Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I look back at my teenage years and my early 20s and things seemed so much simpler, and I'm sure they were. There was no internet, no Facebook, no mobile telephones and things just seemed slower. So it's little wonder, these days, that so many teenagers and young people are struggling with life. If it's not cyberbullying it's the pressure of showing how good you look on Facebook or what you have, whether you've got the latest thing. The reality is, half the people who are posting are just as miserable as the rest of us—in the nicest way possible. Five minutes on Facebook would make anyone depressed.

To compound the problem, adding coronavirus and all its uncertainty, losing jobs, the lack of jobs, not being able to travel, not being able to have your school formal—I think it's tough on our youth these days and the older generation are much too harsh, much too quick to criticise. I say to my boy, 'When I was your age, when I was 13, I had a job.' Apparently, industrial relations laws don't allow that now. But this is why it's so important to have headspace, a youth-friendly mental health service and an investment into our youth, and an investment in the last year of $111.3 million to increase the number of headspaces—and I'm very happy that one was given to Kempsey, my home town.

Just two weeks ago we had a groundbreaking ceremony held by Uncle Fred of the Dhanggati and Thangatti nations. I spoke to 23-year-old Corey Stocks, who said, 'This is one of the best things that happen to Kempsey in years.' He said it will provide a place for the Macleay Valley young people to go and give themselves a better shot at life. Before this, they had to travel to Port Macquarie or they had to travel to Coffs Harbour for the services that they needed, or they had to see a school counsellor—that presented its own problems, where you see a young person walk into an office. The new Kempsey headspace is being delivered through a $3.4 million investment, creating 10 new jobs in Kempsey, half of which will be filled by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. But headspace is only part of the solution. It has to start at home, in schools and in our communities, because invariably the young people who attend have faced trauma, and not of their doing. They 're victims of domestic violence, they 've witnessed drug and alcohol abuse, and they 're victims of sexual abuse. We have to change our way of thinking and acting. Only then will we change the system.

I offer my congratulations on the Kempsey Community Suicide Prevention Action Plan, being delivered by the Macleay Valley Workplace Learning Centre. They 've trained over 200 people within our community in suicide prevention, intervention, crisis response and bereavement training. They 've formed a successful collaboration with the Kempsey TAFE campus and have engaged well with the Macleay Valley Workplace Learning Centre staff.

The policies of the coalition government, indeed since the former Prime Minister John Howard's era, are making a difference. They 're certainly making a difference to people in my community. It's just a shame that these gains have been stymied by the incredible challenges we're facing right now. I'd like to thank this government and previous governments for their contribution to mental health. It's something that will continue. It won't change. It's not the silver bullet, but it is a support network until we can make those changes in our families, in our homes and in our schools and support our kids, who are our future.

Debate adjourned.

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