Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to acknowledge the good work of my friend the member for Bowman in bringing this motion to the parliament today, and it's an issue which impacts on all Australians because, whether you have been touched personally by suicide or not, chances are you know someone who has. When I first came to this place, 10 years ago, the suicide figures were five people a day; on average it was three men and two women. It's now nine. Nine Australians a day take their lives. I think it's about six or seven men and the rest are women. Every day, for every one person that takes their life there are 150 that attempt to take their life—not week, not month, but every single day. Think about those 159 families and their friends and their colleagues.

I've been there. I have a personal connection. Suicide destroys families. It is so hard for families to recover once a suicide has taken place or suicide is attempted. There are plenty of good, well-meaning organisations that do their best to try and help families recover and help with bereavement. But we've got to look at why: why is it that it is now the leading cause of death for 15- to 40-year-olds in Australia? What is happening in this country that the leading cause of death—more so than car accidents, more so than cancer—for 15- to 40-year-olds is them taking their own lives, where they have got to a point in life where they have thought that it is not worth continuing on any further and that it is not worth putting their family through things any further? What have we done as a society that has developed this?

There are many reasons—a multitude of reasons. One I spoke about earlier in this place, just an hour or so ago, was the rise of pornography in this country. I led the Protecting the age of innocence inquiry back in 2020, and that committee received harrowing evidence from young kids who had been preyed upon by the porn industry, some as young as seven. The rise of pornography in this country has demonstrably led to rises in domestic violence levels. That is clear; it is beyond doubt. There are so many reasons: housing stress, job insecurity—so many reasons.

But the particular issue that the member for Bowman brings to this debate is the lack of accountability. We spend north of $1 billion a year on trying to address mental health, particularly around suicide, and yet we don't know what's working. We don't know what is working and we don't know what's not working. If we don't track those measurables and if we don't do that effectively in this place or in this government, how will we know what to spend more money on and how will we know what to spend less money on?

I would plead with this government to look more at its deliverables and look more at the accountability of what's working and what's not, because, if we don't learn those lessons, we're just pouring money down a black hole and more and more Australians will take their lives, and nobody wants that.

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