Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I wish to commend the member for Fisher, as others have done, for his motion today. He has been a wonderful leader and advocate for mental health policy in this parliament. He is a great supporter of the Thompson Institute, in his electorate, which does vital work in mental health policy, and has shared with the parliament his family's battles with eating disorders. Like me, the member for Fisher has a determination to make a real difference in mental health policy. I'm always pleased to support him and value his friendship. I should also acknowledge the excellent contribution from the member for Macarthur, the member for Forrest and others who have made speeches on this particular motion. It's indicative of the way in which this particular issue touches so many in our community and this parliament.

Today's motion gives me the opportunity to inform the House of a suicide prevention initiative that I launched in my electorate of Berowra during the winter recess. It's an initiative that I hope will eventually be rolled out right across the country. Suicide, as we know, is a national tragedy. Around eight people die by suicide every day and there have been 109 suicides in my electorate over the last 10 years. As someone bereaved by suicide, I don't want another family to go through what my family went through after my father's death, by suicide, in 1996. As co-chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Suicide Prevention, with the member for Eden-Monaro, I have placed suicide prevention at the front and centre of what I hope to achieve as a parliamentarian. I believe that building close-knit, resilient communities is a critical response to this crisis. As federal parliamentarians we have the ability to build awareness and resilience. So I have made that a goal: to make Berowra a modern suicide-safe community.

On 31 July, I hosted a Lifeline training session for more than 170 community leaders from across my electorate. Participants included representatives from sports clubs, churches, parents and citizens groups, Rotary, the Lions Club, Toastmasters, the Scouts and other civic groups in our area. It was a special and historic night as it was the first time in my electorate that our local community organisational leadership had come together, in this way, for a common cause. And it makes me particularly proud that my community has shown such an interest in suicide prevention. Lifeline delivered a training program called Dare To Ask, which focuses on learning how to recognise the potential signs that someone you know might be thinking about ending their own life.

As I said in my maiden speech, since my father's death I have reflected on the week before he died many times. Like many families, we were always a family that hugged each other. But he started giving us all these very long hugs. Like many blokes his age—like many blokes my age—my father was very proud of his parking and driving, but the week before he died he just didn't seem to care. If I'd recognised these signs and known what to do, I could have started a conversation that may have saved his life. I want Berowra to be a community—in fact, I want Australia to be a country—where more people can recognise the signs and know what to do.

Lifeline's program provides people with that skill. It teaches us how to ask people the difficult question and how to respond to someone's answer with empathy. It also emphasises the importance of prioritising self-care, as daring to ask another who's struggling can be highly confronting. We are never responsible for the decisions others make, but we can make a significant difference if we have the courage to start the conversation and the knowledge of where to access help. Lifeline's programs provide people with those skills.

I challenged the 170 community leaders who participated in the training to sign a pledge to roll out Lifeline's Accidental Counsellor program across their organisations over the next 12 months. Within days, more than 20 organisations had taken the pledge. Soon, hundreds of my constituents will be undertaking suicide prevention training. In 12 months, I intend to update the House on our progress in making Berowra a model suicide-safe community. And I want to put colleagues on notice. I will issue a challenge to all my federal MPs to mobilise their own communities to run similar suicide prevention programs. I believe that by doing this we can all make a real difference and reduce the number of deaths by suicide in our country.

I want to acknowledge the wonderful people at Lifeline Harbour to Hawkesbury—in particular, Wendy Carver, their CEO, and Cutty Felton, who delivered the program on the night. I want to commend Daniel Mezrani, who very bravely spoke on the night about his own experience of being bereaved by suicide. On the training night, Cutty shared a story. It's an old story. She told the story of a man who was walking along a beach littered with hundreds of washed-up dying starfish. The man noticed a boy on the shoreline who was throwing the starfish, one by one, back into the ocean. The man was puzzled and said to the boy: 'This beach stretches for miles. There are hundreds of starfish. You can't possibly make any difference.' The boy simply picked up a starfish, threw it back into the ocean, and said, 'I made a difference for that one.' Trying to reduce deaths by suicide is an enormous undertaking; however, as the parable of the starfish thrower reminds us, in this space we can make a difference, one person at a time.

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