an Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Western Sydney. In April 5,000 students graduated from UWS - a tremendous injection of talent into the region. The University of Western Sydney has encouraged a range of cultural, civic, medical and economic institutions that would not have been possible without the stimulus that a university of high quality teaching and research provides to a region. These institutions must continue to meet the aspirations and desperations of the region, which is more populous than Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane or Tasmania.
My last visit to Campbelltown was to open the Art Exhibition at St. Gregory's College in 1999. The time before was to open the Fisher's Ghost Art Exhibition in this Gallery in 1998. The Carr Government's decision to spend $3.2 million on the extension of this Gallery, and Campbelltown Council's contribution of a further $2.3 million, ensures a strong future for the Gallery.
Macarthur Health Service, in conjunction with Campbelltown Council, the Department of Education and two public-spirited enterprises, Marsden Solicitors and Paul Wakeling Motors, has developed this Art program focused on health promotion in line with the Second National Mental Health Plan.
The annual Arts Awards are intended to generate strong and sustainable partnerships with other community service providers for improved mental health outcomes for Macarthur's youth. The awards will be used to:
- Recognise the talents of Macarthur's youth within the local community as a way of improving young people's self esteem, confidence and well-being;
- Help the youth of Macarthur to identify with the Adolescent Mental Health Unit in a positive and healthy way; and
- Raise the profile of Macarthur youth within the broader Sydney arts community.
In terms of art awards $5,000 is a major amount; there is nothing of a similar amount available to this age group anywhere in New South Wales.
Campbelltown Council and the State Health and Education Departments are working in a model partnership to promote the awards to local youth. All entries will be hung in the Campbelltown Art Gallery and the winning entries will be hung in Gna Ka Lun mental health unit for 12 months before being returned to the artists.
