More questions about remote mental health service funding cuts

The following is another response from a practitioner in the field sent to CASSE to post:

(*This blog post relates to previous posts: ‘Questions from Practitioners of Central Australia‘
‘Response from NT Medicare Local regarding funding cuts‘, ‘The End for NT Indigenous Mental Health Service?‘, ‘Response to Warren Snowdon’s media release‘, ‘Media release re funding cuts from Warren Snowdon MP‘; ‘More on mental health funding cuts…‘; and ‘The loss of RFDS from nntaria – funding slashed‘) 

Dr Bell’s letter seems to be full of contradictions and weasel words and I am concerned that he will bluff his way out of the situation with more weasel words.

My response is:

Did Minster Dutton refund the program or not (it doesn’t matter how he refunded it underspend or not)?

I do know that with the MHSRRA Program you cannot spend money in any way other than how it was agreed to without getting a variation from the Commonwealth.  That includes how you spend any underspends which without a variation has to be spent on the project that had the underspend.

The question can be cleared up by a simple answer to the following:

• Minister Dutton is saying that he rolled over the same amount of funding for all the MHSRRA programs this year. (That includes any underspends from the previous year). Is that correct?
• Assuming what he has said is factual then where is the other half of the funding for the RFDS Western Stuart Highway team which was funded by the NTML?
• Has any of the MHSRRA program funding (including any underspends) been allocated to any other Projects not previously funded by the NTML/ MHSRRA Program?