Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to thank the member for Forde for bringing this motion to the House. It's a very important issue and one that I think we need to highlight much more than we have in the last few years. As a paediatrician I've seen many patients struggle with mental health and I've seen the impact this has had not only on them but on their families. The pandemic certainly increased the number of presentations of even quite young children with mental health issues, and I'm not sure that we really have the answers to deal with that. I think there's still a lot of anxiety in the paediatric population about their world, not just because of the pandemic.

I think the social determinants of health are incredibly important in this. I continue to see children who are homeless or have unstable living conditions, and I'm not convinced that any of the policies that have been presented by the major parties have the answer to our housing difficulties. Imagine a child—even a relatively young child—who has to move house all the time. When they move house, often they also have to move school. If they have learning problems, other learning issues or health issues, they have to re-establish those links in their school, maybe even with a new doctor, a new paediatrician and a new hospital. It just adds to the stress these kids are facing.

The Kids Helpline has been a really great service over many years—for over 30 years, in fact—providing some support to those kids. It's open 24 hours a day. The counsellors are very well trained and usually tertiary qualified. Many young people and many families turn to Kids Helpline for assistance. Sometimes it's for advice about how to manage their kids. Sometimes for the kids themselves it's about having an independent person they can talk to about their feelings, issues they're having at school or issues they may be worried about in their own families. I'd certainly like to thank the Kids Helpline counsellors and our other mental health teams in my local area of Macarthur, like the Macarthur Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, Lifeline Macarthur and a whole range of different services that are providing support to our kids. But I stress that there are many important issues we need to address if we are going to support our kids.

I'm distressed by the difficulties our public school system is having in accessing help for kids with learning problems. That has been an ongoing issue over many years. It's reflected, unfortunately, in the postcode data and in the private and public school data for the most recent HSC. Overwhelmingly, kids in wealthier areas or kids who go to private schools have, as a cohort, average better results than those in the public school system, particularly in more disadvantaged areas. That is wrong. It is inequitable, and we have to change it. I see time and time again kids without any knowledge of where they'll be sleeping in the next week, I see parents with drug and alcohol problems unable to access rehabilitation and support for themselves, and it really is difficult for schools to support these kids in those sorts of unstable environments.

The social determinants of health are incredibly important. We must fund the Kids Helpline. The Albanese government has also recently developed the concept of kids hubs around multiple different areas, particularly disadvantaged areas, which will provide ongoing mental health and wellbeing services for children between the ages of zero and 12 years and for their families. These hubs will operate as secondary-level child mental health support and they will help. Additionally, I welcome the announcement made last month by the Minister for Education that $203 million will be provided for the Student Wellbeing Boost, $192 million of which will be provided in funding to every school to support their students' mental health and wellbeing, with schools on average receiving over $20,000 for the 2023 education year. There is also $10.8 million that will be provided for launching a mental health check tool to help schools ensure students whom they are concerned about get the support they need.

But I would stress once again at the end of my speech that it's those social determinants of health that are really important, and I don't believe that, at this stage, either the coalition or the Labor government is adequately addressing those issues.

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