Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Services, Territories and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

Suicide rates in this country are too high. Over 3,100 people in the last 12 months lost their life to suicide. The rate amongst males is more than three times higher than that amongst females. In my own region, 40 to 60 people take their lives each year, and that's above the state average.

I want to heap some praise today on an initiative, the Suicide Prevention Collaborative, which is a collaborative of businesses, community organisations, the Public Health Network and the local Fairfax newspaper, the Illawarra Mercury. They have set themselves the task of reducing that rate to zero. We know that we've got a big task ahead of us. In 2017 alone, the South Coast branch of Lifeline received over 20,000 calls which were suicide-related calls. So I want to heap some praise on the Suicide Prevention Collaborative. I want to particularly thank Dr Alex Hains for his work in advocating a new program of training which has been made available, the QPR—or Question, Persuade, Refer—training, which has been made available online.

I'm going to do something unusual, Mr Speaker. You know that normally, when I stand at this despatch box, I'm usually having some harsh words to say about the government. But I do want to give some praise to the Minister for Health. I phoned him a few weeks ago and said, 'I want you to support this; I want you to match the funding that has been given by the New South Wales government to fund access to free online training as a part of this initiative.' He didn't flinch. He said: 'Of course we'll do whatever we can.' I'm very pleased to report to the House that he did, in fact, honour that commitment. So I want to do a rare thing and heap praise on the health minister for making this significant commitment, which will make a difference. Hopefully, sometime down the track, I'll be able to report that we've made a big dent in that number—the 40 to 60 people who take their lives in my region each year.

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