Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight I'm sharing a story from JobSeeker recipient Zach, who has firsthand experience of the harms of mutual obligations. Instead of having access to the disability support pension because of his poor mental health, Zach is forced to survive on a poverty payment and to comply with punitive mutual obligations. Zach is forced to rely on a rolling series of medical exemptions, continuously navigating a complex bureaucracy, rather than being able to access the support that he needs. Zach shared with me how painful he has found the process and how heartbreaking he has found Labor's callous inaction. This is Zach's story in his own words:

In 1949, Labor Prime Minister, Ben Chifley, spoke of a "light on the hill." A glorious aspiration that he believed could be obtained through the "betterment of mankind."

Growing up, despite my life being dogged and plagued by increasingly diminishing mental health, due to no fault of my own, I was a big believer in this strong Labor principle. A concept that actually transcends political affiliation, which could be seen as something that all Australians could strive for. To me it represented hope, hope that no matter how bad things got, there was still a "light on the hill," a reason to persevere. That my poor mental health wouldn't be a hindrance forever. Things would get better.

I am honoured to have my testimony heard in our nation's Senate chamber. It is a unique privilege. But so many who have suffered from poor mental health have never had the chance to have had their voices heard. Instead, they were given only a failed and severely underfunded system that didn't have the capacity to provide what could have been a life-saving intervention.

One such person, who our underfunded and under-staffed system couldn't save, was the love of my life, Lily.

We have changed Zach's partners name for privacy reasons. Zach continues:

Lily was a pure light in my world, the most empathetic and talented person I have ever had the privilege of knowing.

She loved musical theatre and acting. She was brilliant at it, in fact. The two of us were expecting a child, she would have been a brilliant mother. Lily was also the victim of life-long abuse and suffered from crippling mental health. All her life, just like myself, she actively sought help from our mental health services, but they simply did not have the resources necessary to lead her onto a path of recovery. In February of 2022, her pain had become unbearable. To her, death seemed preferable than continuing to seek help from a system that couldn't save her and probably didn't care to either.

For a brief moment in 2021, I saw again that "light on the hill." The chance to start a young family, a way out of the black abyss I had been living in. But now, I have no child and I have no Lily.

Because when our politicians actively choose not to do this, people like Lily are denied a chance to live out their dreams of musical theatre or be a mother. People like Lily die.

Zach wanted to share his powerful, painful account of the loss of a loved one not just to highlight how underfunded and underresourced our mental health system is but to underline how our income support system is also dangerously failing people with poor mental health. Zach said:

I am an incredibly stubborn and persistent person. I don't want to lose this fight against my own poor mental health. But I am tired. I scream out for help, putting in applications to our public systems that exist supposedly to help us recover, but it's like I'm screaming into a void where the help never comes. Our bureaucracy seemingly has other priorities. The Albanese government in fact, has removed what could be lifesaving healthcare from its national party platform.

Mental health doesn't discriminate on the basis of political affiliation or identity. Our Labor Government, in the midst of a cost of living crisis, has a chance to unite our increasingly divided nation by lifting people out of destitution, and fixing our impoverished mental health care system …

… For me and many others that 'light on the hill' feels unobtainable and for people like Lily, that light has been permanently extinguished. But it doesn't have to continue being this way.

You are absolutely right, Zach: it doesn't have to continue being this way. The Greens and I will keep on campaigning alongside you to achieve change in our mental health system and our income support system until you and the others who are suffering like you receive justice—those who are suffering too much, living in poverty while trying to survive on income support.