Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Between 24 September and 9 October 2017 I was asked to take part in the presiding members' study tour, which was to focus on mental health. I was accompanied by Senator Rachel Siewert, who was the delegation lead, and Senator Deborah O'Neill from the ALP. Senator John Williams was to join us, but unfortunately he was not fit enough to travel. We were also accompanied by Mr Mark Fitt, as the delegation secretary.

It was a great honour to be asked to represent the government in the four countries where we did our tour. They were England, the Netherlands, Sweden and Canada. Sixteen days is a long time to be out of the electorate, and it's something that I had to think very carefully about. But the topic of our study tour was that of mental health. I'm a big believer in not trying to reinvent the wheel in relation to anything, least of all in relation to mental health. Having been away for 16 days, it's going to be virtually impossible for me to talk about the learnings that we were able to garnish from the many people and many organisations that we went to so I have decided to address these issues over a series of speeches in relation to mental health.

I was given the opportunity, as we all were, to choose our particular topics of interest in this trip, and I chose four main areas of great interest to me. They were the mental health issues in serving military personnel, veterans, emergency service personnel and those suffering from eating disorders. One of the first things that struck me as we made our way around four very different countries was that the most common question I was asked, almost by every single person that we spoke to, who were leaders in their field, was, 'Why are you here?' Because many of these countries, many of these organisations, look to Australia as being the exemplar of how we research and how we treat clinically those suffering from mental illness. It was a constant reinforced moment of pride for us all for these world-renowned leaders in mental health research and clinical treatment to be saying: 'Why are you here? What you do in Australia is fantastic.' So, having said that, the biggest room in the house is the room for improvement, and the day where we think we know it all we should hang up our hats because we can all learn from other countries and other experts and that's what it was all about for me.

Many organisations that we spoke to held Australia's work specifically in relation to headspace as a shining light for the treatment of mental illness amongst our young people. Clearly that was a well-deserved compliment for the work that this federal government is doing and previous governments have done in the past. When we went to London, we went to King's College London and we spoke to professor Ian Everall, who is the executive dean of the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience and he had worked in Melbourne for eight years. He advised us that the clinical treatment of those suffering from mental illness is much more fragmented in the UK than Australia. He also talked about the importance of clinical treatment and research being done together— (Time expired)