Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to commend the efforts of the Mayor of Manningham, Councillor Michelle Kleinert, to bring headspace programs to the municipality. I had the pleasure of being at the annual mayoral ball last Friday night, and that ball was to raise funds to extend these programs into the municipality. Since headspace started, which is 11 years ago now, it has provided almost two million services to young people through a variety of programs including online and phone counselling services; over 355,000 young people have used headspace centres and eheadspace; and headspace now has 100 centres and two funded outposts across Australia. It is the desire of the Manningham Council, and the mayor in particular, to work with headspace Hawthorn—a locality nearby—to extend the services into Manningham.

Why is this important? We know that one in four young people are living with a mental health disorder; Mission Australia's youth survey in 2016 indicated that something like 25 per cent of young people have a mental health disorder. From chairing the National Disability Insurance Scheme committee in this parliament, I can say that we've had evidence from right around Australia of the prevalence of mental illness, and therefore of the need for these types of services. Suicide accounts for one-third of all deaths of young people in Australia—a truly shocking statistic, which we must continue to address.

In the 2016-17 financial year, headspace School Support has provided services for almost 1,500 schools throughout Australia and, with 7,429 occasions of service, headspace School Support has helped schools strengthen and empower their communities to manage and respond to the impact of suicide. Since it started in August 2016, the headspace Digital Work and Study Service has helped 220 young people with their work and study challenges. These are real needs in communities—not just mine, but communities right across Australia—particularly for young people and, as those data suggest, there are many young people in need of such services. The more these services can be provided throughout the whole of Australia, both in the metropolitan areas and in regional and rural Australia, the more likely we are to prevent some of the problems that could otherwise occur, and to make the lives of young people right across Australia much more fulfilling than they might have otherwise been.