Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think it is quite fitting that we are having this matter of public importance debate on mental health today. It is the same day on which we earlier moved a motion supporting and celebrating the work of the volunteers of Australia—recognising that International Volunteer Day will be on 5 December this year—because volunteers are often the people who have kept our mental health system functioning, for years and years. I would like to recognise the work of not just the higher profile people, such as Professor McGorry and Professor John Mendoza, and the many other people who are paid, such as those within the Mental Health Council of Australia and those in the member organisations of the Queensland Alliance, but also the thousands and thousands of volunteers. Many of them have been parents and carers, and have toiled for years and years, sometimes actually being opposed by their state governments over the sort of care and assistance that they wanted to have delivered to their spouses, their children and their siblings. It has been very hard work for many of them.

I think the first glimmer of hope that that group experienced was through the policies of the Howard government, when we funded the Personal Helpers and Mentors Scheme, PHaMs, and when we funded GPs to develop mental health management plans for patients who require them. That was the first glimmer of hope. I think the appointment of Professor Pat McGorry as Australian of the Year provided yet another glimmer of hope. Hopes were certainly raised that, finally, mental health was on the agenda and that, given Professor McGorry had been appointed to that position under a Labor government, Labor were serious about doing something about the mental health situation.

Unfortunately, earlier this year we had the resignation of Professor John Mendoza from the National Advisory Council on Mental Health—Minister Roxon’s advisory council. In another context, Professor Mendoza has talked of governments ‘low in courage’. I do not think I would be verballing Professor Mendoza in any way by saying that the reason he quit that job was that he found the Labor government ‘low in courage’ in terms of developing and genuinely supporting mental health funding. What we saw instead was artifice. They talk the talk, but that is the end of it from this Labor government. I guess we should not have been surprised, but the hopes of thousands and thousands of professionals, volunteers and carers in this sector were cruelly dashed, in my view.

Senator Siewert earlier talked about the Greens being in favour of early intervention but not just early intervention in this area. Could I turn that around and say that the coalition agree completely. We are in favour of not just early intervention. However, it is our funding of programs that has given the government their ability to boast about the spending that they have put into the area. For instance, it is very interesting that they boast about how much they have spent, compared to the Howard government—of course, they pick the figures that suit them—but the fact is that every one of the mental health programs that are currently funded by this government is an initiative or funding commitment from the Howard government. There is only $43½ million that they have put into ideas and thoughts for themselves over their life as a Labor government.

So it is appalling that the government would attempt to use the figures to suggest that somehow we have not supported a broad funding of this complex area and the many other areas that need to be funded. They have been funded. The two programs that I mentioned earlier—the PHaMS program and the program through GPs—are not aimed at any particular age group; they are aimed to help all people.

I must admit I was somewhat bemused by Senator Moore’s suggestion that people on this side might have been feigning outrage or making cheap political shots on this subject. I would like to suggest that when she talked about this motion and tried to distil it down to some sort of political act her views were wrong. This motion is not informed just by the views of the coalition; it is informed by the views of many others in the mental health area, who make the point over and over again—it is in the motion—that younger Australians between 16 and 24 bear the brunt of mental illness, with the prevalence of problems declining with age. Early and targeted treatment will allow many people to overcome mental illness or lower the incidence of progression or relapse.

Despite what they say, the government have cut services to mental health. There has been $5.5 billion extra in mental health spending from all governments since the national action plan was brought in—the biggest ever boost to mental health. But if you look for the new money and new areas of spending from this government you will find that they do not exist. This is where we need money to be spent.

The view has been put that somehow this is about hogging all the money for early intervention in mental health, as though somehow it is sucking money out of the system. Yes, that view has been put by a number of people. That view gets put because there is so little funding and so much unmet need in this area that people are jealous and scrabbling around over a few crumbs that the government might want to scatter about to keep them quiet.

We are talking here about putting new funding into early intervention—we are not talking about taking money out of existing programs to do it—to support the area that will best allow us to deal as quickly as possible with the problems of mental health. No-one denies that for decades mental health was under funded, but it is not a situation that we want to return to. It is up to this government to do something to prove that they are going to spend some money rather than keep it for an action plan that is not action at all.