Ruth Webber (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of report No. 13, the first report of the Senate Select Committee on Mental Health, A national approach to mental health: from crisis to community. As I have mentioned in the chamber before, this week is Mental Health Week and therefore an appropriate time to review the recommendations of the report. There have been a number of activities in this building to mark Mental Health Week, and I would like to note that some of those activities actually revolve around the government implementing some of the recommendations from the report.

At the outset I would like to echo the comments Senator Bartlett made about the inquiry into petrol sniffing. The select committee adopted the same non-partisan approach to addressing a very real challenge in our community—that is, the needs of those with a mental illness. All of us obviously brought the ideologies of our different political parties to the table, but we all sought to reach a consensus position and, in that way, put the challenges of mental illness in our community above party politics.

It is with some regret, then, that I note some of the happenings that have taken place in this building. Earlier in the week, with much fanfare, there was the launch of the Medicare rebate packages around access to psychological services and services from allied health professionals—a key recommendation of the Senate select committee. The Senate select committee was most concerned about expanding access for people with mental illness to the appropriate services and not restricting them to the traditional GP arranged services. We wanted people to have timely access to the most appropriate services to meet their needs. We spent quite some time discussing, not just with the Department of Health and Ageing but with a number of the key professional bodies that are around the provision of those services, the most appropriate ways to deliver them. It was a unanimous recommendation, so it was a cause of some regret that the launch of that service—the implementation of that recommendation, which was unanimously supported—was a fairly party political event.

I compare that with the conduct of the Mental Health Council of Australia and the conduct of Senator Helen Coonan, as patron of the Mental Health Council of Australia. As is usual, there was the annual breakfast, which is always hosted by Senator Coonan as patron. Every member of this chamber and those in the other place who have an interest in mental health were invited to attend. We talked about the challenges, and the parliamentary secretary for health, Mr Pyne, made much of the government’s commitment to tackling this challenge. It was held in an appropriate professional manner.

Later on that day the Mental Health Council of Australia, as is fitting for Mental Health Week, launched their report—probably the third phase; last year they launched their reports entitled Not for service: experiences of injustice and despair in mental health care in Australia and Time for service: a critical moment for mental health care in Australiaentitled Smart services: innovative models of mental health carein Australia and overseas. Again, all of us were notified of the event and invited to attend, and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health and Ageing was there. Whilst the event was very well organised, I had some concerns about some of the comments that the parliamentary secretary made.

And then we have the event held today, where the Minister for Workforce Participation, Dr Stone—a woman that I have the utmost admiration for and, as a member of the Parliamentary Group on Population and Development, I believe I have a very constructive relationship with—made another announcement. She announced the implementation of yet another recommendation of the Senate select committee’s first report, and that is the roll-out of a course called Mental Health First Aid, a course for the workplace. Our committee unanimously recommended that the Mental Health First Aid course be rolled out as far and wide as possible.

Yet again, what would have been a launch that those of us from this side of the chamber who were on the committee would have been happy to turn up to and happy to support was conducted in a very partisan way—not the usual way that Dr Stone conducts herself, so therefore I can only hazard a guess that the government has decided to play partisan politics with the delivery of mental health services in Australia. To my mind, that is a great shame.

As I have said in this place before, the community is crying out for those of us who are supposedly decision makers and opinion leaders to give mental health the priority that the community has for a very long time. Those suffering from mental illness, those in the community trying to deliver services to those with a mental illness and the families and carers that try to support those with a mental illness do not want this turned into a party-political bunfight. They want all of us in this place to work together to come up with a holistic, long-term constructive solution to address this significant challenge. It is therefore deeply upsetting that the parliamentary secretary, who prides himself on having responsibility for delivering the federal government’s commitment on mental health, chooses to act in such a partisan way.

I was at the launch of the Smart services report from the Mental Health Council of Australia, and the parliamentary secretary talked about the need for step-down facilities—again, a unanimous and key recommendation of the Senate select committee report. I have spoken extensively in this chamber about the need for step-down facilities. But the parliamentary secretary could not help but make the petty political point about the federal government recognising the need but state governments failing to deliver. He was not in any way prepared to acknowledge the commitment of the Premier of New South Wales and the New South Wales government—and in fact the leadership by the Premier of New South Wales—in addressing this challenge. He did not in any way acknowledge the 12 per cent of health funding that goes into the delivery of mental health services in my home state of Western Australia, the only state that has a percentage of funding approaching the disease burden; instead, he had to play the blame game. He played the blame game when he obviously did not understand the complexities of delivering these services.

As I have said in this place on numerous occasions, the state government of Western Australia has extensive commitments to the delivery of step-down services and extensive plans to ensure that those services are available. However, the challenge it faces is not accessing the funding or the other resources; the challenge it faces is getting local government on board to allow those services to be built and operated in a local community.

It is severely disappointing and somewhat petty, I think, for the parliamentary secretary to show his complete lack of understanding of how those services are to be delivered and to choose instead to score cheap political points rather than bring to the table the same constructive approach that the chair of the Senate select committee, Senator Allison, the deputy chair, Senator Humphries, and the rest of us brought to the table in trying to come up with a list of priorities that we thought would address the community’s needs—the delivery of services along the lines of those that were talked about yesterday by the Mental Illness Fellowship. They operate extensive services in the town of Shepparton in Victoria—in fact Shepparton is in Dr Stone’s own electorate.

Those community based facilities are to be commended. They are world class, and they certainly are a leader in this nation. They are something that we should all be proud of. They are proudly supported by the Victorian state government, and the Victorian state government works very closely and in cooperation with the Mental Illness Fellowship. So perhaps what all of us need to bring to the table are the success stories. Perhaps we need to work out in a decent human way how we can make the most of those successes and encourage other organisations and other governments of all varieties to implement those success stories and extend them to all with mental illness rather than seek to continue to score cheap political points in addressing what is the most significant health challenge faced by our community. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.