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

I thank the member for Reid for his question about a topic which I know occupies the minds of everyone in this chamber. Every day, on average six or seven Australians die by suicide and many dozens more make an attempt. Suicide is the biggest killer of men under 45 and of women under 35. One in four deaths of very young men is through suicide and, shockingly, two or three high schools every week are rocked by suicide. Certain groups in the community are at higher risk than others to suicide—Indigenous Australians, the LGTBI community, construction workers, families themselves bereaved through suicide, to name just a few, which is why over recent weeks and months I have announced millions of dollars in funding targeted at each of those groups. In spite of increased investment in the last term of the Howard government and in our first term in this area, the death toll through suicide has not shown significant improvement in more than a decade.

That is why, in the lead-up to the last election, the Prime Minister announced that in a second term of her government we would redouble our efforts in this area, in addition to tackling broader mental health reform. That policy has led to funding flowing, for example, to Lifeline to increase their call capacity from about 400,000 calls per year to 700,000, and to take off the charges for mobile calls to that critically important service; to emergency face-to-face counselling services for Australians across the country where they are identified by GPs or emergency departments as a suicide risk; to infrastructure projects at notorious suicide hotspots which, for obvious reasons, we do not discuss in precise detail; and to a crisis outreach service run by headspace for schools that are impacted by suicide and more. We know that government investment in these programs alone is not going to protect families and communities from this ongoing tragedy. We need more open discussion in this nation, more open discussion as a community about mental health, about the impacts of bullying and about suicide.

As the member for Reid reminded us, Monday was World Suicide Prevention Day and today is R U OK? Day. These are important community initiatives, led from the community and supported across politics, which promote more open discussion. Today reminds us all that looking out for each other and taking a short period of time to have a quiet discussion with someone we know who does not seem quite okay can have an enormous impact and can save a life.

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