Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This afternoon I'll be asking some questions of the Minister for Health. They may seem a little bit esoteric insofar as they relate to Defence and Defence personnel, but I believe that they're inextricably linked.

Not far from this place, we have the War Memorial. We've got to remember that there are tens of thousands of men and women who have served this country in uniform. In fact, in areas of my own electorate, we have our own much smaller war memorials. For all of those men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice, there are men and women who have served this country who have returned home bearing the psychological scars of their experiences, both at war and also serving in the military.

To the public at large PTSD is perhaps the most well known of these psychological impacts. Sadly, however, our clinical knowledge of the condition and its effective treatment, though growing, is not terribly great. While treatments are increasingly successful, with as many as three quarters of sufferers who receive treatment substantially improving within 12 months, the precise causes and mechanisms involved in PTSD remain unclear. It's likely that further research could yield more effective diagnostic tools and treatment approaches. The minister is aware of Dr Jim Lagopoulos and the Thompson Institute in my electorate of Fisher. They're currently working on proposals for further research into the physical changes in the brain which accompany PTSD. I look forward to my ongoing discussions with the minister as to how the government might support that work in the future.

In the meantime, I'd like the minister to please outline to the chamber what the government is doing to support research into mental health conditions, specifically PTSD, to help us understand and treat these conditions more effectively. One piece of research which the government has already commissioned is the transition and wellbeing research program study on mental health disorders' prevalence, which was released this year. It showed the true scale of poor mental health among veterans. Of transitioned ADF members, 46.4 were estimated to have experienced a mental disorder in the past 12 months alone—46.4 per cent of transitioned members. Of those, nearly one in five suffered from PTSD. Almost three-quarters are estimated, in the report, to have lived with a mental disorder at some point in their life. Among serving personnel, 8.3 per cent had experienced PTSD in just the last year. Unfortunately, conditions like PTSD among veterans can have the most tragic consequences. The same report found that in the past 12 months alone, 21.2 per cent of transitioned members of the ADF had considered taking their own lives. I know that the minister has taken a passionate and personal interest in improving the mental health of all Australians, including our ADF veterans. So, secondly, I'd like to ask the minister what the government is doing to support the mental health of our ADF veterans, because our ADF veterans are at particular risk of poor mental health because of high stress and traumatic experiences.

What we've also got to recognise is that our first responders, our ambos, our firies and our police will quite often see more death and carnage in a 20- or 30-year career on the streets back home than our soldiers, airmen or sailors might see in a career in the military. Our first responders, our emergency service workers, also suffer terribly from PTSD. My brother is one of them. He's been an ambo for 30 years. Just as we as a federal government look to repair our broken soldiers—rightly so—I'd like to ask the minister what we are looking to do to assist our first-line responders. I know some will say that's a state issue, but these men and women endure, without overplaying it, the worst of all horrors that we see in modern-day life, and we need to do more. I'd like to ask the minister what his intentions are to help our first-line responders.

See this speech in context