Cameron Caldwell (Fadden, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this motion on mental health and to make one simple point: that the government's spin and feel-good fuzz doesn't match the reality Australians are experiencing in our mental health system. I acknowledge that October was Mental Health Month, an opportunity to appropriately focus on this very important area of policy. I welcome genuine effort to support parents, children, young people and adults with their mental health. And, whilst I acknowledge the assistant minister's good intentions, sympathy is no substitute for competence. On 16 October, the National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Agreementreview was handed down by the Productivity Commission.

If you strip away the slogans in this motion today, what Labor is really asking the House to do is applaud a system that the Productivity Commission has just found is 'fragmented and out of reach for many people'. Three years after the National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Agreement was signed in 2022, the commission reported:

… services remain uncoordinated, unaffordable and difficult to navigate.

…   …   …

Key commitments in the Agreement have not been delivered and should be completed as a priority.

For example, immediately prioritise the gap impacting about 500,000 people with moderate to severe mental illness who miss out on psychosocial supports outside the NDIS. Around 3,000 Australians die by suicide each year, and that has not shifted in about a decade. The report shows outcomes are worse for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It found that four in 10 Australians delayed or skipped mental health care in 2023-24. Three in 10 Indigenous adults report a high or very high level of distress. One in seven children experienced mental illness in the last year. So, when Labor members stand up and say they are delivering more mental health services in the heart of their communities, the independent umpire is saying the national framework that they are responsible for delivering is broken and not doing the job.

Before Labor members try to rewrite history, we should set the record straight on the very services they are boasting about in this motion today. The 'Medicare mental health centres' they keep talking about are not Labor's creation at all. They are rebranded Head to Health centres funded and designed by the former coalition government. In the 2021-22 budget, the coalition invested $487.2 million over four years to roll out a national network of Head to Health centres and satellites. We welcome the fact that Labor has acknowledged that our model works. What we do not accept is Labor spending $29.9 million of taxpayers' money simply to rebadge these coalition created centres so that they can take the credit. It's been exposed that a big share of that $29 million has gone into new signage, marketing, branding and websites while the services themselves remain largely unchanged. Mental health support should never be turned into a marketing exercise. Every dollar that goes into new logos or ad campaigns is a dollar that's not going into extra sessions, more staff or new services.

There is another problem that Labor fails to recognise. These centres were called 'Head to Health' for a reason. The name was carefully chosen after consultation, to reduce stigma and make it easier, especially for men, to walk through the door and ask for help. Rebadging them as 'Medicare Mental Health Centres' might suit a political strategy, but it ignores the thinking behind the original name and risks discouraging some Australians who are already hesitant about seeking support. We know that many sector experts were not in favour of the name change, but it was made pretty clear that it wasn't up for negotiation.

While Labor has been busy changing signs, the fundamentals have gone backwards. They cut Medicare subsidised psychology sessions from 20 back to 10, against the advice of their own experts. They abolished the National Mental Health Commission. Instead of just congratulating themselves on the list of hubs, the government should be responding to the commission's very clear set of priorities, and perhaps one of the speakers to this motion will confirm whether or not the government will adopt the report's recommendations.

The coalition is proud of the foundations we laid in government: Head to Health, headspace, universal after care and suicide prevention. Only the coalition will treat this issue as a genuine priority, and we will continue to hold the Labor government to account. (Time expired)

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