Wednesday, 20 March 2024

Public Accounts and Estimates Committee

Report on the 2023–24 Budget Estimates

Tim RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (10:32): It is great to rise and speak on the report on the 2023–‍24 budget estimates. Normally committee reports do not get people up and about that much, but there we go. The member for Brunswick – good to have him in here today.

I want to turn my attention in the budget estimates to the mental health section of the report and for a number of reasons reflect on the report and its findings around the significant investment that has been made by the Victorian government on behalf of the mental health and wellbeing of everyone. An important milestone that we passed just this month was the third year of the final report into the royal commission’s recommendations; 65 were tabled in addition to the nine interim recommendations that were put forward. This is a landmark and transformational reform that is being led out of Victoria. Other states and territories and the Commonwealth are looking towards the experiences in Victoria and how we are rebuilding our mental health and wellbeing system. It is hard policy work, and you can see through the budget estimates in 2023–24 that it is not through a lack of investment or policy ambition from the government. But cultural change takes time, and we have invested over $6 billion in mental health and wellbeing reforms.

I want on this occasion to recognise those with lived experience who shared their stories during the royal commission’s deliberations. Thousands of people put themselves forward with their lived experience to share their understanding of the sometimes significant impact that the broken system has had on them. As Parliamentary Secretary for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention I have had the privilege of meeting with a number of families who have lived experience of poor outcomes in the mental health system and share that hope and aspiration that we will turn it around for others into the future. When you meet with someone who has lost someone close to them due to suicide, it is a harrowing moment. A lot of people would have done that as members of Parliament. We all know of someone with lived experience. We might know someone that we have, sadly, lost to mental health, and it is such a crippling ripple effect. It is 150 people that are impacted by the loss of someone to mental ill health, and we lose 770 Victorians at the moment. We need to do everything we can to turn around those outcomes, and the budget estimates detail that quite substantially. Sadly as well, if you are from a CALD community, if you are from First Nations communities or if you are in regional and rural Victoria, you are disproportionately impacted, and we need to acknowledge that a disproportionate impact needs a disproportionate response. Very soon we will be seeing some important work in that space around strategies that will be coming forward to set the course for the next years ahead in that reform journey and agenda.

I had the opportunity recently to launch the global conference for Movember at the MCG, which was a really amazing moment, but it was also a stark reminder of the challenges we have in men’s health and particularly men’s mental health. They have done so much great work in prostate health and care, and we have seen in the medical research investment just how significant the advancements have been in the health and wellbeing outcomes. You can see the medical research investment that has been made that is referenced in the budget estimates, but then you see in mental health that 71 per cent of people that we lose in Victoria are boys and young men and three out of five Victorians who we lose to suicide have not interacted with a mental health service before. So we have a really important frame here where we are investing in mental health and wellbeing – the beds, the workforce, the lived experience workforce – but then we need to really tuck in to the preventative health message.

We need people to know where to go from the moment they are impacted. That is why in the 2023–‍24 budget I was so proud to see more investment in the mental health locals. This means that in any council area or any postcode the ambition is that you will know where to turn in your time of need and that there is no wrong door to this. If you walk into the mental health local and you are under the age of 26, we will connect you in with Headspace. If you are a young parent bringing your child in, we might connect you with the infant and children centres that we are establishing as well. We are wanting to make sure that in every element and every corner of our community people know where to go and can get the help they need. That is the fundamental thing. We can have all the performance measures in all elements, but if we continue to lose more Victorians and if we continue to have a system where people do not know where to go, then we are not getting the outcomes that have been set forward. Thankfully, we are leaning full in, and you can see that from the investments that have been made, the $6 billion that has been invested. I will give a big shout-out to the Health and Community Services Union for all the work they do. The lived experience workforce and the peer workforce are doing an outstanding job, and we will turn it around for Victorians.