Emma Husar (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This morning I have come to talk about the men's shed in my electorate. I was very pleased to be at the opening of the shed on March 4, alongside the shed boss man and president, Michael Siegle, and the men's shed CEO, David Helmers. In front of 80 of the current members, we were able to open our newest men's shed, which also happens to be the largest men's shed in the country in terms of square metreage and was a gift from the Nepean Volunteers Rescue Association when they became defunct. This men's shed offers men in my community an opportunity to stand shoulder to shoulder with other men and support one another.

I just want to make special mention of Paul James and John Stalliny, who spoke about their own interaction with the men's shed and how the men's shed has been able to assist them. I also want to give a small history of the men's shed movement. Very proudly, it is a Labor initiative. In 2008, Nicola Roxon, as health minister, launched the consultation on men's health policy, which then came into effect in 2010. It is a proud Labor tradition, because we know that men need support in other ways, and one way in which we can do this is to reach out via men's sheds.

Men, we know, have poorer access to health care. They tend to have fewer visits to doctors and seek medical assistance at later stages in their illnesses. They have longer working hours, there are the requirements of seasonal work and sometimes they are affected by privacy or just the fear of knowing their true health status. Men's Sheds can help with some of these things, such as by providing other men for them to talk to. On average, Australian males have a shorter life expectancy. The rate of death for males at working age, 25 to 64, is substantially higher. In just one year alone, there were 1,901 male suicides compared with 634 female suicides. That is a difference of 1,267, which are many more. Importantly, these Men's Sheds exist for our men to reach out to one another. They are available to any man over the age of 18.

I want to put on the record that, unfortunately, the coalition's health cuts are not helping to reverse the trends in men's health. With the freeze on Medicare rebates, doctors will increasingly be forced to abandon bulk-billing and increase out-of-pocket expenses for patients, which will substantially affect our male population and will discourage them when they are already reluctant to see their GP. If that is not enough, the coalition's cuts to bulk-billing incentives for pathology and X-ray mean people avoid getting those preventative health tests, which we know substantially increase better outcomes in that space. We already have difficulty in getting men to reach out for these and I am not sure that we should be making it any more difficult. I just wanted to update and congratulate the people involved in Men's Shed.