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

It's often been said that government budgets are an expression of priorities. What we saw from the most recent budget is that the Albanese government is not prioritising the mental health of Australians. Australia is in the middle of a mental health crisis. That fact is undisputed by experts and stakeholders in the sector. The previous coalition government took the crisis seriously. In our last budget in 2021 we invested a historic $2.3 billion in the National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Plan. That funding guaranteed essential services and led landmark reforms in mental health support and treatment. We did that because every year, sadly, more than 3,000 people die by suicide, and it remains the leading cause of death for Australians between the age of 15 and 44 years. In addition, one in five Australians experience some form of chronic or episodic mental illness each year.

This Labor government have already shown that they don't take this issue seriously enough. Budget night marked 500 days since the Albanese government's cuts to the Better Access initiative, reducing the number of Medicare subsidised psychology sessions available for vulnerable Australians from 20 back down to 10. This change ripped away affordable access to psychology sessions for around 240,000 Australians who had been prescribed the additional 10 psychology sessions by their medical practitioner. Under our government, Australians were able to access affordable sessions roughly every two weeks. Under this government, that changed to less than monthly. Anyone who is or loves a person with a chronic or complex mental health condition will tell you that this isn't enough. We raised the number of Medicare subsidised sessions because doing so saved lives. I know it did because, even before COVID, as the chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Suicide Prevention group, I had mental health patients and stakeholders in the sector saying to me that 10 sessions were simply not enough.

The government's cuts have made life harder for Australians who are already struggling. There have been recent reports of vulnerable Australians having to rely on buy-now pay-later platforms like Afterpay in order to access the mental health support they need amidst the rising cost-of-living pressures. That's particularly concerning when we know that short-term loan arrangements can lead to additional stress for vulnerable Australians. Australians with chronic and complex mental health conditions should have affordable access to the consistent specialised treatment they need from a psychologist because they deserve the full level of support that's been prescribed to them. It would be completely unacceptable, for example, to purposely restrict patients to only half the course of treatment for a physical health condition, but we're doing it in mental health. As the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, reiterated in his budget in reply, a re-elected coalition government will restore the number of Medicare subsidised psychological sessions from 10 to 20 on a permanent basis.

The Albanese government has missed a critical opportunity to listen to the calls of experts and patients by reinstating full access to Medicare subsidised psychology services, as the coalition has committed to doing. Just as physical health shouldn't be a luxury, mental health shouldn't be a luxury. So I ask the government: why does this budget fail to provide adequate support services to ensure Australians have access to mental health treatment they need, particularly when it comes to the more complex and chronic mental health conditions in the form of establishing new measures or reinstating old ones.

Also shockingly, this budget has quietly dissolved the National Mental Health Commission, including the National Suicide Prevention Office. Those bodies were established as a recognition of the depth and significance of this issue. The dissolution of those bodies is yet another indication that this government is not prioritising the mental health of the Australian community. As I said at the start of my contribution: government budgets are an expression of priorities. So above all I ask the government why is it not properly responding to the Australian mental health crisis that this country is facing? Why is this not a priority for the Albanese Labor government?

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