Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

We all come to this place with different hats. First, we come as local members and in my own case, other than the agreement of my wife, Paula, to take my hand, being the local member for Flinders has been the great honour of my life. Second, if we are so fortunate, we come to have portfolio responsibility. Third, we come as national legislators, irrespective of our party and irrespective of our origin. It is in that third capacity that I wish to address and respond to the Governor-General’s address-in-reply today. I will have ample opportunity elsewhere to set down the local agenda for Flinders and the portfolio agenda in the area of environment and climate change. This is the one chance to set out in this particular, unique parliament the three primary legislative agendas I have as an individual member of parliament on a non-partisan basis for this coming term.

Let me begin first with my own family situation. The last time I saw my mother before she passed was in a mental health institution in Goulburn. She suffered from a form of bipolar related to manic depression. It is not something about which I have talked much. I do not want to overstate the circumstances. Her condition was not permanently debilitating but it was significant. The final occasion on which I saw her was in the institution in Goulburn and it was a shock. I mean no disrespect to those of good faith who served that institution, but it was a difficult circumstance. It has stayed with me ever since I saw her for the last time in 1992. When she passed away subsequently, I was overseas and she was living at home.

As a consequence of that fact, I was approached recently by the Satellite Foundation. The Satellite Foundation is an organisation dedicated to assisting the children of mental health patients or mental health sufferers. There has been much good work done over recent years in this parliament about the issue of mental health, work done on both sides of the chamber, but it is unfinished business. One element, however, which I believe to be entirely inadequate is the subject of the work of the Satellite Foundation—that is, the care, protection, development and maintenance of those children of mental health sufferers, those children who have parents with much greater debilities than that of my own mother, Kathinka Hunt. It is a need that is profound and significant in the cases of many children throughout Australia today. So the first legislative goal which I will pursue as a member of this parliament, not as a member of either party, and on which I will seek bipartisan support is to work with the Satellite Foundation to establish a national program for the children of mental health patients.

I would like to see two elements to this program agreed upon during the course of this parliament. First, that there should be a national program of camps for young people under the age of 24, not just under the age of 18, who are the children of mental health sufferers. This is a way of providing them with respite, a way of providing them with support, a way of providing them with joy, a way of providing them with a sense that they are not alone and that there is a way forward. The second element of this program is that there should be a permanent national counselling regime set in place across state and territory borders, which will give these young people a way forward during the course of their life and a sense that there is national support, state support, local support, and above all else community support to make sure that they do not walk this journey alone. It is important; it is profound; and this notion of a national program for the care, protection, development and maintenance of children of mental health sufferers, is a goal to which I am committed and for which I will seek to work with members of both sides of this House over the course of this term. I will not rest until we have a program for the care and protection of children of mental health sufferers, which is an unintentionally neglected part of the mental health program that needs to be addressed.

The second program which I want to deal with as a member of parliament rather than as somebody who is partisan either way—so working with members on both sides—involves a very simple task—that is, to establish a school to give parents of vision impaired children in Victoria the choice as to whether or not there will be specialist education for blind and vision impaired children. The genesis of this program came from Alan Lachman and his wife, Maria. They have a beautiful daughter whom I have met. She attends Pearcedale Primary School. This beautiful girl has profound blindness but does not have access to specialist care. By my understanding, there are over 80 specialist schools that do magnificent work in Victoria. It is an unacceptable situation that not one of these schools is dedicated to assisting vision impaired children. That must end and I have made a commitment to Alan Lachman to work with both sides of this chamber to ensure that that opportunity as to vision impairment is provided for children throughout Victoria. I would like to see this occur so there is at least one school set aside throughout each state in Australia for vision impaired children so parents may have a choice as to whether or not to mainstream such children.

The third of the personal goals which I will work towards with both sides of this House is a national Indigenous blindness program for the eradication of avoidable Indigenous blindness in Australia. The inspiration for this has been Professor Hugh Taylor. Professor Taylor is the Harold Mitchell Chair of Indigenous Eye Health at the Melbourne School of Population at the University of Melbourne. In brief, the facts are these. There are 1,400 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are needlessly vision impaired from diabetes. I take this from an article of Professor Taylor’s in the Canberra Times on 6 August this year. There are 3,000 Indigenous people who have lost vision from avoidable cataract blindness and that is 12 times more than the national average. In addition, what we hear from Professor Taylor is the belief that 94 per cent of vision loss in Indigenous Australia is avoidable. We must set the task together, as members of this parliament, to seek to eradicate avoidable Indigenous blindness in Australia and during the course of this term I will work with both sides to ensure that there is a program or a practice, with legislation if necessary, to guarantee that a national initiative to eradicate avoidable Indigenous blindness is in place.

They are three simple goals: firstly, care and protection for the children of mental health patients; secondly, a school for the blind in Victoria so as to give parents choice, not obligation; and, thirdly, a genuine national Indigenous blindness initiative to eradicate avoidable Indigenous blindness in this case. There will be many opportunities for partisan issues and for grievances across the chamber, but with respect to my mother for the first time in this House I acknowledge the conditions she suffered and I hope to be able to do some good work for others in that space. I will cut this speech short in respect of the historic opportunity for the member for Melbourne to give his maiden speech in representation of his party.

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