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

I present the report of the Community Affairs References Committee, The hidden toll: suicide in Australia, together with the Hansard record of proceedings and documents presented to the committee.

Ordered that the report be printed.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

Firstly, I would like to thank everybody who made submissions and gave evidence to the inquiry of the Senate Community Affairs References Committee into suicide in Australia. This was a deeply emotional and moving inquiry, and we very much appreciate the time and work people put into submissions and oral presentations. We heard many personal stories that were deeply moving. I would like to express thanks on behalf of the committee to all those people. I would also like to express thanks to the secretariat, who worked very hard on this committee and who also found it very moving and emotional.

This committee inquiry arose because, as the title of the reportThe hidden toll: suicide in Australiasuggests, there is a hidden toll of suicide in this country. It was initiated because organisations such as Suicide Prevention Australia and Lifeline Australia were deeply concerned that statistics on suicide were not being accurately reported and that the statistics were much higher than was being reported. The Australian Bureau of Statistics, the ABS, was undertaking a review of statistics which came out during our inquiry. That review showed that the statistics are indeed substantially higher than is currently reported—in fact, the number is over 2,000. The figures, unfortunately, are nearly as high as our road toll. We know there is a lot of awareness around our road toll; there is not as much awareness around the issue of suicide. So, for a start, the committee recommends that we improve the accuracy of our reporting.

We think there is a need for standardisation of coronial investigation and findings of intent—it is different throughout the country. We need a single national suicide prevention strategy to clearly link all the efforts of government and community organisations. We listened very carefully to evidence from Patrick McGorry—among others—who told us that we need to have aspirational targets for suicide reduction. So we strongly recommend that the government adopts those aspirational targets. We make recommendations about the need for stigma reduction programs, because there is still a stigma around the issue of suicide which prevents people talking about it.

We talked about the issues around mental health and suicide. We received a lot of evidence around mental health. We heard about many positive programs. We recommend in the report that more money be allocated to mental health around Australia. We believe it is very important that successful programs currently operating around Australia continue to be funded and we recommend that funding for suicide prevention and for support of the bereaved is at least doubled. We have said ‘at least doubled’ because that was what was recommended by some witnesses—some recommended much higher. We think it should be at least doubled, and then current programs and strategies can be reviewed. We believe more resources are needed to address the issue of suicide. 

It is also very important that more training is available for those working on the front-lines in our communities—ambulance officers, police officers, nurses, doctors—to help them address the issue of suicide. Two of the recommendations that I am particularly strong on is the need to put people who have expertise in mental health and suicide in every emergency department in this country, because—would you believe?—that does not happen. Everybody that comes out of emergency or a stay in hospital needs to have a case management plan and a support person. I also strongly support the recommendation for ‘graded accommodation’, or step-up and step-down facilities, for people who are recovering from a suicide attempt or those who have suicidal ideation. It is important that those facilities are provided.

I will stop there because I know others want to speak and we are tight for time. But I very strongly recommend this report to the government and ask them to very seriously consider the recommendations from this inquiry. There is a hidden toll in this country, and we need to do something about it.

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

One of the great joys of being a member of the Senate Community Affairs References Committee is the amount of time we can devote to some of the most important issues that face Australia, and suicide prevention is by no means unusual in that sense. This has been an extraordinarily educative and at times harrowing process. Certainly it can only increase the enormous respect one has for people who live with bereavement as a result of suicide and for people who live with a mental illness that makes them consider suicide all the time.

I would like to concentrate on a couple of the recommendations. The first recommendation makes the point very strongly that the economic cost of suicide is minute compared to the social and emotional cost of suicide. But as a society we tend to notice the things that cost money. Current assessments from organisations like Lifeline and from people like Professor Patrick McGorry are that suicide costs the Australian economy at least $30 billion a year—which makes it well worth trying to reduce that rate just in economic terms. The flow-on social and economic benefits can only be wonderful for the country. We are suggesting that the Productivity Commission or an organisation such as that should look at the economic assessment of suicide and attempted suicide in Australia.

One thing I did not know until we did this inquiry was how large a problem suicide is in Australia. Professor Patrick McGorry, at a different launch this morning, made the point that it is the largest killer of people in the prime of their lives in Australia. In terms of lives lost every year in Australia, it is 40 per cent higher than the road toll. However, we obviously do much, much less about it than we do about the road toll.

As a former journalist, the other recommendation I would particularly like to focus on is recommendation 20, which is about how we go about reporting suicide and how we develop awareness of suicide. It has long been the view in Australia that reporting suicide has the potential to lead to copycat suicides, but the point is made that without strong public awareness campaigns and strong mainstream media reporting of the road toll very little would have happened to reduce the number of deaths on the roads. We have been highly successful in reducing the road toll with strong media awareness campaigns on the topic. It would be good to see the research done so that we can be confident that the guidelines that currently exist under Mindframe can be reviewed and adapted so that we do get public attention being paid to what is currently the greatest killer in Australia. On that same basis we recommend that, at least biannually, the national figures on suicide should be published. Again, stigma has prevented this from being the case. It needs to be brought out into the open now.

One fact that I did find disturbing, and Senator Siewert mentioned that we really have some problems in recording suicide and even assessing what sometimes constitutes suicide, is that we basically do not recognise the fact that people under 15 commit suicide. Those figures are not even collected as part of the statistics. There needs to be public conversation about what is a terrible tragedy and we certainly need to do something about the issue. I would very much hope that this report is widely read and accepted and that it leads to real changes in the way we deal with the question of suicide prevention.

Judith Adams (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to concur with my colleagues on the importance of this particular inquiry. It attracted 258 submissions, we held 12 public hearings throughout Australia, and we have come up with 42 recommendations. Each of those recommendations is very, very important, and I would like to speak about some of them.

There should be an increase in the funding and the number of projects for men. Unfortunately men, unlike women, are very loath to come forward and say they have a problem. Coming from a rural area, I know that there is a cohort of older farmers who really do have these problems, and in many rural areas there is no access to appropriate services and often no GP. Going to the local mental health service, which is often the only place for them to go to, is seen as a stigma. We do have Lifeline, and while we were in Hobart we were very fortunate to observe some of the volunteers working for that organisation. I think Lifeline should be commended on the work they do.

We feel that a separate strategy should be developed for Indigenous communities. In my own home state of Western Australia, not very far from where I live, we had 12 suicides of Indigenous young men over the course of four months. It was absolutely tragic. One suicide is tragic, but to have 12 in a community was very, very sad. It is great, though, to see the support that that community now has in the shape of the services that have been provided there and great also to see the way the community has pulled together to deal with the issue. I do hope they are able to go forward.

We feel that child suicides should be officially reported and that support group assistance should be developed for those who attempt suicide or self-harm. Often those who self-harm go to an emergency department but, because they have self-harmed, they are treated with complete disdain and are not given the service they should get. Quite a number of our witnesses gave us evidence to this effect.

Front-line emergency staff have been mentioned too, and I think they need terrific support. The town that had the 12 suicides was only small, and those emergency staff had to deal with one suicide after the other. On such occasions those people need so much support. Front-line emergency service people must be given debriefing and must be trained to deal with what they have to deal with.

In relation to mental health services, I feel that we need to put so much more into the area. Not every suicide is completed by someone who has a mental health problem, but most are. Somehow we have to pick up these people before they self-harm. Another recommendation is that additional suicide awareness and risk assessment training must be provided to the gatekeepers in regional, rural and remote areas. The cities do have services but, coming from a rural area, as I have said, I know that services are very few and far between.

Another group of people, the LGBTI people, must be recognised in suicide prevention strategies and policies, and targeted programs need to be developed for them. They seem to be left out and they are often very badly affected. We also feel that a national suicide bereavement strategy should be developed. The person who has completed a suicide is not there to deal with the tragic consequences, and bereaved families really have not been given the assistance they probably deserve. Once again, I must say that in rural areas these services are not readily available. There are some very, very good organisations that are doing great work, but there are just too few of them.

We really feel that we should have backup and support for recently released prisoners because often they have had problems. They come out of the prison and then do not have any backup services. So, all in all, I would like to thank the secretariat. With 12 public hearings, they had had to work very hard, and I think that they have done a wonderful job to produce the report for the committee. I also thank all those witnesses who have come before us in public hearings. It is not easy to come and sit before a Senate committee and tell about your personal life. I really commend all those who did that, because they certainly helped to give us the evidence in this report to go forward and to ask the government to support this problem.

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

I want very briefly to add something to the comments that have been made by the other members of the committee. This inquiry on suicide cannot be something that is left to sit on shelves. We have over 40 recommendations, which can be a little bit confronting for people, but the message from all of us who took part in this inquiry was that these recommendations come from the heart. What we were expecting from them was a greater awareness and some real action to come from the process that we were lucky enough to share in.

As is usual with the Senate Community Affairs References Committee, the number of people who came to tell us their personal experiences and to share in an act of hope and positive solution making allows us to move forward so that there will be some concerted effort in this country around the very important issue of suicide. There is not time to talk too much about it now, and I am sure that many people will continue to talk about this inquiry and the opportunities we have in the future, but I very much wanted to commend again the people who came and shared with us. When you see the inquiry—and I really hope that many people will get the chance to read it—you will see the depth of compassion and knowledge that people have chosen to give to our committee and then expected us to do something with. It is not just storytelling; it is an expectation that, by doing this quite difficult action—coming and talking with our committee—there will be a resultant action taken by the government. As have many people, I commend the work of the secretariat. I think it is most important that we move forward and make a concerted effort in this country to face up to the issues that have affected so many people and so many families so that these issues are not hidden and avoided. We can work together to make a better response in this country. With that, I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.