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

I am in the rather unusual situation of wanting to support the statements of all the senators who have spoken before me. People are quite right to say that the issue of mental health should not be politicised. That does not mean we should not hold the government to account for slow implementation and poor policy-making. That is something we certainly need to do. I am delighted to have this opportunity to recognise this 20th World Mental Health Day. It is interesting to note that it is only the 20th World Mental Health Day. Many other physical diseases are great fundraisers and have organisations with household names that have been going far, far longer. The stigma of mental illness still prevails and is only slowly being rolled back, but we need to do more.

Mental health is often an invisible problem. It is more prevalent, as many other speakers have said, in rural and remote areas than in metropolitan areas simply because of the huge amount of unmet need for psychological and psychiatric services. The level of unmet need is particularly high for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and suicide rates in our Indigenous communities are 26 times those of the general population.

You have already heard that in Australia one person dies from a suicide attempt every four hours. The figure from many of the hearings the Standing Committee on Community Affairs has had is very conservative, because many suicides are reported as something other than suicide. The family does not want that report and police, coroners and others are reluctant to make that assessment unless they have some very strong evidence that it occurs.

The headspace program, which of course was an initiative of Professor Patrick McGorry, former Australian of the Year, and others is now seeing about 20,000 young Australians a year but they estimate that there are still 350,000 young Australians who need help and cannot get access. In this situation the government has developed a 10-year roadmap—we do not need help in 10 years—and emasculated the Better Access program, which was doing a fantastic job of giving people who needed low-level mental health services the opportunity to get well. I think it is worthwhile looking at some of the comments in the motion on World Mental Health Day that was proposed in the Senate today. It makes the point that mental illness is experienced across the lifespan, with many illnesses emerging before the age of 25; that people affected by mental illness can recover to live a happy and rewarding life with adequate and high quality services and broad community understanding and support; that there is a need for a holistic and broad range of services and support for those with mental illness, including community-based services and services delivered by both the Commonwealth and the states and territories; and that policies and services must recognise and respond to the impact of mental illness on families and carers. I would suggest that the government's current delivery of its mental health reform package does not do those things; it is not holistic.

The decision to cut back the Better Access program to a maximum of 10 consultations, no matter what, is damaging people right now in Australia and will continue to do so. The Better Access program was in many ways a victim of its own success. It was introduced by the Howard-Costello government. In its first year in 2007 2.7 million services were delivered under the Better Access program; in 2008 it was 3.8 million and in 2009 4.6 million—almost a doubling in three years. That would have continued because of the massive reservoir of unmet need in this area.

I was somewhat interested to hear Senator Moore suggest that the Minister for Mental Health and Ageing, Mr Mark Butler, is open to hearing about issues and problems in the area. The Alliance for Better Access, a group that has come together to try to fight to get some understanding from this government about why they should not simply emasculate the Better Access program, has been trying to see Minister Butler for over 12 months. In August they were told that he did not need to see them. So much for his open access and desire to talk to everyone who wants to get involved in this area.

I would like in the short remaining time I have to talk about some of the cases, from many emails received in my office, that are going to be affected. One senior practitioner in rural Queensland has sent me an email saying:

Regional centres have profound unmet health needs as it is. The cuts to Better Access will prove fatal for some.

This is not an exaggeration. The end of treatment when treatment must continue is even worse perhaps than not having started treatment. This practitioner goes on to say:

Last week I was contacted by this patient who I have treated for five years on and off who has a diagnosis of complex post-traumatic stress syndrome and is one of the most profoundly traumatised people I have treated in over 15 years of practice. This patient presented with a credible and involved suicide plan, had been giving away belongings and had written goodbye letters to the select few supports in her life including her psychologist.

In other words, she was ready to kill herself. My correspondent goes on:

The fact that she had been cut off from any further help from Better Access was the last straw. It then took us over 18 hours to find a hospital bed for this poor woman.

How can we allow a situation involving dozens and dozens of cases of people who have no other source of hope to continue. That is why in this situation we criticise the government's implementation. It is as poor here as it has been in so many other areas.