Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Mental Health and Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

This package recognises the diverse impact of mental illness across a person's lifetime. It will build resilient kids. It will support teenagers dealing with the emergence of mental illness. It will deliver more targeted primary-care services across the community and it will deliver targeted, intensive and integrated supports for adults dealing with severe and chronic mental illness. We take the COAG process very seriously, which is why we will be taking more than $200 million to the table later this year to help drive improvements in emergency departments and in supportive accommodation, as well as continuing our plans for a long-term reform roadmap over the coming decade. We will establish the first ever national mental health commission reporting not to any particular department but to the Prime Minister and to this parliament.

Unlike the opposition's policies, these measures are properly costed and they are fully funded. They keep in place the broader health reform measures that the opposition would have trashed, like the e-health record, by better targeted primary-care infrastructure for local communities, like more targeted hospital funding instead of continuing to send the states a blank cheque and, of course, like the GP after-hours hotline. This reform package is comprehensive, it is balanced, it is targeted across the lifespan and it will make a real difference to millions and millions of Australians living with mental illness and their families.

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