Wednesday, 21 September 2022

Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System

Mr RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (17:43): It is a pleasure and honour to rise for the grievance debate this evening and reflect. On behalf of Victorians I grieve for the lack of a bipartisan policy approach to the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System, the reforms that have been brought forward and the risk of a lack of a bipartisan approach undermining some of those significant recommendations and reforms for the future.

You see, after some of those valedictory contributions that have been made it is quite telling and amazing to think of the points that people reflect on in their moment of pure honesty with the Parliament and the chamber, what they sought to achieve, and a lot of those reflections go to times where they made substantial impacts on others and supported others in a range of different areas, whether it was a policy initiative or whether it was simply a constituent-based inquiry. To hear some of those reflections was really moving. And in this 59th Parliament, with everything that we have been through as a community, as Victorians—the pandemic and the challenges that we faced and now on the edge of the most substantial work of the royal commission into the prevention of mental health harm into the future—it is a really important time to reflect on what is at stake and what could happen if we walk away from those reforms. Just because someone says something at a press conference to kick the issue down the road does not mean they will not cut mental health funding if given the opportunity. I, on behalf of Victorians, would really grieve if that was to be the case.

You see, we lose 700 Victorians to suicide each and every year. Each one of those tragedies is preventable, and we have to see it as that, just like we do in our approach to the road toll and the significant trauma and harm that that brings to communities. Lifeline, today at the Victorian Parliament at their event, talked about how over 300 000 Australians reach out for help in times of need. That is 300 000 times that someone has contemplated ending their life and needed to turn to someone else for support, comfort and care. We need to make sure that the greatest focus we have in the months and years ahead is on the prevention of more deaths from mental ill health in our community.

With all the funding that was invested and all the support that was put in, the Premier and the then Minister for Mental Health acknowledged that we had a broken system and that despite the hundreds of millions of dollars that had been invested we were not getting it right—and not for the lack of effort from a range of different organisations and stakeholders and particularly the workforce, which for decades has worked so hard in the support of people with mental ill health. I recently caught up with the Health and Community Services Union, a great crew who brought to us a number of people with lived experience and workplace experience who for decades have been working against the tide in a challenged system. But it is not for the lack of love, care, respect and kindness for their fellow Victorians. They front up every day to support one another.

We realised there was a substantial challenge that we needed to confront—that challenge being a broken system that needed something like a royal commission. It was not supported in its first phase. I remember the coverage around that time; it was not supported at that time. We were attacked at that time for putting our hand up and saying, ‘We need answers not only for the years to come but for the generations to come’. We need those answers now, because every day we are losing nine people across our nation, and each and every day that we miss an opportunity is someone we cannot get back or someone we cannot support and care for.

The mental health levy was a large part of those recommendations. This was a real opportunity. We saw with the prevention of family violence recommendations how impactful they were, how well researched they were and how evidence based they were, but we could not quite get bipartisan support for a number of months. It was the real work of the former member for Northcote and Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence, Fiona Richardson—all the work that she did in that space—that really drove the Parliament to that point. That was again a really powerful moment in the last few years. So that levy was a key recommendation—like the TAC, quarantined funding and support for Victorians to make sure, in perpetuity, that we have a funding source that is certain, that grows over time and that makes sure that we are investing more.

You think about those recommendations—how powerful they were, how impactful they were—and the substantial submissions that we had. Thousands of people contributed their lived experience that underpinned all that. At that time it was described as ‘just another tax’—just flippantly, another tax at that time. I really worry about the comments that were made by those opposite at the time, and I will share them with the house because they echo across multiple policy areas that we have seen in the past. I think they should worry all Victorians who care about mental health and wellbeing: ‘If we can, we will’. They were the words about the cuts they would make. It would be over $5 billion now that they would have cut out the mental health and wellbeing support and funding. ‘If we can, we will’. You always trust that first innocent comment, not the rubbish that comes later at a press conference trying to kick the media scrutiny down the road. ‘If we can, we will’. That was evidenced by the member for Ripon, who really attacked the mental health levy in the take-note motion on the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System, talking about it multiple times, attacking it and saying:

… it is profoundly wrong to say, ‘We will fund mental health services differently to how we fund the police or health or education’. It should be the same.

Well, if it should be the same, what does that mean? That is more of the same impact that we have had in year after year after year of a broken system—more of the same, losing more Victorians. More of the same are the cuts that we would experience if the Liberal-Nationals were ever in charge of policy on mental health and wellbeing, because it is not instinctive for them to be caring and supportive. We saw that attack on paramedics in 2014, standing with them each and every day, when we literally saw the Liberal establishment give the middle finger to nurses at the time. And there is a really interesting hallmark: whenever you see those opposite now lining up for health announcements, you never see workforce. It is just shadow ministers, and that is it. You do not see workforce with them. At the announcement that was made with nurses the other day, you saw the support for the policy to make nursing courses free, because we legislated nurse-to-patient ratios. That was attacked by those opposite. That was attacked at the time. They went after our nurses, they went after our health workers and they undermined that again.

Past behaviour is normally an indication of what we might see in the future. They might front up now without the workforce behind them, because they know what happened in 2014. They know what their policy position is. And we know when we hear things about, ‘If we can, we will’, with reference to cutting the mental health and wellbeing levy, where the impacts will be in the future. That is the real challenge for those opposite. Like, what services would they take away?

We are already underway with 90 per cent of the recommendations, and we are working closely with the community stakeholders and most importantly those with the lived experiences to make the royal commission’s vision a reality. The future mental health and wellbeing system will provide people with dependable access to services when and where it will make the most difference. That is in the community. That is at the grassroots level, all the way from preventative work, which is so very important, through to the acute stage, where people are really debilitated.

But if you do not do it because you care about your fellow Victorians and it is all about bottom lines, then look at the economics of this. Our businesses and communities know that this is an investment in the future. A dollar invested in preventative mental health returns a $9 investment. It is a substantial number, and it makes economic, social policy and health policy sense to do this and support communities into the future. When you think about all the work that we can do to make sure people are safe and supported and protected for the future, the economics of it stack up—the saving of lives into the future, those lives that we would not lose, from a better system that supports them at their most critical time of need rather than have some of the cracks that people fall through and the lack of support and care that we saw tragically detailed in the royal commission.

This is the opportunity. We have got to seize the moment. But there is a lack of bipartisan will and respect for those recommendations and what is the trusted language that came instinctively from people who talked on that take-note motion—talked for hours about why they would not support such a landmark reform. But then they came out at a press conference a little while later and said, ‘No, don’t worry. We’ll trust the evidence. We’ll trust the science. You can trust us into the future’.

But we have had evidence of this previously in other policy areas, haven’t we? We have just had a couple of years of health advice constantly undermined by those opposite—from, ‘Let it rip and let it open, and let’s go without a vaccine’, all the way through to chastising the chief health officer and demonising public health officials who are literally putting in each and every day to support their fellow Victorians and the health workers who front up in PPE, covered from head to toe each and every day, sweating their guts out to support those in critical need and care. At that time those opposite were making their job harder by preaching to those that would undermine science, the empirical evidence and basic facts. That is where we have gotten to just recently.

Or there have been the climate wars. I did like the backwards and forwards with the member for Brighton, who has come to the light recently—legislate 50 per cent, go even further. I reckon the member for Brighton might have a crack. He has found his way finally into empirical evidence and research. He might be a lone voice over there, but he certainly gets on Facebook enough to try to tweet or say, ‘No, forget about the last 15 years’. I remember those days of the opposition leader, Tony Abbott, tearing up climate policy. I remember when the Greens walked away from the carbon pollution reduction scheme at that time.

Mr Hibbins interjected.

Mr RICHARDSON: There is a saying, member for Prahran: do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Hopefully the lessons of the future have held him in good stead. But we saw empirical evidence on the challenges of more unpredictable weather events torn to pieces, and we lost a decade. We have more impactful weather events—storms, floods, bushfires. We see that now traumatising our nation. The evidence was back there.

I remember working as an adviser then to the then Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, Mark Dreyfus. He and Greg Combet, the minister, and all of the Treasury team with Wayne Swan and then Julia Gillard came up with this policy, and we lost all that momentum. So when is the time that those opposite will front up in bipartisan support for empirical evidence and research that underpins the hallmarks of our communities? If we do not respect that, then what do we do? Is it just the loudest voice? Is it the minority groups that dominate certain sections of our communities and erode away their party’s base to a percentage in the mid-20s? It is time to stand up and back something that should be instinctive and believe in those measures to support communities into the future. This is evidence and research based. Our plea to the whole Parliament is to respect these recommendations into the future—the 65 interim recommendations that will underpin the health and wellbeing of generations to come.

I just go back to that really important point: if it is not about caring for fellow Victorians, including the 700 people each and every year that we lose in Victoria to preventable deaths from suicide and from a broken system that we have been given all the evidence and research on, and if it is not about the prevention space and all the work that can be done there or at the acute end when people need that support and find themselves in emergency departments absolutely debilitated, then look at the economics. The economists, business councils and industry leaders understand that a broken workforce and a broken mental health system impact on the economics of our community and lead to billions of dollars of economic harm and impact into the future. To get our workforce back to capacity when they are impacted by mental health and wellbeing issues makes economic sense. Every organisation in our community should have a mental health and wellbeing plan and a strategy that they audit and implement each and every year for the future. That is the changing, nurturing way that we need for the future at every single stage of your life.

I have seen that in the work that I have done with the former Deputy Premier on the mental health and wellbeing practitioners being rolled out across schools, primary and secondary, to lift up a culture of inclusive practice of mental health and wellbeing support. It is changing cultures in primary schools and secondary schools, and it is going to make a massive difference, because it is not about the haves and have-nots of mental health and wellbeing. We hear about the stats, but every single person in their life will be touched by mental health and wellbeing challenges, whether it is through someone they know that they love and care about, all the way through to being debilitated themselves. As a village and as a community we have a collective responsibility to care for one another.

As we exit the 59th Parliament, let us front up in the 60th in whatever make-up we have with a shared resolve to make sure in the years to come, in the 10-year agenda of the mental health and wellbeing reforms, that the rollout is impactful and has bipartisan support and that we make sure that we save Victorians into the future. There is nothing more important to do as members of Parliament than this work, and I hope that those opposite will share those values into the future, even if they are opposed to the mental health and wellbeing levy at this moment.