Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Minister for Sport) Share this | Hansard source

As the member for Makin said, we are running out of time, so I will try to address as many points that have been raised as I can. On the public dental benefits services in South Australia: it is the role of the state government, not the Commonwealth government, to establish public dental infrastructure. South Australia is actually quite good at using the private dental service to do what the public dental service should have, and quite a few of your dentists have made me aware of that. In terms of building infrastructure, some states have done it well—Queensland, for example. Some states have in fact relied on dollars in what is I think an easy way of channelling them into private dentists to do what really should be public dental work. No-one argues that public dental services are the preserve of state governments. So there might be some questions for your South Australian colleagues there.

Around pathology the misunderstandings continue to abound. I wanted to say that the agreements that were made between the government and Pathology Australia, representing the pathology sector, have indicated that bulk-billing will continue. We are having ongoing discussions about addressing the circumstances of pathology rents, and there is genuine agreement around the table. Much of that is on the public record.

On mental health: I know that, if he had time, the member for Dunkley would have talked further about the valuable work that his headspace does and the young people that it helps. I am glad the member for Franklin understands the allocation of scarce dollars in mental health even though she does not seem to appreciate the allocation of scarce dollars across the health portfolio generally or she would not continue to make the repetitive comments she does about Medicare. But I assure her that the purpose of Primary Health Networks is to commission the dollars to the services that provide the front-line support and to get those services where they are needed in the best possible way.

The people in the Primary Health Network do not provide services. They should not be service providers. But they are people who are very good at getting the best value out of the health dollar. Importantly, their decisions are informed by clinical committees and consumer committees, so every Primary Health Network has those networks that inform it where the dollars should go to meet the need. For example, severe youth mental health, anxiety and depression the organisations that do the best on the ground are the ones that will get the dollars, and you as consumers can be satisfied that we are getting the best possible spend. If you have one size fits all from Canberra, you have what sometimes almost seems a historical accident that certain organisations get funded and certain organisations do not. Some will say, 'Here's an organisation that is doing really good work.' It may be doing really good work and it may continue to get funded, but our job is to have the very best front-line services, particularly for young people with mental health.

The shadow minister speaks about the Fifth National Mental Health Plan and, if she looks at the history, she will see what the first four plans achieved. She will also note that a previous Labor Prime Minister said that they would make mental health a second-term priority. It is not something I say very often, Member for Franklin, because I want to be bipartisan about mental health, but I think you can be really reassured that we are not holding back when it comes to reforms in mental health. There is the $192 million that the Prime Minister allocated during the campaign because of his personal passion for suicide prevention. We are starting to work out how we can absolutely provide that to the organisations that can do the very best work in suicide prevention, in research—because we really do not know what works and what does not work—in severe psychosis and in our commitment to 10 more headspaces, all of which is being funded.

I end where I always begin with health: if you cannot fund it, you cannot deliver it.

See this speech in context