Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Next month, Wentworth will commemorate the first anniversary of the horrific attack at Bondi Junction Westfield, which claimed the lives of Ashlee Good, Dawn Singleton, Faraz Tahir, Jade Young, Pikria Darchia and Yixuan Cheng. This was a tragedy that traumatised our community and changed the lives of the families and friends who lost loved ones. Six beautiful lives were cut short. These people mattered, and honouring their memories is up to all of us.

The Bondi Junction tragedy also shone a light on Australia's chronic and severe mental health crisis. Mental health has the second-largest burden of disease after cancer in Australia, yet it attracts as little as seven per cent of total government health expenditure. Nearly a quarter of a million people with severe mental health conditions have unmet needs for psychosocial supports.

Since Bondi Junction, many people have shared with me their own lived experience in dealing with chronic mental health diseases among family, friends and members of their community. We need to do more to raise our investment in mental health support, to better integrate services between state and federal providers and to dramatically expand the mental health workforce to provide the best care for those in need. We didn't see enough for mental health in the budget, so I urge both the government and the opposition to push for mental health in the coming election, and I will commit to continue to fight for it.