Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I present the report of the Community Affairs References Committee inquiry into mental health services in rural and remote Australia, together with the Hansard record of proceedings and documents presented to the committee, and move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

This is a very comprehensive report looking at the accessibility and quality of mental health services in rural and remote Australia. I'm going to keep my comments brief because there are a number of reports to table, and I know Senator O'Neill wants to make a contribution. Senator O'Neill and I referred this matter to the committee inquiry. Before I continue, I would like to thank all our witnesses, who did such a superb job sharing, in some cases, very personal experiences. I would like to thank all those who made a submission, and I'd also like to thank the secretariat.

The committee makes 18 recommendations about how to fix accessibility and the quality of services for people in rural and remote Australia. We held 16 hearings. We went to rural and remote Australia and made sure that we listened to people in rural and remote Australia and got evidence from people in those areas. There's absolutely no doubt that people in rural and remote Australia are not getting access to the services that they need and deserve. It is absolutely clear that there are some fundamental changes that need to be made. There are many barriers to people being able to access services in rural and remote Australia. Those include not being able to get access to the workforce in particular, and the workforce not being properly trained in support for rural and remote Australia; the nature of the social determinants of health of people in rural and remote Australia, the lack of access to 24-hour services; the lack of access to the right services; the very significant burden of mental health in many areas; and the cultural competence of the services that are available. There is also the fact that people have to go to emergency—and, in some cases, need to be drugged in order that they can be transported to the nearest largest centre—to get access to services, the fact that the emergency rooms in many regional areas are simply not designed adequately to deal with people who are having a mental health crisis and the fact that there is not appropriate funding available to properly implement the stepped approach to mental health that is now being very strongly supported by funding bodies and government services but which is not being implemented effectively through the services available through the PHNs.

So our first recommendation is that a national rural and remote mental health strategy be developed to address the low rates of access to services, workforce shortages, the high rate of suicide—which is almost double in remote areas—cultural realities, language barriers and the social determinants of mental health. That strategy needs to be developed, then implemented, and there needs to be regular reporting to the government, with those reports being tabled in parliament. We need to make sure the NDIS is working properly for psychosocial disabilities. We heard many accounts of the NDIS not properly meeting rural and remote needs, particularly the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It is absolutely critical that we make sure that services to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are delivered by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, that they're developed with them, that we have and develop a peer workforce and that we recognise the cultural competence that our First Nations peoples have in dealing with and addressing mental health. So often we heard accounts of providers and the workforce arriving in a remote community, going straight to the person who is the usual person of support in a remote community and asking them for help—an unpaid person who very often is bearing the responsibility for and supporting so many people in that community. We need to recognise that. We need to support those persons and actually make sure that we're paying for people who are providing that sort of support, because they are providing very vital services in remote communities.

In the very short time that we have available, I'm not able to do justice to this report. I beg everybody to read this report and I beg government to have a very close look at the recommendations. I will make sure that I allow time for other people to speak on this report and other reports.