Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I would like to congratulate you. I believe this is the first time I have spoken since you have been in the chair. Congratulations on your elevation to Speaker.

On Wednesday, 2 September, I will be attending the official opening of headspace at Lake Haven on the Central Coast. It has been operating for a couple of months now, but the 2nd is the day that it will be officially opened. I would like to congratulate all those who were involved in securing this headspace in the northern part of Wyong Shire.

A group came together and worked over quite a few months to secure a headspace for Wyong Shire. There were a number of organisations on the Central Coast that had identified the need for a headspace in that northern part of the shire because of the increase in the number of young people living in the Wyong Shire and of people needing support. There was an increased number of young people accessing LINKS youth service. At that stage, LINKS was allocated one day a week to transport young people to Gosford. There was a round trip provided by the LINKS youth service.

The Central Coast Regional Plan identified the needs of youth in the Wyong Shire area. The plan also highlighted the burden of mental health in areas of great socioeconomic disadvantage, which is exactly the kind of area the northern part of Wyong Shire is. The population is increasing. It is due to hit 160,000 by 2016 and it has an average growth rate of 1.5 per cent. There are a very high number of young people who are unemployed. There are a large number of young people who do not finish their schooling and, when they leave school, they are then dependent in one way or another on support from Centrelink. The proportion of jobless families in the northern part of the Central Coast, in Wyong Shire, is quite large; 26 per cent of working-age people in Wyong Shire receive some sort of support from Centrelink. Employment opportunities are very few. Issues around transport mean there is a heavy reliance on motor vehicles. There is a bus service that goes in and comes back once a day. A large number of families are not connected to the internet. As I said, there are very few opportunities for employment.

Accessing headspace in Wyong was difficult for these young people. One of the best meetings organised within the community that I have attended happened on 31 May 2013, when the then minister for mental health, Mark Butler, visited the San Remo Neighbourhood Centre—or, as it is now known, The Epicentre—and was blown away by the presentations from the young people there that day who shared their stories and told how hard it was for them not to be able to access mental health services when they needed them. We also heard from teachers from two of the local high schools and from the wonderful Jillian Hogan from The Epicentre, as it is now because it is the epicentre of that community. As a result, then minister Butler approved a headspace for Wyong Shire. It now does outreach to the San Remo Epicentre one half-day a week, and it is operating in Lake Haven.

I would like to thank the current government for continuing with the plan to build and fund the centre at Lake Haven. This would not have happened without the community getting behind it. This headspace was truly generated by the community. I would particularly like to put on record my thanks to the previous minister for mental health, Mr Butler.