Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Hansard source

I, too, would like to thank the member before Hunter not only for bringing this motion forward but also for his friendship. It's an honour to co-chair Parliamentary Friends of Mental Health. This is a place that I think all of us recognise can be a difficult environment to work in, and these relationships that we have across the aisle are important so that we look after our own mental health in this place. This doesn't mean that I'm not going to disagree with some of the Labor policies of the member for Hunter, but having that contest of ideas and doing that in a friendly way is an important part of what we do here.

As has been said by previous speakers, 3,000 lives are tragically lost every year to suicide. Approximately 75 per cent are of men, and that has touched us all. It has touched me in my electorate of Nicholls. Some very notable people took that option, and the sadness that's left behind and the impact on the community can't be overstated.

I think we've seen an increase in the challenges around mental health since the COVID pandemic. I get that it's easy to look at this stuff with hindsight, but I do think that we need to look at the way in which some states, particularly my state of Victoria, approached that particular issue in terms of lockdowns and, perhaps, the mental health issues that were not being addressed when the more physical issue of the COVID pandemic was being addressed. The Morrison government did put forward funding for 20 Medicare subsidised mental health sessions. That has been reduced to 10. I think that's a regrettable step. I've had professionals tell me that they think that that should be reinstated to 20 Medicare funded mental health sessions.

In terms of what I see in my community, what does positive mental health, particularly for men, look like? For me, there are three aspects of it. It's physical health, it's mental health and also, if I can put it this way, it's financial and purposeful health. In regard to physical health, many people might know that I've been on a mission to train with every football-netball club. I have trained with 44 clubs—half netball, half football—and you can see people's mood lift as the endorphins are released and people do this exercise together. It has a great impact on mental health because of the togetherness. We can look in particular at Victoria and the way in which the netball and the football come together. It means that the whole community comes together and issues such as domestic violence can be addressed. I've seen that very positively, particularly in the community of Yarrawonga, which has had this approach towards ending domestic violence, with both the men and the women of their community—the netball players, the football players—in the room together.

In my view, mental health is lifted by the arts. Music—or whatever your form of art is—is an uplifting experience and is very important for our mental health. If young men have a purpose, meaningful work, the ability to support themselves and their families, and a contribution to a business and to a community, that helps. The reason I mention those sorts of things is that I think that, if we can enable physical health through supporting community sport and community sport infrastructure wherever we can; if we can support mental health through the arts by supporting not just the arts that might be a bit more elitist—not that there's not a place for that—but also community arts, where committee members, whatever their level of talent, can become involved and express themselves that way; and if we can also focus on that strong economy, competitive in the world, we will have businesses like agriculture and food manufacturing in my electorate that give young men and young women that sense of purpose and that sense of hope that there's a future for them, there's earning potential, there's camaraderie with work colleagues and there's all of the positive mental health outcomes that that brings.

I thank the member for Hunter. I look forward to working with you through this term in the Parliamentary Friends of Men's Health. I'm sure we'll have a lot of fun doing it and, hopefully, will spread a good message.

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