Ashley Manicaros: Who gets the blame if we don’t halve NT suicide rate?

TERRITORY Labor’s promise to halve suicide rates, as well intentioned as it is, is an absolute disgrace

Territory Labor’s promise to halve suicide rates in well intentioned but unrealistic. PICTURE: Vince Calati

TERRITORY Labor’s promise to halve suicide rates, as well intentioned as it is, is an absolute disgrace.

It epitomises the type of reckless public policy announcements which come out at election times that add to the cynicism of the public.

Labor’s next announcement will be how everyone who wants to walk on water will be able to.

This type of proclamation falls into the same category as the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial declaration “no child shall live in poverty” and Kevin’s Rudd’s “the single greatest issue facing humanity” just before he scrapped the ETS carbon emission scheme and Terry Mills’ signed promise to reduce the cost of living by 10 per cent or was that crime or was that to increase the number of police, right before the complete opposite happened.

See what I mean.

Labor’s promise is not traceable, and the AMA said so to the ABC’s Alyssa Betts on the day of the announcement.

What Labor will do is fund more nurses and more indigenous family support workers; spend $3 million to trial a Housing Accommodation Support Initiative in Darwin and better early intervention in indigenous communities.

Awesome stuff but halving the rate, really?

Somehow through their policy implementations they will be able to do something that nobody has been able to do – stop people who are feeling so bad about themselves, so lost within themselves, from killing themselves.

Here’s a few stats to chew on while you consider the enormity of what Labor says it will do.

Over a five-year period from 2010 to 2014, the average number of suicide deaths per year was 2577.

In 2014, there were 2160 males and 704 females that died by suicide. That is 7.8 deaths by suicide in Australia each day.

Suicide rates are substantially higher in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

In 2014, data showed that suicide was the fifth leading cause of death for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and accounted for 5.2 per cent of all indigenous deaths compared to 1.8 per cent for non-indigenous people. This policy announcement was designed to give the politicians a headline. Territory Labor got its headline.

The reality is Labor’s policy wouldn’t have saved a friend who took his life four weeks ago, devastating his children, wife, family, friends and football colleagues in the process.

He hadn’t lived in the NT for a while, but regardless none of the touch points highlighted in Labor’s policy would have caught him before.

This just highlights even further the danger associated to the proclamation of Labor.

Full credit to Territory Labor for having a policy in the first place but show some respect for society by pulling back on the dramatic claims regarding policy outcomes.

When you don’t achieve it will you blame the last government, like every other government does? How on earth are you going to measure the effectiveness of this policy?

Just because it seems many Territory voters have made up their mind to give you the keys to government, show a little humility in the way you will govern. We both know the scrutiny to be placed on your policy claims will be less than the existing government but let’s not go overboard in certain areas, please.

We will all come face to face with suicide in the Territory regardless of your policy.

Let’s not make that worse than it has to be.

If you need support please phone Lifeline Australia on 13 11 14