Ged Kearney (Cooper, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to thank the member for Goldstein for raising this incredibly important issue through an MPI. I think it's very rare that we get an MPI that all sides of this House can speak to with such passion and concern. It is a very important issue. I'd like to thank the assistant minister for her contribution and the member for Fisher for his as well.

In the eighties, when I was young—a long time ago—there was a book called Puberty Blues, and we devoured this book as young people. It really highlighted the ugly pressure that young women felt to conform—the desire to fit in and be one of the crowd—and how that led to behaviour that was actually detrimental to their health and wellbeing. As I said, we devoured that book because, I think, we related to it so well. We had never seen the issues that we felt and were experiencing so explicitly expressed—that pressure to have sex, to drink, to smoke, to take drugs, to look thin and to dress in a certain way. We all felt it, but there it was in black and white and, ultimately, in a movie. We all felt it, but some felt it more than others.

I remember how that book and that film started the most amazing conversation for my generation: a conversation about young women and the pressure that they were under. Fast forward to today and, yes, there is more awareness and a better understanding—although there's still a lot to learn, as the members for Fisher and Kooyong have explained. There's a lot to learn about these conditions. There's been some advancement in support and education: we talk a lot more about gender equity and the empowerment of girls, young women and young men. Yet the pressures still exist and these conditions are still being manifested in serious mental ill health and, perhaps even more so, the physical conditions that follow.

I know it's not only societal pressures that lead to eating disorders, but we know that they do. Pressures from peer groups have gone beyond the channels that I may have had in the eighties. Social media has amplified that pressure; it's taken it to a whole new level. Cyberbullying is serious. It's so difficult to monitor and tackle. So-called influencers are presenting body images that are impossible to emulate. Consumables are pushed on our young people, and social trends change at a furious rate. It's almost impossible for them to keep up, and they are unaffordable and unattainable for so many. These make young people who can't reach these societal expectations feel inadequate, out of the mainstream and isolated. If they can't conform, it affects their health. It's not only women; young men, as we have heard, are also affected. The mental health impacts are profound, and, as members have outlined here, they contribute to issues like eating disorders, where we know physical outcomes are very serious. Social pressures are not the only cause that contributes to eating disorders, but they are a serious part of it.

It was extremely disturbing to see that eating disorders are on the rise, putting pressure on a health system that is struggling to provide care in the light of that rapid rise. As we've had from the previous speakers, there was a serious concern about the increase in incidence over COVID. I think the member for Kooyong expressed very clearly how COVID contributed to the rise in mental ill-health for our young people. It has been well documented. Evidence that psychiatric conditions have declined post COVID is welcomed but eating disorders haven't. These are complex illnesses with high mortality rates from suicide and organ failure.

The Australian government acknowledges that, whilst vast improvements to treatment have happened since the eighties, more needs to be done. But it isn't just a matter of opening beds in hospitals. Yes, that is vital, but we need a better trained and more trained workforce. We need to make sure that we have people there to care for them. We need wraparound services for people in their homes and in society. We need to deal with sexism, bullying, sexualisation and social media content and monitoring. We need to make sure our young people are resilient, have self-esteem and are believed. We need to support young people and their families.

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