Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, may I observe that, if you had been the referee for the Cowboys matches this year, we would have got a much fairer outcome!

Honourable Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Kennedy will resume his seat, and then we can set his time again.

Honourable members interjecting—

I will admit that I was the rabbit in the spotlight because I am not too sure of the reference—whether I should take it as a compliment or not. The member for Kennedy has the call. He will go to his question directly to save me from this problem!

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question without notice is to the Prime Minister. Given that, this year, 21 Australians in Mount Isa have taken their own lives—a rate 23 times higher than the Indigenous average and 80 times higher than the national non-Indigenous average—could a senior officer from the office of the Prime Minister attend the emergency forum scheduled for Mount Isa? Further, could the Prime Minister address some of the applications of state intervention policies which have driven people from north-western and border communities into Mount Isa, causing terminal overcrowding, widespread alcoholism and resultant crime and abuse? Finally, could the Prime Minister consider solutions to address causes—land titles for economic development, plant operated training for mining and build-your-own-homes programs—that have in the past been so successfully undertaken in neighbouring Cloncurry?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Kennedy for his question. I know how serious and passionate he is about the issues that he has raised. When I have had the opportunity to travel with the member for Kennedy in his electorate, he and I have discussed suicide in his electorate, and one time he particularly wanted to convey to me an individual family's circumstances. So we did have the opportunity to discuss these issues in some depth.

Understanding how passionate the member for Kennedy is, I believe I can say to him on behalf of all members in this House that that passion for addressing this national tragedy of suicide is shared. I doubt that there is anybody in this place who cannot recount a story of suicide touching their own lives or those of their family, their own friends or the constituents that they see in their electorate offices. This is a major national problem.

Because it is a major national problem, at the last election we made a series of commitments about better investing in strategies that can assist, in what are dark and desperate days, in preventing people getting to the stage where they think the only alternative is to take their own lives. Fortunately, we are aware that there are policies, plans and programs that can make a difference, and it is a question of providing the resources and enabling them to be rolled out in more parts of the country. In the electorate that the member for Kennedy represents, we do have a suicide prevention officer working with the relevant division of Queensland Health, and there is a meeting of stakeholders this week to develop an agreed approach on this. So the federal government is clearly there; the meeting is being organised through the relevant department.

We are also investing in extensions to the Access to Allied Psychological Services initiative, and that will help Australians, including approximately 18,000 Indigenous Australians. We are investing in the Personal Helpers and Mentors Program, which provides services and support for people with severe mental illness, for their families and for their carers. We are investing, too, in family mental health support services. We are also investing in a single mental health online portal, because when people are in dark days they may go looking for help but not feel comfortable having a conversation with another person; however, they may look for help on the internet. We want to make sure that there is access for them to services and reliable information rather than the information they may find on the internet which would not assist them at all during those days of darkness and desperation.

I do understand how seriously the member for Kennedy takes this. I will ask Minister Butler to visit Mount Isa in the following weeks to discuss this with the member for Kennedy and to discuss it with the relevant people in his community, who are also very keen to take localised initiatives to try to address what are by any standards very alarming statistics in the part of Australia that the member for Kennedy represents.