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

I'm very passionate about this issue. When we were in government in this place, under the leadership of the former Minister for Health, Greg Hunt, we did an exceptional amount of work. This is an incredibly important issue. Within eating disorders, anorexia nervosa has the highest mortality rate. Organisations like Butterfly Foundation estimate that around a million Australians have eating disorders or disordered eating. I'm very pleased to say that when we were in government we established the first residential eating disorder facility in Australia and we provided some $70 million to construct eating disorder facilities right around this country, so I say to the crossbench, the member for Goldstein and members opposite that with that $70 million we provided when we were in government to the six state governments—'Here's $70 million; go and build yourselves a residential eating disorder facility' like the one that we built in my electorate—not one of those states has provided a residential eating disorder facility, apart from what we did in Queensland, and that's no thanks to the Queensland state government; that's thanks to Mark Forbes, endED and the Butterfly Foundation, who actually got off their backsides and built it. In Queensland, we are now treating people from across the country who can't get treated anywhere else because the states in this country are leaving children and sufferers of eating disorders and their families with nothing.

I have walked this walk for almost 20 years, personally. There is no greater pain for a parent than to see your child go through an eating disorder. One has nearly cost my daughter her life on numerous occasions. We are failing children and families across this country, still—even with the amount of money that we are putting into this problem. We have got to do better.

Some will say that this is the purview of the states, and it kind of is. I thank the new federal government for keeping the $20 million that we allocated in our budget for community services like endEd in my electorate, to provide that step-up, step-down care. But we really need to do so much better. We don't know what causes eating disorders. Some doctors out there will tell you that we do. Let me tell you: we don't. We don't know what causes them; we don't know how to fix them. We're providing some funding into the research, but, if there was any other form of illness that was impacting on a million lives in Australia, we'd be pumping a hell of a lot more money into it than what we do now.

I've spoken with the assistant minister, and I believe that she genuinely cares about this. I'm going to keep working with her. And I encourage the member for Goldstein. I'm happy to talk to her about this issue. I want to acknowledge the former assistant minister for mental health, David Coleman, who has done a great amount of work in the space, as did Greg Hunt. Please, members, we need to do better in this space. There are families out there that are literally tearing themselves apart over the losses that are occurring. So, government, let's do more. (Time expired)

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