Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to follow my friend the member for Macquarie, who is the co-chair with me of the Parliamentary Friends of Suicide Prevention. I founded the Parliamentary Friends of Suicide Prevention with Mike Kelly when I was first elected to this place, and it's had a very good effect on the parliament. It has been a bipartisan forum, as my friend the member for Macquarie said. It's been a place where we can talk, share stories and share lived experience.

I want to particularly honour the member for Macquarie, who has been very public about her daughter's experience with suicidal ideation and particularly her daughter's bravery in being involved in a series of videos by SANE Australia that we were able to get some funding for back in, I think, the last parliament or the parliament before, which were called Better off With You, where prominent Australians told their experiences of attempting suicide and how life is better with them. I want to acknowledge those people and particularly acknowledge my friend the member for Macquarie.

The statistics are grim. In many respects, I feel we are failing and we are continuing to fail. When I came to this place, eight Australians every day were dying by suicide. Now the rate is nine. We know that three-quarters of the people who die by suicide are men, but we know that three-quarters of those people who try to harm themselves are women. We know that suicide is the leading cause of death of Australians under 44. We know that for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians the suicide rate is two to 2½ times higher than the rest of the population. We know that people from the LGBTIQ community are reported as having suicide attempts at a rate 10 times higher than the general population.

Beyond the tragic loss of individuals is the effect on families. Every individual lost is said to affect over 135 people. Males aged over 85 and older experience the highest age-specific rate of suicide. An estimate of one in three Australians, despite living in what is the best country on earth and one of the most prosperous and successful countries, say that they have feelings of great loneliness.

I started the Parliamentary Friends of Suicide Prevention and spoke about my father's death by suicide in my maiden speech because I didn't want other Australians to go through what our family went through and I wanted Australians who were contemplating suicide to know that there were people in this place that understood what it was to contemplate suicide and understood what it was to lose somebody to suicide. I think there are many in this parliament who sadly have been touched by suicide in their own lives.

I want to acknowledge the great work of Suicide Prevention Australia, and in particular the annual report that they present, not only talking about the sector but talking about the country more broadly. Again, the statistics are grim. Almost nine in 10 Australians believe that social and economic circumstances will pose a significant threat to the suicide rate in Australia over the next 12 months. In particular, three drivers are the focus of this: the cost of living and personal debt, housing access and affordability, and family and relationship breakdown. These are the things that pose the most significant risk. I think, while we've made—

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In this speech on suicide prevention I want to record that, during our time in government, I think one of the most important things that we did was the progress on universal aftercare, because the people that we know are most likely to die by suicide are those people who have actually attempted it in the past. Too often, we've seen across the country people who have seen a doctor or have been discharged from hospital and are just discharged into the night. We wouldn't do it with people with physical injuries, and we shouldn't do it with people with mental health challenges, particularly people who have attempted to take their own lives. So I think the universal aftercare plan that was put forward by Minister Coleman, when he was a minister, was such a step in the right direction. I'm sorry that a number of the states just haven't taken it up, because I think there's no silver bullet here but this is one of the things that we can do where we can really be quite directed and focused on dealing with people who have suicide ideation and really try to address the suicide rate more broadly.

The other thing that I think is important is ensuring that people who get mental health support are able to access it. I'm pleased that the Leader of the Opposition, in the budget reply speech earlier in the year, committed to the restoration of the Medicare funded mental health consultations, because that's so important. It wasn't just a COVID measure; I had many people coming up to me in the years before COVID saying that the ten sessions were just simply not adequate for many people. I think to cut people off at ten sessions is just a cruel thing to do. I think it's very important that those things be restored.

One of the things that I think is missing across the economy is actually focused, workplace delivered, tailor-made programs that help people understand the signs and know want to do. I think one of the organisations that has done that so well and so effectively in their sector is MATES in Construction. MATES in Construction is a partnership between both the union and the employer groups to deliver specific trainings in the construction sector. They've trained over 300,000 people. These are useful skills that will last with people for their whole lifetime. Almost 30,000 trainers—I think that that's a really good contribution, and we need to see these sorts of workplace based trainings in other places.

I've been quite grim so far about where we are in the suicide prevention space because I don't think we're succeeding, so what gives me hope? What gives me hope are the amazing organisations in my community and elsewhere that are doing wonderful work. First among those is Lifeline Harbour to Hawkesbury, run by the extraordinary Elizabeth Lovell. Some of their statistics are amazing. In the last 12 months, Lifeline Harbour to Hawkesbury—that's not national Lifeline, but it's the Lifeline in my community—has answered the telephone crisis line for over 36,000 hours with over 90,000 calls. That's 11 per cent of the total Lifeline load nationally. They've provided 15,000 hours of high-quality, affordable clinical and community support; they've reached over 800,000 people with social media posts and their website; 5,000 people have attended Lifeline Harbour to Hawkesbury training, fundraising and community events; 18,000 people, including myself, have attended the book fairs; and 145,000 people purchased something from their shops.

And Lifeline is not resting on its laurels in my community. They are taking up new frontiers, like taking crisis supporters out from behind the phones and putting them in local libraries in places like Hornsby Library. Three weeks ago, Lifeline's national text service was launched at the Lifeline Harbour to Hawkesbury headquarters at Gordon, and they will be taking on an additional 300 paid and volunteer staff to deal with this. Demand for the service is growing at 26 per cent, and they are working with Lifeline Australia to meet that demand. They are partnering with councils and shopping centres to deal with major at-risk locations in car parks and public places, and working with Women's Shelters and Rotary to reduce the impacts of domestic violence on families.

Importantly, particularly for our community, which is a multicultural community, they are launching a bilingual counselling service translating key mental health data and programs into Mandarin, which I think is so important. They are preparing a campaign, which I'm sure they are going to lobby me about, to partner with government for safe havens connected to major hospitals, with councils to increase means restriction at key locations around Sydney. I want to pay tribute to the great work of Lifeline Harbour to Hawkesbury.

Another organisation I want to acknowledge is Parents Beyond Breakup. I have the privilege of being one of their ambassadors. Their wonderful CEO is Gillian Hunt and their extraordinarily talented board is led by Brendan Blomely and includes: Ross Arriola; Campbell Lennox, who led the Parents Beyond Breakup training session I went to; Glen Poole; Alice Campbell-Jones; Kim Goodair; Rob Kennaugh, my friend; Brendan Root; and Gavin Hudson. What Parents Beyond Breakup does is provide a peer supported free counselling service with a series of counselling sessions—a support group—for people who are going through the family law system.

I have been interested in family law policy for a long time, and what I think is particularly good about Parents Beyond Breakup, who provide sessions for mums, dads and grandparents, is that they are not about people getting angry or getting even; they are about helping people go through the system. They have a number of traditions. They have the empty chair at some of their sessions, to remind people of those who did not make it. They have the rock that people hold, so that people are listened to respectfully while they are doing their session. It is a very important organisation, which has been going since 1999 when it was founded by Tony Miller.

Suicide prevention is a great and important national goal for this country. It is unfinished work. We are not heading in the right direction, but the hope is in the great organisations like Parents Beyond Breakup and Lifeline, who are at the front line and making a difference every day in delivering services.

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