Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to be given this opportunity to speak on World Mental Health Day and to support the motion moved by the member for Franklin. Mental health issues are prevalent in regional Tasmania but, given the stoic nature of country people, and particularly country men, they are not talked about nearly enough. Thankfully, that is changing, in part due to the hard work of organisations like Rural Alive and Well, which employs outreach workers to speak to people in their homes and on their farms, offering a friendly shoulder to lean on.

Indeed, as regional Tasmanians have battled and recovered from drought, fire and flood in recent years, RAW has proved itself to be invaluable. Importantly, RAW is based not in the city but in the regional town of Oatlands in my electorate of Lyons, and its workers are spread throughout the state. I note that my good friend the member for Braddon is here, and her electorate does also benefit from this great service. This direct connectedness to country life is, I think, essential to RAW's mission.

I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the leadership of RAW Tasmania President Ian McMichael and to welcome new CEO Liz Little, a lifelong community advocate. Founding CEO Danial Rochford left the organisation earlier this year to pursue an arduous life in the South Pacific. His tireless energy was vital to RAW's acceptance and emergence as a vital cog in Tasmania's mental health apparatus, and he deserves our thanks.

While we are all feeling the bonhomie of bipartisanship on World Mental Health Day and Mental Health Week it would be remiss of me not to mention the elephant in the room: the marriage equality plebiscite. I do this not to embarrass members opposite nor to score a political point but to genuinely plead with them to take this day, this World Mental Health Day, to consider the impacts the plebiscite will have on hundreds of thousands of our fellow Australians, particularly on young people, and to ask them to abandon this unnecessary and cruel endeavour. This is not the Labor Party trying to play politics. It is mental health experts who have raised serious concerns about the detrimental impact that a plebiscite will have on the LGBTIQ community and their children. Experts, including Patrick McGorry, a former Australian of the Year, and Mental Health Australia, say the plebiscite will cause significant harm to gay and lesbian Australians. He says that there is definitely a risk involved. Anyone working in mental health would be concerned about it. A plebiscite 'is a dangerous thing to be doing … It will harm peoples' mental health.' Lives are at stake—literally.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics told us this year that suicide is the leading cause of death for Australians aged 15 to 44, with 28 people in every 100,000 taking their own lives. In rural Australia the rate is double that of the cities and suburbs. Last year in Tasmania for every 100,000 people in the state 45 young people took their own lives. That is the highest number per population in Australia. Young LGBTIQ people are six times more likely than the population overall to try to kill themselves. The average age of a first suicide attempt by a young LGBTIQ person is 16 years of age, often before they come out publicly. I will say that again: the average ages 16. That is about the same age as my teenage daughter. So kids whose only worries should be exams and pimples are trying to end their lives because they are worried about the way they are perceived in society.

But, of course, it is not only the young LGBTIQ people who are suffering mental ill health. Older same-sex Australians still grapple with the knowledge that as recently as 20 odd years ago sex with their partner was a criminal act, that as recently as 1992 their sexuality was listed as a disease, and that as recently as within a decade they and their partners had fewer legal rights regarding next of kin, division of property and taxation treatment than heterosexual couples. I cannot imagine what it must to the someone's wellbeing to be told in so many ways that you are not really one of us, that you do not quite belong. So I would ask those opposite, as they consider the importance of addressing self-harm and Australia's terrible levels of suicide, whether a plebiscite will help people's mental health or harm it.

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