David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to update the Senate on the progress of the Heart2Heart Walk and give a shout-out to Vince Pannell and the team, who are now on day 31 of their 90-day walk covering 3,000 kilometres from the Lambert Centre of Australia, the heart of our country on the Northern Territory-South Australia border, to right here in Parliament House, the heart of the nation. The aim of the walk is to raise awareness around first responder mental health and wellbeing, including suicide, PTSD and premature mortality.

The logistics behind this walk are next level. The Heart2Heart planning, as the team said to me, is a daily tactical exercise in making it all work. Vince characterised the approach as like 'eating an elephant'—not doing it on the whole but just going with bite-size chunks and getting through it. Thanks to updates we receive along the way, I understand the crew are currently in Hawker, South Australia, and were generously shouted lunch at the Craddock Hotel in a sign of the generous welcome and hospitality the team has received along the way.

I hope that when they reach Canberra they will receive a similarly warm reception when presenting their petition to the government calling for a better deal for first responders on mental health. Specifically, they would like to see the recommendations from the 2019 Senate inquiry report The people behind 000: mental health of our first responders implemented. I am proud to support them in this call.