Rowan Holzberger (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd like to start with a light hearted observation about what I've got between my nose and my lips at the moment. I think we're about 24 days into Movember now, and this is what I've got! But, on a serious note, it is there to bring attention to men's health and, especially, men's mental health. My experiences are very much informed by where I grew up—Broken Hill, in outback New South Wales. It's a mining town—mining city, really—of about 25,000 people. It's a working-class environment to its bootstraps. It's tough, and it's really there that my early experiences of mental health were born. Even though Broken Hill is 1,400 kilometres away, according to demographics it's not much different to the area that I represent now—tough, working-class people and tough, working-class men.

There are two friends that I remember very much growing up with, and I'll use their first names, because I haven't talked to their families for a while. Jezza and Benny were the rough, tough kids. Benny was probably one of the people that really sparked my interest in politics in many ways. When we had a school strike, Benny was the one who was up there encouraging me—not that he cared about the politics behind it all. He just wanted to have a day off! But he had that real, natural leadership, that natural gravitas, that carried people with him. Jezza was slightly different. He was really quiet and just a lovely bloke. And neither of them are here anymore—my age.

People say we shouldn't talk about suicide, but I think the only thing worse than talking about suicide is not talking about it. And why the focus on men? I think it's because 75 per cent of suicide victims are men. If we can improve the opportunities for people to access mental health care for men, we will improve those opportunities for everybody. In fact, maybe it's typical of blokes that the people who most often bring mental health support for men up with me are women—the mums, the sisters, the daughters and the wives.

In the last 20 seconds that I have, I will say that there are lots of positive things we can do. Look at MATES in Construction. In 2007 or so, when they started, the suicide rate of men in construction was way over the national average. Today it's at about the average, and it's going down. So there are things that can be done. There are some timely interventions that can be made. I think the Albanese Labor government's investment in mental health care, particularly in the Medicare mental health clinics, is really going to hold us in good stead.