Wednesday, 22 February 2023

Ministers statements: mental health services

Gabrielle WILLIAMS (Dandenong – Minister for Mental Health, Minister for Ambulance Services, Minister for Treaty and First Peoples) (14:09): I rise today to update the house on the Andrews Labor government’s commitment to improving the mental health and wellbeing of all Victorians. Earlier this month I joined the Premier, the member for Mill Park and the member for Thomastown at the newly completed state-of-the-art 30-bed acute mental health facility at Northern Hospital.

This is one of nine new facilities being delivered across the state. This facility will provide care to more than 650 people a year, and the project created and sustained around 450 jobs during construction. But that is not all. The delivery of this new facility represents only a very small portion of the total investment we are making into our mental health system – about $6 billion so far. As a part of that we are building 260 new public beds across nine infrastructure projects across the state, including of course the MacCallum mental health and wellbeing centre; Northern Hospital; Sunshine Hospital –

Natalie Suleyman: Hear, hear.

Gabrielle WILLIAMS: ‘Hear, hear’ from the member for St Albans; Royal Melbourne Hospital; Goulburn Valley hospital; Footscray Hospital – where is the member for Footscray; Melton hospital – over here; Frankston Hospital – somewhere behind me there; and Warrnambool hospital, so I expect the member for South-West Coast to be very excited about that.

Daniel Andrews: No, she’ll be bagging it, don’t worry.

Gabrielle WILLIAMS: That’s right. That also includes 24 beds delivered across the state as part of our mental health Hospital in the Home program as well as 35 beds for public mental health patients in private mental health services. These investments will mean that we will deliver a total of 260 new public health beds. That is 25 more than the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System recommended. That means of course more mental health beds and more local construction for our hardworking Victorians, but more importantly – perhaps most importantly – thousands more Victorians accessing the mental health care and treatment they need closer to home.