Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I go back to the motion to take note of the response by Minister Butler on suicide agreed to on 13 September. I thank the chamber for leave to speak briefly in relation to the minister's response. Following on from the theme of Senator Siewert in her previous contribution about the lack of detail, I too would like to focus on some points in that area and on where Minister Butler has failed to provide necessary detail, particularly in relation to suicide prevention and what is being rolled out in this area. I remind the Senate that this motion was agreed to by the chamber, that it was about suicide and that it marked the important R U OK? Day, which was on 13 September 2012.

Importantly, that motion set out some vital statistics in relation to suicide and I would like to repeat those for the chamber. Today, six Australians will die through suicide and more than 200 will make a suicide attempt. One in four deaths among young people occur through suicide. Suicide is the leading cause of death for our young people aged between 15 and 24. Suicide is the biggest killer of men under 44 and women under 34. Suicide currently ranks 15th in the overall causes of death in Australia.

The motion asked people to regularly check with each other—friends, colleagues, family—'Are you okay?', to start a conversation that could change a life. Basically the motion called upon the government to increase efforts to raise awareness about the problems and complexity of suicide, especially amongst our young people. The minister, in his very pithy response, simply referred to the National Mental Health Reform package, which he says will see a significant investment. I question that because of the very slow pace at which the rollout of this package is happening. I am not the only one being critical; it is very clear in the mental health community there is a lot of criticism of Minister Butler and his failure to roll out important programs, especially in the area of suicide prevention, and I will come to that.

This package, which was in the 2011-12 budget, came at the end of some very serious pressure on this government to actually take action in the mental health area. I remind the Senate that this came after two motions were passed—in this place and the other place, in October and November of 2010, respectively—where the coalition, with the support of Independents both in this place and the other place, were successful in getting these motions up, which, I remind the Senate, those opposite and their Greens alliance partners voted against. After sustained pressure by the mental health sector and efforts by the coalition to support that pressure, Labor was finally shamed into doing something on mental health in the 2011-12 budget.

As I have repeatedly said, and as is now being said by others, it is very clear that this was simply a smoke and mirrors package because despite the headline figure, which certainly looked impressive, the net spend over the forward estimates was only $583 million. Of course, once you take out $581 million from GP mental health services and allied health treatment sessions from the Better Access program it is very clear that this was simply a smoke and mirrors operation. What was worse was that these cuts were made without proper consultation with practitioners and caused enormous concern throughout the community, especially among mental health practitioners. Then, of course, we saw that in that first year—2011-12—there was only $47 million in new funding and almost $63 million of cuts from existing programs. What was very clear was that the government failed to properly explain how many of the 'new initiatives' were actually new money rather than simply recycled money, reannouncements and reorganising of the deck chairs.

Like just about everything that this government has done, it has the brush of the never-never about it, tainted with that possibility that things may happen into the future. Why do I say that? I say that because it is all tied up with a 10-year road map on mental health which, again, has been heavily criticised. One in five Australians need help now, Minister Butler. They do not need to wait 10 years for a timetable that this government cannot finalise and certainly has not yet been finalised despite all the talk that has occurred. Let me remind the Senate of some other important statistics. I mentioned earlier the six Australians committing suicide every day, but this is only the official statistic. It does not reflect the statistic that was referred to in the last National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing in 2007, which talked about the more than 360,000 people who had contemplated suicide that year.

So, every year we have 360,000 people who contemplate suicide. That statistic then goes down for people who actually take some action towards suicide, and ultimately we come to that 2,000-2,500 official figure of people who suicide. But, as practitioners in this area will tell you, that 2,000-2,500 figure is not reflective of the actual number of suicides and does not take into account many of the single-person fatalities that happen on country roads late in the evening and a range of other deaths in our community, which, sadly, get reported as accidental deaths but in reality are suicides. Indeed, I reiterate that it is vitally important that all governments work to ensure that a mechanism is put into place so that the actual figures and the proper statistics are reflected in the work that we do, so that we deal with the actual figure, not just the official figure, which we know is not really reflective of what is happening out there.

As I said, one in five Australians need help now, not to wait for a 10-year timetable. For those people suffering a mental illness today, for their families, their friends and their carers, regrettably all we see from this government is another hallmark smoke and mirrors trick. Let me take a moment to reflect on suicide prevention. I remind the Senate that in 2010 the big headline figure was about $277 million to be spent on suicide prevention, supposedly over the forward estimates. But in that first year, in an area where we know that moneys need to be rolled out, and we know they need to be rolled out quickly, unfortunately we saw only about $7 million of that being rolled out. Indeed, not even the amount that had been budgeted for in that year—$9 million—was spent. Naturally, this has drawn criticism from people like Professor John Mendoza and others in the mental health space who are understandably and justifiably critical of this government's failure to take definite action in this area. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted.