Herald Sun, WED 04 MAY 2005, Page 020
By: John Ferguson

SO who was Mark Bailey, and will his life mean more in death? It is a name that in normal circumstances would remain in the public mind for weeks, if not months or years.

Despite having shot Sen-Constable Tony Clarke less than a fortnight ago, it is becoming clear that 26-year-old Bailey has been all but forgotten by those unaffected by the trauma of April 24.

Unlike police killers of past generations and circumstances, there seems to be some comfort being taken in the fact that Bailey killed himself; that he was disturbed, rather than a career criminal seeking revenge.

With apologies to his family, Bailey's suicide has taken some of the sting out of the anger that followed the execution of Sen-Constable Clarke. Rather than lingering in a cell, rough justice was self-administered in the Yarra Ranges.

Yet it would be a profound mistake if Bailey were simply confined to the scrap-heap of society's collective short-term memory. Indeed, for the sake of his victim and his wife and child, Bailey's violent end should not be ignored.

INSTEAD, it should be examined in fine detail to determine what -- if anything -- could have been done to prevent the two deaths.

The coroner will have his say, but police, the State Government and the health industry should be asking whether a more detailed investigation -- such as a royal commission -- should be held into not only Bailey but the wider issue of dealing with mentally ill Victorians.

Any investigation should go beyond the simple argument of whether Sen-Constable Clarke should have been operating alone. That answer is simple: in an ideal world, no.

Yet for the deaths to have real long-term impact, authorities would be well advised to open up mental health services statewide to a meaningful inquiry.

Mental health is, of course, a subject with which governments and society are slowly coming to grips.

The stigma of suffering from depression and related ailments will surely last to some degree for many years, but there is finally a growing consensus that heads in the sand don't equate to either good policy or compassion.

The Bracks Government deserves credit for its package of mental health reforms, announced last week.

But the hype that surrounded the social package needs to be seen in context. The $180 million injection into mental health services is over four years, and $55 million relates to capital works.

So the money to be spent on services and wages is limited to $124.8 million, or a shade over $31 million each year.

Which is, in reality, a piddling amount in the bigger picture, dwarfed by land tax relief and other such initiatives.

It means that, in effect, the health system will continue to be burdened by insufficient mental health resources, though there appears to be an acceptance by the Government that major aspects of critical care are failing.

Bailey's parents complained at the weekend that they had stood in the emergency department of a suburban hospital in 2002 crying out for help. They were, it seems, well and truly in the wrong place.

Yet for all his hurdles, Bailey had a lot more support than many others who find themselves in the same position. He was loved by a family who may not have understood their son but certainly threw their arms around him.

None of this is to diminish or excuse his actions as a killer. But for the wider good, Bailey -- and people like him -- deserve to have their plight and the resources available to them open to meaningful scrutiny. Few would suggest that the Cain and Kirner governments' de-institutionalisation policy, which involved the shift from psychiatric hospital to community-based care, should be wound back.

But there is plenty of evidence on the streets to suggest that there remain insufficient resources for the mentally ill, who once might have been institutionalised and under constant care.

The biggest single impediment to serious reform on mental health is that those who need the help aren't always the most efficient advocates for change.

Where a pensioner waiting for a new hip is likely to open her mouth and complain, it's not quite the same for a pensioner in the midst of a crippling depression.

SOCIETY, no matter what many would like to think, still can't properly get its head around mental health problems.

Mark Bailey couldn't come to terms with his life and the consequences were powerfully tragic for the Clarke family as well as the Baileys.

Bailey, like Sen-Constable Clarke, is gone. Neither should be forgotten, even though one died in shame, the other a servant of the people.