Emma McBride (Dobell, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Hansard source

I would start by addressing the question from the member for Mayo. It is deeply distressing to hear of any person or family that find themselves in a situation that your constituent did—or their 93-year-old parent. I wish them all the best as they recover in hospital. I can offer you a meeting with the minister, as I understand this is one of a number of cases that you are helping people with in your local community. We will offer you that meeting so you can discuss not only that particular case but also others that you are responding to.

A lot has been said about this budget and more will be written including in today's consideration in detail focus on health and aged care. But at its heart it is a Labor budget. I say that because it is about fairness. In Australia today, where you live and what you can afford largely determines your health and quality of life. The differences are stark and growing. Experts will use terms like 'health outcomes' or 'priority populations' or the 'social determinants of health' but what they are really talking about is fairness.

Forty years ago, before the introduction of Medicare, the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in Australia was unpaid health bills. Before the introduction of Medicare, one in seven Australians had no coverage for health bills. That is why Labor introduced Medicare and affordable medicines through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme—the PBS as we know it. It is important to remember the Liberals' record on Medicare: tearing it down after it was first introduced as Medibank under Whitlam, opposing its re-establishment as Medicare under Hawke and the disastrous attempts to undermine it in a decade of neglect under the previous government, including when the now Leader of the Opposition was health minister.

We heard earlier from my friend and colleague Dr Mike Freelander, the chair of the aged care and sport committee, an esteemed paediatrician. When I first met Dr Mike, as candidates in the 2016 election, he told me why he was running. He said he didn't want his career to end as it had started, without Medicare, because he had seen the difference Medicare had made to hundreds of children and families over decades in his community in south-west Sydney.

Before coming to this place, I worked for many years at Wyong Hospital in the electorate I now represent on the Central Coast of New South Wales. I was a specialist mental health pharmacist and then later a director of pharmacy. My day-to-day role was part of a team of nurses, social workers, OTs, psychologists and psychiatrists providing care to over 50 in-patients. I saw many people in crisis after they had been brought in by ambulance or police and ended up in seclusion. I also saw our health service discharge people back to the circumstances that made them sick without the crucial support they needed in the community, which is why I am determined in working alongside Minister Mark Butler to reform mental health support and care in Australia, to steer the introduction of Medicare mental health centres and make sure everyone can get access to the help they need when they need it. That is why we are introducing a new national intervention service, establishing 61 Medicare mental health centres, making it easier to access affordable mental health care from GPs, enabling better multidisciplinary care and expanding the mental health workforce.

Our new national early intervention service will provide free high-quality evidence based therapy from trained professionals. We are establishing 61 Medicare mental health centres, where people will be able walk in and get free help, including from a psychologist or psychiatrist on call. These centres, building on the Head to Health model, are designed to remove barriers to care. These centres, the Medicare mental health centres, will be free, they will be walk-in, and people will not need an appointment or a referral to get support and care.

We are also making it easier to access affordable mental health care through general practitioners by allowing GPs to use standard consultation items to review mental health treatment plans and we are enabling better multidisciplinary care for people with severe or complex needs by funding more than 150 mental health nurses, counsellors, social workers and peer workers to provide free care coordination, navigation support and general practice. We know that the success of mental health reform relies on expanding and broadening the workforce. Sometimes the best support comes from someone who has walked in your shoes and lived through a similar experience, which is why we are also creating a new national peer workforce association to mobilise, professionalise and unlock the potential of peer workers.

These reforms to expand free mental health services right across the country alongside our work to strengthen Medicare will ease cost-of-living pressures with cheaper medicines, and will make sure that everyone can get the care they need and deserve.

Proposed expenditure agreed to.

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