Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The OzHelp Foundation was developed within the construction industry about five or six years ago, originally in the ACT. They were shaken by the tragic suicides of three apprentices within a very short time. The mother of one of these apprentices persistently lobbied the industry for some action to address the suicide problems and to prevent further deaths. This issue was not unknown within industry. Through the various super funds that operate as a joint industry-union arrangement throughout the construction industry, people had been working with families who had suffered bereavement over many years and had seen that there was a growing rate of concern about the issues of suicide in this industry.

The statistics back up this concern. Recent stats, and I think these are from about 12 months ago, indicate that suicide mortality rates from the construction industry are around 75 per cent higher than the standard Australian male rates. That is a horrific statistic. According to internal figures from Cbus, which is the construction and building industry super fund, from 1998 to 2004 the rate of possible suicides among their membership is 43 per 100,000. I use the adjective ‘possible’ because of the ongoing discussion we have about how suicide statistics are collected within this area. The stats that the industry funds are putting out there indicate that these are cases where, in discussion with families, it could well be indicated that the reason for death was suicide.

These figures were so concerning, and they stacked up consistently across the industry, that something needed to be done and the OzHelp organisation was formed. It has a vision. I am always worried about visions, but this vision says:

To provide an early intervention work based suicide prevention and social capacity building program, that has a vision for resilient and resourceful apprentices and workers, confidently facing life’s challenges and that provides measurable benefits for the participants and industry.

One of the truly impressive aspects of the OzHelp Foundation is that it is a co-operative. It has a range of participants that engage with the construction industry. The unions are very strongly involved, the super funds are very strongly involved and building companies have been involved from the start and understand the importance of maintaining health and strong social engagement among their workers. These people were all shocked by the statistics, which I have mentioned, and the persistent lobbying of a family who had been bereaved. Out of this process, the ACT has developed the OzHelp program.

I have met with the OzHelp people in the ACT, but most of my knowledge comes from the OzHelp Foundation in Queensland. I have been happy to know many of the people involved in this program for many years, and I will talk about the work they do. There are three key projects that are run in Queensland under the OzHelp guidelines: Mates in Construction—MIC—the Life Skills Tool Box and a program called Staying Connected. The Mates in Construction program has been developed to raise basic awareness about suicide within the workplace, making it easy to ask for help and to know where to go, and ensuring that any help that is provided is practical and culturally appropriate. The Mates in Construction program has been, according to a number of evaluations, hugely successful. I have met with people who work in this area and they are so proud of the work they have done. Having the Mates in Construction sticker, which is a very distinctive white sticker, available in workplaces—I have seen them on safety helmets; I have seen them on a few pairs of safety boots as well—is an identification to all the people in the workplace that these people are engaged in the program.

The way this program works is not by having lots of outside intervention. It is by using the people you know in your own workplace to make it easy to ask for help. One of the things that has been identified is that this is a predominantly male workplace. In another place I will talk about how we can make some changes to that, but currently the construction industry is mainly male, it covers a wide range of age groups and it has links with a number of other industries. But within the construction industry they pride themselves on their identification with their own business and their own jobs.

The Mates in Construction logo is easily identifiable and people know it. One of the core aspects of the success of this program is that the employers and the unions work together on the program. They train people who work in the industry and amongst blokes—and they use the term very openly—that they know and respect. It takes away any concern about men being prepared to ask for help, it takes away any sense that people are judging them and it also means that people are more open about the issues they are concerned about.

The Mates in Construction project focuses on visiting workplaces. People are not being taken away from their workplaces; they can talk there on the job. A number of volunteers are trained very well about how to become aware of the issues and what their roles are. These people are called connectors. I did speak with some people in the ETU and they told me that they had no involvement in this particular title and that the idea of connecting means people will connect with each other and be able to share experiences and offer support.

In the OzHelp program people do not pick up individual aspects of the program; they engage in the full training. There is a general awareness training component, which takes about 45 minutes and is conducted on site. It deals with suicide as an issue within the industry and the kinds of tip-over points that can cause someone to go from being unwell or upset to being in danger—some of the warning signs that you might be able to identify in yourself but also in your mate. People become more aware of some of the warning signs of behaviour so that perhaps in a friendship arrangement they can tell someone, ‘Hey, maybe you want to have a chat with someone.’ Once again, it is not intruding from outside but using people’s own knowledge and respect to talk about a really important issue.

All workers at a particular site, once it has been identified as a site that is engaging in the program, should receive the training. What we are trying to do is maintain backup training over a period of time, because industry sites turn staff over quite rapidly. What we have found in talking with people who are engaged in the program is that once the program is in place people have a sense of ownership and pride in it and want to maintain it. That is the key issue: when people own a project and want to continue making it operate.

The connector training is about a four-hour course. Those people then have the sense and the confidence that they can have this role in the workplace and actually get to have more knowledge if they wish to. We also have the understanding that the standard provisions that are available within other agencies are also known so that people can have an effective referral processes.

One of the things that people talk about is whether blokes are prepared to ask for help, and certainly one of the links that has been made in the Queensland OzHelp process is with the existing mental health services in the state—in fact on their board they have a representative from state mental health—and also with the key research areas. Professor Graham Martin, Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Queensland, well known for his work across a range of areas, is also on the board. Once again, it keeps these networks alive. Graham Martin has said:

A common misconception is that ‘blokes’ will not access help, but MiC has already undermined this idea.

I also have a quote here from one of the delegates who has done the connector training. Dean from the BLF said:

So you come back on a one-to-one basis and nine times out of 10 in that one-on-one you get them to open up and then you know straightaway that it is just you and him talking. Make the phone call, put in the right people and two weeks later—not even that, probably a couple of days later—they come back and say, ‘Thanks, it’s exactly what I needed.’

That reinforces the need for people to have the training and the confidence, but it also means you have to know other places to which you can turn for help.

The process around OzHelp is certainly one that indicates that the awareness situation is very important in ensuring that people are prepared to talk about issues about which they are concerned and are causing them stress. The impetus for starting this in the first place was deaths of young people—apprentices. One of the concerns was that kids did not know where to turn for help and also this idea that strong people do not need to. That is all so wrong. The Mates in Construction program proves that you can have an ability to talk together and share experience and know when your role ceases and when you need to hand on to someone else.

A really good friend of mine works with OzHelp in Queensland. His name is Jorgen Gullestrup. He is an ex-plumber and a fairly strong and tough individual. He gave evidence to the Community Affairs References Committee suicide inquiry about the kind of work he was doing in the workplace—the kind of connections that he had made. He told a story at the hearing about working with some people who had gone to the stage of attempting suicide and the way they thought that they had no-one else to talk to. These are people that he had worked with on construction sites.

He identified one particular case in the inquiry. This person had reached the stage that he was so concerned that there was only one role that he could see in his future and that was to end it, but he knew by the connections he had made in the MIC program that he could call someone in that group, and he did. In that way Jorgen could go to the nearest hospital with the person and sit with them while they went through the horrors of what happens in emergency wards, because it is very much the case that when someone needs treatment you need to get it quickly and you need to know that you are going to get the appropriate treatment. That does not always happen. By having the Mates in Construction program and people whom you trust to whom you can turn, that gives you the help that you need to survive the system—not only to survive the circumstances in which you find yourself, which may lead you to having thoughts about suicide, but then to survive the health system into which you are placed. If anyone gets a chance to look at the Hansard record of our Community Affairs References Committee inquiry, you can see the kinds of situations, particularly in emergency rooms, where it is most important that someone is there with you who will be able to support you through that process. This link amongst men in the workplace can provide very important element to whether you will able to be healthy into the future or not.

One of the core aspects of the OzHelp program is that it brings together people from the superannuation trusts, government and industry and also the trade union movement. This particular program grew out of the trade union movement, because they saw that their members needed help. In Queensland there is wide support from a broad spectrum of Queensland building and construction industry donors, funders and sponsors. This is not an exclusive list, but they include the Building Employees Redundancy Trust; Queensland Health, particularly the mental health area; the Building Unions Superannuation Scheme; Construction Skills Queensland; Construction and Building Industry Super; BERT Training Fund; Services Trades Industry Fund; Building Services Authority; RoadTek; Fulton Hogan Pty Ltd; NECA; the Electrical Trades Union; and the CFMEU is also strongly involved. It goes across the whole industry and it is owned by the industry.

It is important that we see where things work and where they do not. The number of evaluations of the OzHelp program shows that this model actually operates to make people safer and help them talk about their issues and maintain their health. Certainly at this stage our government has responded to the suicide inquiry by announcing a whole range of funding programs that will be operational over the next few years. I strongly hope that the OzHelp program will be able to access some of that funding, because this program gives practical assistance and, most importantly, it gives hope and it gives hope for the future.