Tyron Whitten (WA, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on one of Australia's greatest and most preventable tragedies. Every year, we lose more than 2½ thousand men to suicide. That equates to one Australian man taking his own life every three hours. These are fathers, sons, brothers, grandfathers, friends, mentors and workmates—ordinary men whose lives were ended by a level of despair and hopelessness that became too much to bear. All suicides are profound tragedies for the families and communities that are left behind, yet the sheer scale of this crisis among men demands far greater attention than it currently receives.

According to the latest Bureau of Statistics data, 83 per cent of people who died by suicide were under the age of 65—lives cut tragically short—and 77 per cent of all suicide deaths were male. The largest proportion occurs amongst men aged 40 to 44, and suicide remains the leading cause of death for men aged 15 to 44, as highlighted by Professor Rice, the global director of the Movember Men's Health Institute. These numbers should be causing a national outrage. They should dominate debate in this parliament, but we hear precious little. I would like to acknowledge the great work and advocacy of organisations like Zero Suicide, who every year place shoes on the front lawn of this parliament to represent the boys and men that are lost to suicide each year. I have repeatedly called for the establishment of a dedicated office for men to address the challenges facing Australian men and boys. We even wrote a letter to the Prime Minister. To date these calls have been rejected. The government claims it has done enough through the appointment of the Special Envoy for Men's Health. While I acknowledge the honourable member's efforts in promoting men's physical health, this approach falls well short of confronting the deeper systemic and situational issues driving men to take their own lives.

When we examine the factors behind male suicide, we must look honestly at the situations these men were facing when they made the tragic decision. The New South Wales government's 2024 report Men's mental health:a focus on suicide prevention provides sobering insights. It found that 17.4 per cent of men who died by suicide had a history of self-harm, 15.6 per cent were experiencing family disruption or divorce and 13.6 per cent were having serious problems in their relationship with their spouse or partner. These are not abstract figures. They represent real men, often fathers overwhelmed by isolation, loss of identity, financial pressure and the pain of being separated from their children. As a nation, we have failed to seriously address these situational triggers. There is no comprehensive national inquiry, no royal commission and no detailed government strategy examining why men are dying by suicide at three times the rate of women. We run awareness campaigns, yet we continue to ignore the structural pressures that push so many men to the brink.

Every member in this place is receiving the same messages I am receiving. My office is flooded with accounts from men who feel they have been treated harshly, often brutally, by the family law system. They describe being effectively removed from their children's lives following separation. While relationship breakdowns are complex and the best interests of the child must always come first, many family lawyers will tell you that the current system stacks the deck against fathers and is easily gamed. The Australian Institute of Family Studies 2019 report on post-separation parenting arrangements confirms what many already know: equal shared care custody occurs in as little as nine per cent of cases. Children spend the majority of nights with their fathers in only three to eight per cent of cases, while they spend the majority of nights with their mothers in almost 50 per cent of cases.

When a father is facing the prospect of seeing his children only every second weekend or less, it is little wonder that many descend into deep despair. This is why we must look at the real solutions that have worked elsewhere. In 2018 the American state of Kentucky introduced a presumption of equal fifty-fifty shared parenting in divorce and custody cases. The results have been significant. Between 2016 and 2023, Kentucky's divorce rate declined by 25 per cent, a much steeper fall than the national United States average decline of 18 per cent. Families stayed together more often, and fathers were given hope and a meaningful role in their children's lives, rather than being pushed to the margins.

Let us honour the memory of the more than 2,500 men we lose each year by refusing to turn a blind eye any longer.