28/01/2026
PUBLIC APOLOGY
I owe an apology to the professionals working across the addiction and mental health space, in hospitals, corrections, drug and alcohol services, mental health teams, and every other part of the system.
Over the years, I’ve been outspoken about the problems I’ve seen as I have grown in an area that I never actually worked in. Too often, I’ve aimed that frustration at the people doing the work while not fully understanding each person’s role. That wasn’t fair and I am genuinely sorry to anyone that I have offended.
I have been writing a book on Rehabilitation, Reintegration & Re-Socialisation and the more I’ve looked into what genuine rehabilitation, reintegration, and re-socialisation actually requires, the more I’ve realised something important: the problem isn’t the people. It’s the architecture.
Hospitals were built for medical crisis. Prisons were built for criminal behaviour. Mental health services were built for psychiatric conditions. Drug and alcohol services were built for addiction. Each one does what it was designed to do. Each one is staffed by people who care and who work hard, who go over and above, and who are passionate about what they do as am I.
The gap isn’t inside any of those services, the gap is between them.
Nobody designed that gap. It exists because these services developed separately, at different times, to address different problems and the connections between them were never built. Not because anyone failed, but because it was never anyone’s job to build them. Each service was responsible for its own piece. Nobody was responsible for the whole picture.
That’s not blame, that’s just history and history can be changed when people work together.
I’ve spent years pointing at problems in frustration when I should have spent more of that time acknowledging the people working within a system that was never set up to give them what they need to succeed.
To the nurses, the corrections officers, the drug and alcohol workers, the mental health clinicians, the social workers, the case managers, the counsellors, the chaplains, and everyone else doing this work every day, I apologise for the times my frustration landed on you when it should have been directed at the architecture you’re working within.
You deserve better support. And you deserve more respect than I’ve sometimes shown.
I’m still going to speak about what needs to change. But I’m going to be more careful to make clear that the change needed is in how services connect - not in the dedication of the people doing the work.
Peter Lyndon-James 🇦🇺
