Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to talk about some happenings in my electorate. I have just left the hospitality area after meeting with children from the Strahan Primary School, which is on the west coast of Tassie in the beautiful village of Strahan, on Strahan Harbour. It was great to see them and they were very pleased to be here. I really enjoy visiting the west coast of Tassie, which has been incorporated into the electorate of Braddon since the last election.

The first thing I would like to comment on and to congratulate this government for is that the north-west coast of Tassie has been selected as one of only two sites in Australia for an outpost of headspace. Headspace is an excellent national program developed to support and assist young people with health issues, particularly in relation to mental health and drug and alcohol use. Of course, most of these are interrelated. Headspace is specifically designed to assist and attract young people between 12 and 25 years of age, of which there are about 17,000 in my electorate.

I thank the Minister for Health and Ageing very much for listening to the case put by the community of the north-west coast to look to providing more services specifically for young people in relation to mental health. This is one innovative way for such a service to evolve. We are looking forward to working with headspace Launceston and developing and using their expertise to help us evolve a local headspace outpost. In many ways you hope that you do not develop it to a full-blown centre because that will mean you are doing the job and that young people are relying less on that service. So I do thank the minister and the Prime Minister very much for this commitment of an extra $197 million for mental health services at another 90 sites throughout Australia. I thank them for the opportunity for us to be an outpost and I look forward to working with Launceston and all my service providers and organisations to evolve a north-west coast headspace.

Not only did the Prime Minister and Minister Butler expand headspace throughout Australia; they also introduced eheadspace, which is a national online and telephone counselling service to offer flexible mental health support to young people and their families or friends. I would emphasise that it is not a crisis service. It is there to direct and refer, if that is of assistance to people. Eheadspace is a 24-hour service and, for the record, the online component operates from 1 pm to 1 am Australian eastern standard time and the telephone component operates from 10 pm to 1 pm Australian eastern standard time. That is great news for the north-west coast. I would also like to congratulate the Devonport City Council on the further evolution of its aquatic centre, with a 25-metre indoor aquatic centre to complement its 50-metre pool and other swimming and water awareness facilities that are being developed. The council made the decision to commit $4 million, the federal government committed $5 million, in 2010—and I was very pleased to be able to secure that funding—and the state government committed an equal measure of $5 million to bring about this $14 million complex.

The whole site is effectively being revamped by introducing a 25-metre pool to complement the 50-metre pool. The complex will also have an infant awareness pool, a warm-water pool, a foyer, a fitness gym, a cafe, a kiosk and change rooms. I congratulate the council on this and I look forward to working with them to bring about this really important piece of community infrastructure to make us even more waterwise and water careful.