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

It's a pleasure to follow my friend the member for Werriwa, and I note her good work on this committee—as I note your work on this committee as well, Deputy Speaker O'Brien. I also note the leadership of the member for Reid and the member for Dobell, as well as other members, including the member for Ryan, the member for Stirling, the member for Macquarie and the member for Barker.

This is a very important and serious report. Although I am not a member of this committee, I chair the Parliamentary Friends of Suicide Prevention and have a long interest in this issue, having been bereaved by suicide when I lost my father—a matter I spoke about in my maiden speech some years ago. You can see the amount of work that has been done on this report by the fact that it's 336 pages, and there are 44 highly considered recommendations.

One of the things the government has done recently is to put together a whole series of streams of advice on mental health and suicide prevention, of which this report is the latest. Anybody who has had a chance to read the Productivity Commission report—I know the Productivity Commission report will have been thoroughly considered by this committee—will know the way in which they tried to consider the whole environment, the whole regulatory architecture and the interplay of Commonwealth, state and non-government sectors in dealing with mental health and suicide prevention.

The most significant thing in the Productivity Commission report was the statement about universal aftercare, and I'm very pleased that the government, in its budget earlier this year, committed to providing universal aftercare. I believe that is the game changer in making a serious dent in the suicide numbers in this country. I think there is one thing the Productivity Commission did not get right. They actually understated the number of people whose lives would be saved as a result of universal aftercare. After you have a hip replacement or a knee replacement you go into rehabilitation; they don't just send you home. But in too many of Australia's states, unfortunately, after a person has been admitted to a mental health unit the practice has been to discharge them into the night, into the street. That's not appropriate. Universal aftercare provides step-down rehabilitation, constant contact for people who have suffered a mental health illness or, indeed, have attempted to take their own life.

Why this particular measure can make such a difference is that, unlike other measures in the suicide prevention area, we know the people who are most at risk of dying by suicide are people who have made a previous attempt. So, if you've made a previous attempt and we know who you are and we know where you live, we can put into place things to take care of you. We won't save every life, but with proper universal aftercare we will certainly save more lives than we are saving now, so I want to commend the government for that.

The second thing I want to note—and, in doing so, I want to draw attention to a particular part of this excellent report—is that the government has announced a $114 million grants program for organisations to engage in community suicide prevention activities, which I think is very important. I think the missing piece in what we have rolled out in terms of suicide prevention is universal suicide first aid that can be rolled out in workplaces. I will illustrate why I think workplaces are important in a moment. One of the most important things that we can do is to look out for others and to notice the signs and know what to do if we see the signs that somebody might be contemplating suicide. I note that the inquiry report talks about promoting wellbeing in the workplace and says:

There is now greater recognition 'peer based early intervention case management models can dispense with the need for professional gatekeepers' and thereby help ease the burden on the health system.

Through its own experience, MATES in Construction stated the issues seen in workplaces 'are not going to be a surprise to anyone—relationship issues for 38 per cent of those presenting, work related issues are about a quarter, family issues are about a quarter, and financial stress is about one in seven cases'

Recognising the 'fluid factors' in suicide prevention and the fact a significant number of people may not see a psychologist or other mental health professional, the Australian Association of Psychologists Inc (AAPi) spoke in support of a community focus on suicide prevention, including education in the workforce and in areas where rates of suicide may be higher.

The Chamber of Minerals and Energy of Western Australia agreed that mental health issues in society require a holistic approach, acknowledging the role employers have to play in addressing mental health as a community issue.

I want to commend the work of MATES in Construction and MATES in Mining and other organisations that are workplace based in terms of providing that suicide first aid.

I want to explain why I think workplace based suicide first aid delivered nationally is going to be such an important thing. In 2018 I challenged my community in Berowra to become a suicide-safe community. What did I do? I gathered 170 community leaders, from 170 different organisations in my community, together for a night at the local RSL club, and I had one of Lifeline's suicide prevention trainers come and talk to the community organisations and put them through what was then called a Lifeline accidental counsellor course. I then challenged those community organisations to go and roll out a similar course within their organisation, whether it was a church, a P&C, a Rotary club, a local community progress group or a scouting body. We also had the council and the hospitals, public and private, there with us. I'm pleased to say that around 20 organisations took up that offer and put on events like that. I'm also pleased to say that a new organisation, Mentoring Men, founded by Ian Westmoreland, was born as a result of that night and that other organisations, like the Hornsby Ku-Ring-Gai Community College, staged a suicide prevention day as a result of that.

But where I saw real uptake of the suicide first-aid courses was in the large employer organisations—the hospitals and the council. It made me realise that, while my original objective had been 'Let's get it done at the community level; let's get people in community groups to stage this,' actually there is a real benefit to staging suicide prevention training in the workplace in a way that is appropriate to the particular workers, the particular employees, and the particular management of that workplace. That's something, I think, that MATES in Construction and MATES in Mining do so well. There are other organisations, like Lifeline, like Wesley LifeForce, that provide similar sorts of courses. I know that staff in this place do the mental health first-aid version of a course from an organisation called Mental Health First Aid as part of the services that are offered by Ministerial and Parliamentary Services. I commend the parliament for providing those services. This shouldn't be something that's just available to people who work in this place. This should be something that is available to everyone. In my view, we can put in place structures to improve the operation of the medical side of the system and the psychological side of the system. We can do things like the increase the government has approved in the number of Medicare funded psychological counselling sessions that you can have in any one year. But the thing that will make more of a difference on the ground than anything is having more people looking at their neighbours, their friends and their family to see whether their conduct has changed and, if so, asking the difficult question: are you contemplating suicide? Having asked the question, they need to know what to do if the answer is yes.

I support an idea that's not covered in this report and I want to use this occasion to raise it publicly. I think organisations like those I've mentioned and others need to take advantage of the $114 million suicide prevention grants that are available to work together to roll out a national workplace based suicide prevention training program, so all of us can better look out for our neighbours, our friends and our colleagues. I think this would have a really significant impact on the suicide rate in this country, which, sadly, remains far too high. I want to again commend colleagues on both sides of the House for the way in which they worked to produce this very significant contribution to the public discussion and to public policy in relation to mental health and suicide prevention in this country. In my view, there is no more important social policy issue than to save the lives of our fellow citizens. There are far too many people dying by suicide in this country every single day, and I believe that these recommendations deserve serious consideration by government and other public policymakers in terms of what we can do to improve Australians' mental health and reduce the suicide rate in this country.

Debate adjourned.

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