Deborah O'Neill (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I commend the member for Swan for his comments on the report, which I think were fulsome and absolutely reflected the sentiments that we shared as we explored that territory. I rise in this place today to speak to the report of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health and Ageing Before it's too late: inquiry into early intervention programs aimed at preventing youth suicide. It is with sadness, but in a sense also with pride, that this work is being undertaken at this level with the intention of securing much better life outcomes for others on behalf of people who are now, sadly, on the record as having lost their life to the tragedy of suicide. As members of parliament moving around the community we hear these stories and we are very sensitive to the impact that they have on the members of our community.

The reality is that roughly 2,000 young Australians in the 14- to 24-year age group die each year due to suicide. They account for 20 per cent of all deaths. It is the second most common cause of death, after accidents, amongst young people. Tragically, the rate of death in young males is one in four, a much higher rate than suicide deaths amongst older men. Suicide rates for young females are also higher than they are for older females. They account for one in seven deaths where, for boys, it is one in four.

This issue is of such importance to so many people, but I want to applaud the work of this committee of the 42nd Parliament and the work of the secretariat from that time to this time. As a new member, this is the second report I have spoken to this week on important work which we completed, which was commenced in the 42nd Parliament. This report came up with 10 core recommendations. In terms of how they covered areas, this is essentially how I see it. The first two really talk about recording and reporting, and the member for Swan made considerable observations on that. We found as we were taking evidence that trying to get data in particular jurisdictions was quite difficult, and then to seek any comparability across jurisdictions was almost impossible. So this is an area that needs serious review and serious action. The third recommendation essentially dealt with research going forward.

Then there was a cluster of recommendations that related to DoHA, the national coordination and the need for a holistic response. In terms of a recommendation for the Department of Health and Ageing, we made a recommendation that they need to take a leadership role in the facilitation of the sharing of resources. What was really heartening was that, in each of these jurisdictions, people have responded—agencies have responded and government departments have responded—with a range of resources that they are using and implementing. The problem is that across jurisdictions—even within jurisdictions—some of those great resources are unknown to others. We also noticed that linkages between community education and other agencies was something that was not well constructed and needed further attention. I have mentioned the problems within jurisdictions. If you amplify that out across the nation, you can see that national coordination remains a problem as well.

A holistic response really was the recommendation. I think this outlines the complexity of this issue. It is not one agency or one issue that can be attacked here. There is a whole-of-government response that is required in terms of dealing with a whole person. Those areas of cultural identity, employment status and educational, social and economic disadvantage all figured prominently in some of the indicators of young people's journeys to the point where they were so desperate they felt there was no future for them in this amazing country in which we live. We have people lining up from all around the world who want to come and live here. We have tragically young Australians who feel so disconnected from a hopeful future that they give up that opportunity for life. It is not a small thing.

In the time that I have remaining I would like to particularly speak to recommendations 7, 8, 9 and 10. I want to do that particularly because of my experience as a teacher. I want to put on record a brief story of an occasion in 2000—quite a long time ago now when you think about it. In 2000, I had the benefit of having some Swedish experts who worked in education and in drug and alcohol reform come to Australia. They were speaking to some outstanding Australian educators, who have absolutely, without doubt, amazing commitment to education and young people. The Swedish people asked these Australian educators, 'What do you do if you have a student who presents with drug and alcohol problems?' There was a series of steady responses: a low-order response, 'Provide support to the student, try to link them into other agencies.' The Swedes asked, 'What if there is a second incident, with a student bringing drugs to school or having drug issues or reports of this?' The Australians said: 'We would escalate it. We would attempt to try and connect them into agencies outside. But the school could not really continue in this way.' With a third incident generally it triggered an expulsion. The Swedish response I thought was quite interesting. They said, 'Well, what do you do then?' Thinking it was a language problem, the Australian educators repeated an explanation of the process. The Swedes replied: 'Yes, we understand what you said. But our question remains: what do you do then?'

I think that is the question that is at the heart of how these young people got to this point. There is wonderful work being done in schools and, happily, our suicide rate is not higher because of the outstanding work that teachers are doing in terms of identifying young people who might be at risk. Our wonderful schools are connecting outside the boundaries of the school fence into local community and health support agencies. But clearly we have not got it right when we look at the statistics on what we are confronting.

To emphasise that, I want to put on record a story of evidence we heard in Adelaide recently of a young woman we met who was in a community setting and trying to get her life back on track, a very intelligent young girl who faced a lot of difficulties, and she had many of the risk factors that the member for Swan identified evident in her life. She was in a situation where there had been family breakdown. She had had an unstable upbringing in her adolescent years. She had felt isolated from her peers. She continued to attend school for some period of time but she was the first to admit she had become quite a problem in school. She reached the age of 17 and showed up at school on that day. She said, 'My present on my 17th birthday was a form to fill out for me to leave that school.' Because she was a problem she was sent away from school. That is not the case in most schools but it is the case in some schools.

It points to a resourcing problem for many schools but it also points to a question of whose job is this. Is it my job to really attend to the mental health and wellbeing of some young people? In my experience previously I had the real pleasure of working for the Hunter Institute of Mental Health to do some qualitative research analysis of the rollout of the national MindMatters program. That program is a very powerful tool that schools are using. But in that research it became very evident that there were teachers in the secondary setting who understood the need for care for young people and intervention when they needed to assist and also understood the implications of curriculum planning that could have positive or negative mental health outcomes for kids. But there was also one piece of evidence that was gathered that I read where a teacher of mathematics said, 'I teach mathematics. What I do has nothing to do with the mental health and wellbeing of the kids in my class.' I sense for that person, who was obviously dedicated to teaching and a long-term teacher, that while they saw their professional identity framed in terms of information and skill development in mathematics, that had somehow become divorced from their ethical, moral, spiritual and social responsibility to look after the whole person in their care in the classroom.

That is why I think recommendations 7, 8, 9 and 10 really do something to address the situation I have attempted to outline in those couple of vignettes. Recommendation 7 is that the Australian government, in consultation with state and territory governments and non-government stakeholders, establish partnerships between departments of education and community-based service providers to ensure continuity of care for school leavers by facilitating referral of students to external counselling services where appropriate. The need to make this recommendation is in some ways a little surprising, and I do note differences across the jurisdictions. For example, in Victoria I became quite aware some years ago that it was a funding requirement of local community agencies and health based agencies that they actively seek links with their local schools. That was not the case in New South Wales. Sadly, I have been in the situation in my own office at the university trying to make phone calls to get support for students with local agencies and actually being told, 'That's not our job.' These are cavernous cracks that open when agencies are not working with a person's wellbeing at the centre of their role definition and when we have got this, I suppose, boundary riding between different agencies.

The eighth recommendation is that the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority include social development education and mental health as a core component of the national curriculum for primary and secondary schools. This is a very significant recommendation. ACARA is undertaking significant reform at this point in time of the whole of the national curriculum. The reality is that if, as an educator, you have a student who is hungry or physically or mentally unwell then investing in attempting to get them to learn is a zero-sum game if you are not going to enable them to feel well about where they are.

This recommends that there be a course for students to learn. But I would like to add to that. In addition to the students being mentally healthy and well, we need to attend to the fact that teachers need to be mentally healthy and well. Sometimes recommendations for youth forget to look at those who are going to provide the services for the youth, and teachers are under pressure. It is a false assumption that every teacher has things so perfectly aligned in their life that they come to school equipped with resources enabling them to respond to the real and pressing needs of students who are at suicide ideation stage, for example, or even further down the track than that.

The ninth committee recommendation is that social development and mental health education for older secondary school students should include specific components to assist them to be better prepared for moving from school into the workforce and higher education and to make them aware of the full range of services available to assist them as they transition from child to adult services. The reality is that, as we move to increasing the number of students who participate in further and higher education, we are dealing with students who are transitioning from one place to another, and that is a risk factor. 'Where do I belong? How do I fit in? What skills do I have that make it okay for me to be at this university? Who will pay attention if I do not look like I am going too well?'

In my experience in the university sector there are amazing teachers who are employing what Nel Noddings calls 'ethics of care'—that there is an underpinning of care for the human beings who come into their classrooms. Sadly, sometimes performance criteria lead people to think that it is about creating numbers, data and pieces of work, and somehow students are sacrificed. Sadly, some students do not make the six-week cut-off for HECS and they just disappear. I hear that Swedish question again: whose responsibility are they now? What happens now? The end of the story from the Swedish people was that the community has invested so much in these young people—they have sent them to school, cared for them and provided health, education, resources and support—and here they are, on the cusp of a wonderful adulthood. Can there be any more important time for us to pay attention than right there and then as we launch them into that?

The final recommendation is a critical one. It is that teachers receive mandatory training in mental health awareness. I think that is for their benefit as well as that of their students. Looking after our colleagues is an important part of our role, as is looking after our students. The recommendation is for the inclusion of specific training to develop their capacity to recognise and assess suicidal risk. Teacher planning also needs to impact positively on students. (Time expired)

Sitti ng suspended from 13:13 to 16:01

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