Melissa McIntosh (Lindsay, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the minister for health. Last week I met with a young woman from Western Sydney about her petition to make Medicare funded access to 20 psychology sessions permanent, which has received over 41,000 signatures. She said, 'It's extremely infuriating to hear the health minister say that consumers of mental health are not asking for this decision to be overturned, when I know my supporters have sent countless emails to his office.' Why isn't the minister listening to people with lived experience, and when will the minister return the psychology sessions he cut?

Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Lindsay for her question. I'm not sure—she may want to indicate—whether she lobbied the former minister to make those additional 10 sessions permanent, because, as she would know, the former government made the decision that they would terminate on 31 December 2022. That decision was not changed in the March budget last year, the last budget that was delivered by the former government. Perhaps the member for Lindsay lobbied the former minister for that. I've not heard that. I've seen no correspondence to that effect. As far as I know, every single member across the now opposition backbenches was quite happy with the decision that the former minister, Greg Hunt, had made.

The decision we took to essentially support the position of the former government was informed by the evaluation of Better Access program, which I have outlined to this parliament a number of times before. The essential conclusion of that was that the additional 10 sessions, far from making access better, which is the name of this program, made access worse: tens and tens of thousands of potential patients could not get into the system at all. The evaluation also found that the additional 10 sessions did not go to people with any more complex needs than those who were not getting the additional 10 sessions.

I hear an interjection from the member for Lindsay that it's not true. I can't remember the exact words, but the evaluation found that the baseline mental health of those who received the additional sessions was almost identical to the baseline mental health of those who did not receive the additional sessions.

I, along with the Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention, am consulting with the sector very broadly about ways in which we can make Better Access more equitable, ways in which we can make Better Access more accessible for those communities who are missing out and who, frankly, have been missing out for the almost two decades of this program, which has seen these services disproportionately delivered to wealthier suburbs and inner city suburbs instead of those in the outer suburbs and in regional communities. We're committed to making this a sustainable, equitable program.

The member for Lindsay also asked why we are not listening to those with lived experience. Well, in the 2012 budget, when I was Minister for Mental Health and Ageing, we set aside funding to set up lived experience organisations to give consumers a voice in the delivery and deliberations around mental health policy. And who cut that? The now Leader of the Opposition, who was the health minister, the worst health minister in the modern history of health, cut the funding we had set aside to give consumers a voice in the development of mental health policy. I'm really proud that the assistant minister for mental health, 10 years too late because of those opposite, has finally reintroduced funding to give consumers a structured voice in the delivery of mental health policy in this country. (Time expired)

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Member for Lindsay will cease interjecting.