Tuesday, 2 August 2022

Bills

Mental Health and Wellbeing Bill 2022

Second reading

Debate resumed.

Ms KEALY (Lowan) (14:47): In the brief time that I have left available to me I just want to reiterate how important it is that there is a specific focus put on rebuilding Victoria’s mental health workforce. Unless we have the workforce there, people will simply not be able to get the mental health support they need when they need it. It is all well and good to create another 2500 jobs, but we have already got 6000 vacancies in the mental health sector in Victoria. We need the people to actually fill those jobs so that we can provide mental health support and not have the only avenue to getting critical support being once you finally make it into an emergency department or into a hospital bed. That is not the system that we need or want in Victoria. We must do better, and the only way to do that is to rebuild Victoria’s mental health workforce.

I would like to highlight a number of recommendations arising from the minority report in the Review of the Pandemic (Visitors to Hospitals and Care Facilities) Orders, which was recently published by the Pandemic Declaration Accountability and Oversight Committee. This provides a number of recommendations which would immediately release mental health workers into Victoria’s mental health system. For example, within this legislation finally counsellors are recognised as mental health practitioners, but we will not see this come into play until September next year. If the government had not voted against our private members bill in the Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council last year, which would have recognised counsellors as mental health practitioners, then we would have an additional 2000 counsellors being able to deliver mental health support in our schools under the Schools Mental Health Fund.

We also have a number of recommendations in relation to providing funding support for a provisional psychologist to assist to meet surge demand for mental health support. This is something that can be provided by the Andrews Labor government in the same way it is providing funding support to student nurses. We also have recommended that the Andrews Labor government immediately provide additional funded positions to ensure that the number of postgraduate psychiatrists is sufficient for all suitable candidates to train to be a psychiatrist in Victoria. We missed out on over 30 last year. People that could be training in those positions simply are not. They wanted to—they applied, they met all the criteria—but the government would not fund the places. Finally, the Andrews Labor government should immediately bring forward funding for the Schools Mental Health Fund from 2024 to meet the immediate demand for mental health support from students in metropolitan Melbourne. These are simple solutions. They are what the Liberals and Nationals have put forward. That is why we are the only people who have a plan to fix Victoria’s mental health system.

Mr RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (14:49): It is great to see you in the chair, Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to contribute to this landmark, generational bill. The Mental Health and Wellbeing Bill 2022 is some of the most important work that we will do as a Parliament, not just in the 59th Parliament but in succeeding parliaments, as we set a course to a new way of approaching mental health and wellbeing for generations to come.

There are a couple of points the member for Lowan made that I will probably reflect on during my contribution, but let us be clear here: it is the Andrews Labor government who called a royal commission. It is the Andrews Labor government who has delivered on every recommendation of this royal commission and will continue to do so into the future. It is the Andrews Labor government that did not have a bet each way on whether it would support a mental health levy. Similar to the work that has been done in road trauma where we have special charges to support people with road trauma, we will do that into the future for mental health and wellbeing support. We will quarantine that funding to make sure that into the future Victorians get the support they need. It is not about the ebbs and flows of budgets and outcomes but about supporting mental health and wellbeing into the future, because we should be targeting zero for the number of people that are lost in Victoria to mental ill health. If we look at every person that has passed away as a preventable death, the work that we do and the urgency in acquitting these recommendations, this bill, these recommendations, will save lives. The ripple impact on communities of mental ill health was well established in the royal commission. It is a devastating toll that affects families and communities for generations to come, and we need to do a lot more.

It was not through a lack of funding and effort from the Andrews Labor government; we had hundreds of millions of dollars invested in each budget up until that landmark royal commission announcement in November 2019. In fact hundreds of millions of dollars—I think it was about $700 million—in additional funding was provided by the then Minister for Mental Health, the member for Albert Park, but we were not seeing substantial changes in the outcomes. A lot of that funding was going towards important initiatives, but it was not the groundbreaking change that we needed to see to change the lives and outcomes of Victorians experiencing mental ill health. This bill is the mechanism for the implementation of all of that work done by the royal commission—the 65 recommendations that will be a guiding force for Victorian governments into the future.

I would ask the member for Lowan as the shadow minister, and indeed all coalition members, to guarantee that they will support the mental health and wellbeing levy into the future, to guarantee that they will share the Andrews Labor government’s ambitious plan in this bill—750 pages that will absolutely transform the mental health and wellbeing outcomes for Victorians—and join us on that journey with cross-party support for these initiatives to make sure that our communities have certainty into the future.

There are some important elements that we need to consider, like the challenges that we face that were played out in the royal commission. About 60 000 people in Victoria each and every day care for someone with mental ill health. That is a significant amount of care and love and support from fellow Victorians giving up their own ambitions and aspirations in that moment to care for others. It is an extraordinary number. We have a $14.2 billion economic impact from mental ill health in our community. That is really stifling the economic ambition of our state, but the social and emotional elements to that as well are that people are suffering over that time and are not able to fulfil their potential and destiny from a broken mental health system. These challenges played out quite vividly in the royal commission’s evidence, and I wanted to place on record the thanks and appreciation of all Victorians for the people who shared their stories, who were vulnerable in that time and who detailed their journey to make sure that we have the lessons for the future to change those outcomes.

What has been the journey since November 2019 when the royal commission made those recommendations? In 2020 we did not waste a moment. Following the royal commission interim report we saw substantial investment. In 2020 we saw $869 million invested in critical-demand mental health and wellbeing support as we awaited those final recommendations, such was the urgency of the Andrews Labor government in seeking to support our mental health and wellbeing system and to make those urgent changes up-front. We have seen over the last two budgets $3.8 billion to kickstart the next decade of mental health and wellbeing reforms, focused on funding for services to provide greater clinical care and community support services to Victorians in need. In the most recent Victorian budget we saw the outgoing Deputy Premier and Minister for Mental Health detail $1.3 billion in further investment, really securing the foundations of the generational reforms that will come from the Mental Health and Wellbeing Act reforms that start to really transform our mental health and wellbeing sector.

I want to place on record as well that a key focus of this year’s budget was securing additional capacity and workforce. The member for Lowan made an interesting comment about where Victoria’s mental health and wellbeing community had found itself—a broken system. But to suggest it was a disaster I think is a poor reflection on the thousands of dedicated mental health and wellbeing workforce—our nurses, our doctors, our psychologists, our psychiatrists, our counsellors—who each and every day through their efforts support people on their mental health and wellbeing journey, sometimes at the acute level in our emergency departments, in our mental health and wellbeing facilities, all the way through to preventative health and the positive frame that we have for everyone having a role to play in supporting mental health and wellbeing, either for themselves or for someone in their community, someone that they love and care about and cherish. That is a real hallmark of this sector.

As the incoming Parliamentary Secretary for Mental Health and Social Inclusion, already I have had the opportunity to speak to the mental health and wellbeing workforce as well as the Health and Community Services Union who represent workers in this sector. You get an overwhelming sense of care, compassion and kindness from this sector. They are indeed the best parts of Victoria, each and every day supporting people, sometimes at their lowest point, and they are doing long hours and a huge amount of work to support those in need. On behalf of my community and the Victorian government I really give them a shout-out. Their work and toil over decades, the efforts that they have put in and their contributions to the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System and then to consultation on this landmark legislation have contributed to a better way forward. They have been toiling away for decades in a system with administrative challenges and a lack of integration of different services, and that wraparound policy support and aspiration has been very difficult. But this is a new way forward where we can be hopeful for a future where we lower the impact and the toll of mental ill health. We look towards a more aspirational, inclusive and supportive future for Victorians led by dedicated and committed mental health and wellbeing practitioners and workforces.

There is a substantial amount of recommendations to be seen in this bill coming forward. It is a substantial journey that we are on as a community into the future. We have seen this also in education, with mental health and wellbeing practitioners being rolled out across our communities and our primary schools and secondary schools. It is a really important contribution that is made in education. It is a journey from early childhood all the way through. That is why I think the portfolio of social inclusion will be really critical in ensuring that every single Victorian at any stage is not left behind. There is a place for you in Victoria, wherever you are up to—whether you are in your early years or have the challenges that we face with loneliness and social isolation, which have been impacted substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a place for you in Victoria, and we will support you into the future as well. That is a really critical frame to social inclusion. We see right at the grassroots level with not-for-profit and community organisations, with councils and all the way through to state government services the need to increase funding and support for people in our communities going forward.

I want to finally place on record the deep appreciation of my community but also of all Victorians of the work that was done by the former Deputy Premier and Minister for Mental Health. When you read through the second-reading speech, it is something else. The passion and energy and purpose that come from those pages are really something to behold. To read that speech with the passion that has been put forward shows this government’s commitment, the Andrews Labor government’s commitment, to getting this policy setting right and to making sure it is transparent and accountable into the future. You can see the purpose, energy and will to make sure that we change lives for the future. It is a real privilege to see this bill hit this Parliament. It is probably one of the greatest features of the 59th Parliament, if not the most important element of the work that we do as parliamentarians. This will change and save lives for the future. It is great to speak to this bill, and I am glad to see that it will support my constituents in Kingston and Greater Dandenong.

Mr BATTIN (Gembrook) (14:59): I might sound like I am a bit out of breath. It is a fair run up the stairs. I would like to rise on the Mental Health and Wellbeing Bill 2022.

Mr Richardson interjected.

Mr BATTIN: I have just had some water, thank you very much, member for Mordialloc. Some of the issues I know we have been reviewing around mental health are the impact it has in my shadow portfolio of police and how Victoria Police over time have dealt with mental health issues throughout our state. First of all, I think it is really important that we put on record that the training, education and access to education and support throughout Victoria Police have improved year on year. You can go back many years to when Victoria Police struggled with how they dealt with people living with mental health issues. Now, today, we see the improvements that have happened within the staffing, within the training and even through the academy in how recruits coming through learn how to better deal with and handle people who are living with mental health issues. During my time in Victoria Police I went to many cases; probably this and domestic violence were two of the main things you were called out for in the Dandenong area. Although crime is what everyone likes to think is all that the job of Victoria Police is, there is so much more to it. It is when you go out to deal with people living with mental health issues that you truly understand the different ways and the art of communicating with people to ensure that they are comfortable and ensure that you are protecting yourself as well as protecting them, not as an offender but as effectively, almost, a patient; they are someone you want to work with.

Some of the things that need to be addressed and that we have raised recently are around the handling of people living with mental health issues—how they are transported to hospital and what happens when they get into the public health network, particularly if they are being driven or transported in a police vehicle. Police vehicles can range from vans and cars to buses et cetera. They have got a whole range of police vehicles they use for transport, but when transporting people living with mental health issues who are non-violent, who generally are in a calmer state and who just need transport because they may be a danger to themselves or they are displaying suicidal ideation or other issues to be concerned about, Victoria Police may transport them to the hospital using a police divisional van. That in itself could be something very confronting for a person living with a mental health issue. It is something that needs to be addressed. It is something that the Police Association Victoria has many concerns about—how that transport turning up to a scene or a situation where there is a person living with mental health issues can trigger them—and even more so now. We all know we have got one of the best multicultural countries in the world, and particularly here in Victoria we know how proud we are of our multiculturalism. We also have a lot of people coming from countries where the police themselves do not have the same respect in the community, are treated differently and have been the ones to persecute some of these people before they arrived here in Australia. So people’s level of respect for and understanding of Victoria Police can be vastly different. That is why when we talk about mental health it is so important, as we move forward, to talk about the education model and the many different ways to handle and deal with mental health issues. As I said, Victoria Police are very passionate about this.

The police association has been very strong in its messaging that the hours spent by Victoria Police in transport and in attending scenes with non-violent people living with mental health issues mean another police vehicle off the road, and it does put a strain on their resources. When you take to a hospital a person with mental health issues, you effectively end up in a similar situation to ambulance ramping, but obviously it is police ramping, where the person cannot be handed over directly to the hospital staff. I know the association is looking at and reviewing the process of how we hand people across and how people who are arrested and taken into custody, effectively, are to be transported to the hospital. It is under section 351 of the Mental Health Act 2014 now. It was under section 10 when I was younger. Sorry, it is under section 351 now, but it used to be section 10, in case I refer to the wrong one. It is, when they are using that power to transport someone, how long Victoria Police can then end up at the hospital that has become a real concern, because if you have got two police officers sitting there waiting to hand over a patient, again that is one less resource on the road. Victoria Police, no matter how much training they have done, are not psychologists and are not counsellors; they are Victoria Police. They do a wonderful job, but they cannot be expected to sit with someone living with a mental health issue for prolonged hours in a position where they effectively become someone who could be in a counselling position. Most who have been involved in anything in counselling will understand that one of the important aspects of counselling is you have got to have that training, the education and the understanding of who you are dealing with, and if you have got Victoria Police, who could say the wrong thing—unintentionally—or counsel in the wrong direction, it could make situations worse just in words.

I will give an example of that. When I was out on the job in about 2003 we went to a scene and a person was at the time hallucinating about seeing people from the army in the garden. I was a young constable at the time, and we looked at that and we went along with that story because we had no training. We did not know what to do. So we went along with that story as being the best way to keep them calm until someone could come and assist. We were not counsellors, so we went along with the story. I know now that that was not the best way to deal with that situation, and if we had had the training we might have done it differently then.

The legislation here also emphasises and reiterates the police, ambulance and clinical early response program, which is ensuring that we have got mental health practitioners as well as Victoria Police responding to a lot of these situations, so you do not just have that one-pronged response, you actually have the best response in the interests of the patient. And I think we have to keep reiterating that it is in the interests of a patient. Even though we have arrest powers, we have warrants, we have all these other things, it is actually still a patient when it comes to these situations when you are going down with mental health issues.

Another thing that I know Victoria Police have raised is more and more recently, with the challenges in the health system and the health crisis here in Victoria, they are being used more and more as a first responder. That is a big concern not just to the police but in the interests of the patients that they are going to see because if Victoria Police are the first responders, again it goes back to the lack of counselling, the lack of understanding of exactly how to deal with it. No matter how much training they can do, they are never going to be the best qualified to do these responses. So what we need to ensure when we are moving forward is that we have the correct people within the health sector and the mental health sector so they can respond and we have got enough staff so we do not have to send out police as first responders.

As I said before, the issue is not just for the patient themselves, where it could be a trigger point, but also, if you can imagine being a person living with a mental health illness, having a police vehicle turn up at the front of your house is something that paints another picture throughout your community if neighbours see that. We all do it unintentionally, but if you walk out of your house and there is a police car in the street parked outside someone’s house, if there are one or two police cars, you want to kind of know what is going on. Some of it is a bit selfish because we want to know if it is something that could impact us, but the other part is just curiosity. We want to know what is happening in our street when we see two or three police cars arriving at any particular scene, and if you have got someone who is non-violent, who is not a threat to the rest of the community, all that can do is change the perception among the local community that that person could be dangerous. And that is genuinely no good for the patient, because they then feel that they cannot communicate with others in their community.

You will know in this place we are very proud of what we are seeing with the mental health changes within legislation, the recommendations of the royal commission, and we have all agreed to the fact that we need to make changes throughout the entire mental health network, and I know this is the beginning of the process. I will say in closing on this that this is an exceptionally large bill, and I say to the staff and to the department staff, well done. Congratulations on actually putting together such an important document. We know these documents will always have elements of them that are not perfect as we move forward that will need to be fixed by future governments, and that is just because of the size of something like this where you are going to have those implications. But I will say, as a Parliament, it is so important that we work together to ensure that we are delivering the best outcomes in relation to patients here in Victoria in mental health. We can be and will be the lead organisations or the lead state when it comes to responding to mental health, but that comes through working in a great partnership between our mental health network and Victoria Police.

Mr McGUIRE (Broadmeadows) (15:09): Deputy Speaker, congratulations on your elevation.

I rise to speak on the Mental Health and Wellbeing Bill 2022 because this delivers the key recommendations of the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System. It is an important milestone in the 10-year mental health reform program required to give full effect to the royal commission’s vision. I want to add value to this as well, because I had the opportunity of catching up with Professor McGorry, who was the chair of the expert advisory committee for the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System. This was just in the last week when the Victorian government was launching its new strategy for health and medical research for the next 10 years. That is what we are doing.

Here is the big picture of how we are creating a better health system even in a time of pandemic, trying to take care of the issues surrounding mental health for people right throughout the community and also how we are going to build in the future. This is one of our world-leading areas. I say this to give a context. Victoria’s thriving mental health research community is solving global health challenges and advancing the Victorian economy. Victoria’s health and medical research sector is one of the state’s most significant and productive industries. Every $1 invested in the sector generates $3.90 of activity in the economy. Here is how we take care of people: we build a better system, and we drive economic activity and a benefit for the community.

This ties in because I have been pursuing how we can get multibillion-euro investment opportunities from the UK and Italy to save lives at home and abroad. This stems from my address to the Australian British Health Catalyst, ‘Creating opportunity from adversity’. That was the theme that I was prosecuting, and it has led to new opportunity. We had a great response from the Italian ministry of economic development. It has hundreds of millions of euros to invest. The leader of their biomedical sector publicly described the meeting on partnership scenarios as ‘great’, so there is an immediate connection and a willingness to collaborate with what we are doing in Victoria as Australia’s leader. That is the key thing. These proposals offer outstanding benefits for medical research, for education and for industry development at home and abroad. Monash University has the competitive advantage, with a campus in Italy and a world number one ranking for commercialising intellectual property in pharmacy, and it is one of the epicentres of Victoria’s acclaimed ecosystem. The projects remain confidential, but this is a collaboration scenario that is being discussed and pursued right now.

The second initiative I pursued is an Australian research collaboration with the UK, which has €2 billion it wants to invest in science and medical research. The problem that it has is that the European Union is blocking the UK from the world’s largest research and development investment fund, the €95 billion Horizon Europe fund. This provides a lucrative opportunity for Australia, and again, as I say, with Victoria as the beating heart of our medical research, this gives us the best chance to progress on these issues and to land a deal and a benefit for all of Australia but based predominantly in Victoria.

The third initiative has already secured access to new digital technologies to enable health breakthroughs featuring the fight against cancer, especially the so-called Australian disease, melanoma, and also how we address hospital waiting lists, which is critical, and how we use digital technology and other innovative breakthroughs on mental health. This is the result of the investment from this government over a long period of time to build these ecosystems that are of international significance. The point I am making obviously is where you have Monash University, which has a campus already in Italy, here is a connection where we can bring our best and brightest in the same way that we did with the Cancer Moonshot. We internationalised that. That was President Obama’s moonshot quest to cure cancer where he put then Vice-President Joe Biden in charge of mission control, and he came to Victoria in 2016 for the launch of our billion-dollar jewel in Australia’s medical research crown, the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre. We are doing world-leading research. We have had the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System. The rest of the world is looking at what we are doing out of Victoria as Australia’s leader. We also won the bid—highly contested throughout the country—to manufacture mRNA vaccines. This becomes another part of our competitive advantage, and one thing leads to another.

Again in looking at how sophisticated the Monash sector is, you have got the university, you have got CSIRO connected by Innovation Walk, and we are going to have the heart hospital there as well. This is how we keep driving the sector and how it has the impact on saving lives at home and abroad. The point I want to make is that that is how national governments from Italy and from the UK see the opportunity that we can provide. That is what I have tried to do—create opportunity and then deliver the results as best we can. These are key strategies that will be pursued.

The mental health bill itself sets out the foundation for the future of mental health and wellbeing services in Victoria—one where lived experience voices are at the centre and mental health professionals are supported to deliver treatment, support and care in facilities that actually help people recover. The government acknowledged that the system was broken. This is how you have a patient-centred view. You have some of the world’s leaders and best experts connected in as well. That is the model that is most likely to deliver you the best results, and that is the model that overseas countries are examining. That is the reason why you can build these much bigger partnerships and collaborations and have access to these new investments.

The situation that the UK finds itself in is that it has the €2 billion that it wants to invest, but it has now been frozen out by the European Union from the world’s largest investment in research and development, the €95 billion Horizons Europe fund. That is because of Brexit and it is because of the situation in Ireland. So here is the opportunity. We are reaching out, saying, ‘We can partner with you. If you want to invest with the best, you invest in Victoria’. That is how we have built this system, and that gives us the leadership position in medical research, not just nationally but also of international significance. I argue simply that you can look at the three biggest cities: Boston, with Harvard and MIT; London, with Imperial College and Oxbridge; and Melbourne, with the sophistication of the Parkville precinct, with all of our medical research leaders right through there. Then you reach across to the great southern hub, which is Monash University and CSIRO, and then you look at the manufacturing of vaccines, which the Italian government was incredibly interested in, and we have got the manufacturing arm in Broadmeadows with CSL. We have got the extra $1.8 billion deal, done with the former federal government, for new vaccines against influenza nearby. So there is your manufacturing hub. There will be others to come, no doubt, with the manufacturing of mRNA.

This puts into the big-picture perspective why this bill is important, why we keep driving for leadership and excellence and why we connect with people to make sure that their experiences are told, listened to and delivered on. Here is how you can build a whole new system and an ecosystem that is truly of international significance. We are not world leading in many things if you take sport out, beyond being a quarry or a beach or a mine. Medical research has the best of our intellect, and it is how we drive the bigger picture ideas and then deliver the results for people and save lives and change lives at home and abroad.

Ms VALLENCE (Evelyn) (15:20): I rise also today to speak in support of the Mental Health and Wellbeing Bill 2022. We all know and we have all said around this chamber that Victoria is experiencing a mental health crisis and that the mental health system in Victoria is broken, and it has fallen drastically into this state under the watch of the Premier and this Labor government. People need to be able to access and receive help at the time that they need it, and at the moment that is not occurring. Unfortunately people are in need. They are experiencing mental ill health and have nowhere to turn to in their time of need. And the workforce—an amazing workforce, a dedicated workforce—are exhausted. They are fatigued. We know that the recent Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System identified a number of recommendations, particularly for addressing the challenges of the mental health workforce in Victoria but also the failure of the government. This exposes the failure of the government to invest adequately and in a timely fashion to address the decline in the workforce, the challenges that they are experiencing and dealing with, the burdens that they are experiencing and the attrition.

We also know that, through the course of the COVID-19 pandemic over recent times and during the lockdowns and restrictions imposed by the Andrews Labor government, things people were experiencing were around isolation and being away from loved ones, not being able to attend funerals and pay their respects to loved ones at that time, not being able to work, some small business owners struggling with actually keeping their business afloat, family breakdowns and an increase in domestic violence. All of those things that occurred and increased during lockdowns and the restrictions really only amplified the mental health crisis in Victoria. We knew that we were experiencing mental health challenges and plummeting into a crisis before the pandemic, and the pandemic only amplified it. The policies of this government through its pandemic response only amplified that. The workforce, as I said, have done a tremendous job, particularly during the pandemic, to support communities right across Victoria, and particularly my community, experiencing a spike in mental ill health. But of course where I live on the outskirts of Melbourne and near two country areas access to services is limited.

What I would just like to point out is that while members from the Andrews Labor government in their contributions on this bill will try to claim how good they were to have established the royal commission into the broken mental health system, what they fail to say in their contributions—they fail to be transparent—is that the system became broken under their failures, mismanagement and lack of investment. And while the Labor members will also claim that the Victorian Liberals and Nationals did not support a mental health levy, they have failed to be transparent that our policy was to actually make mental health core government business and part of the budget—not funded through a tax but funded through the budget—just like the health system, just like the police system and just like the education system. Our mental health system, the workforce, the sector and those Victorians experiencing mental ill health deserve absolutely that. The Victorian Liberals fully support all recommendations of the royal commission, and there is absolutely no time to delay in addressing and fixing the problems in our mental health system crucial to the collective wellbeing of communities right across Victoria. Victorians deserve no less than for the government and their elected members of Parliament to fix this crisis that we all talk about.

This bill seeks to act on recommendations of the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System. The interim report was handed down in 2019. Five of the nine recommendations highlighted the desperate need to build the mental health workforce to ensure sufficient personnel to effectively deliver mental health services under the reformed system. That was a couple of years ago, and the bill is only coming before us today. The final report was handed down in early 2021.

While this legislation is before us today, and on behalf of the sector, I really think it is important to document that the government’s consultation with the sector has been extremely limited. I think that is very disappointing. The Victorian Liberals and Nationals have been disappointed to hear from a variety of stakeholders throughout the mental health sector that there has been a lack of consultation and a lack of transparency about the contents of the proposed legislation. What concerns me most about this is that there may be opportunities missed and expertise not utilised to ensure that this bill is the best it can be to help recover and rebuild Victoria’s mental health system.

To that end we have listened to the sector, in particular the alcohol and other drugs sector. I support our shadow minister’s constructive amendment that will ensure the inherent relationship between alcohol and other drugs support services and treatment and the mental health sector is embedded in legislation. The Victorian Liberals and Nationals amendment is strongly supported by the alcohol and other drugs and mental health sectors. It recognises the inherent relationship between alcohol, drugs and mental health issues. It ensures that that group will be in the room as part of planning and implementation of the royal commission recommendations. We call on the Andrews government to recognise that this is a constructive amendment. It is a good idea, it is backed by the sector and it will strengthen the legislation. We plead with the members of the government to not oppose this just because it is not an idea that they had, but to support it.

I am particularly interested in young Victorians and supporting their mental wellbeing and mental health challenges. They have been disproportionately impacted as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the harsh and lengthy lockdowns imposed by the Andrews Labor government. This bill establishes Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing Victoria, which goes beyond the recommendations and distinctly recognises the fact that young people have been disproportionately impacted. Young people lost the ability to go to school. Their learning was disrupted, damaging their social networks and taking away their ability to work in jobs in retail and hospitality. They have been disproportionately impacted, and the statistics are troubling around mental ill health.

At this point in time I wish to pay tribute to the many local organisations in my community, in my electorate, that have gone above and beyond to help those experiencing mental ill health, both older Victorians and our youth, in our local community. I would like to shout out particularly to those who have played a key part. The Bridge Builders youth organisation made sure that they stayed connected with the youth of Lilydale district and the Yarra Ranges, the Yarra Valley and the Dandenong Ranges. Sue Sestan and the team at Inspiro do a tremendous job and not just at Inspiro—they are always looking to connect with other organisations for a full wraparound service for those in our community. Anchor, Headspace and the Lilydale Youth Hub—Lisa, Tyrell and the team at the Lilydale Youth Hub are doing a tremendous job.

I would like to point out the Lilydale Youth Hub is extremely valued in our community. They got off the ground through the pandemic and they have helped hundreds, probably thousands, of young people through the Lilydale district, the Yarra Valley and the Dandenong Ranges. They are at risk of closure because of uncertainty around future funding. They are so valued; we do not want to lose them. The mental health and wellbeing of young Victorians in my community will be at risk if the Andrews government does not listen and does not provide essential, crucial funding to the Lilydale Youth Hub. Some of the achievements include supporting nearly 3000 sessions with people and their families just in the last year. The Andrews government needs to provide interim funding of $1.5 million to support the ongoing operations but really also a longer term plan to ensure that the Lilydale Youth Hub remains in Lilydale to the benefit of all young Victorians through Lilydale, the Yarra Valley and the Dandenong Ranges, otherwise this government will be leaving the youth in my community behind.

Ms RICHARDS (Cranbourne) (15:30): I am incredibly honoured to be able to have the opportunity to rise to speak on the Mental Health and Wellbeing Bill 2022 and reflect, in these last sitting weeks of this Parliament, that this is an incredibly important reform. To have the opportunity to be able to contribute to this debate is something that is extraordinarily important to all of us on this side and I think across the chamber as well, because this really does put our community at the centre, and the reason that many of us have actually fought so hard to be in this place is to represent our community. They say it takes a village to raise a child. Well, it has certainly taken a village to elevate this legislation and bring it to us here, so I am going to begin by making sure that at the centre of my contribution is appreciation and thanks to the many contributors to this legislation.

I would like to, straight up and at the very beginning, recognise those who have lived and living experience of mental illness—families, carers, supporters—and say how important it has been that they have opened up their hearts and provided us with the generosity of their contributions to this legislation. To have that lived experience put at the centre of a piece of legislation is something that we always aspire to. It is an aspiration that is always important to this government, but I think that the lived experience is particularly stark in this particular bill, and I wonder if there will be another place or another piece of legislation where it will be quite so strong in this Parliament. I would compare it perhaps to the legislation in response to the Royal Commission into Family Violence in that way.

I do want to thank the Minister for Mental Health and say how excited we are that the minister has taken on this important role at a time when we have so much reform and work to do, and I thank the member for Mordialloc in his role as Parliamentary Secretary for Mental Health and Social Inclusion. But I do want to say how important it has been to have the previous Minister for Mental Health, the member for Monbulk, and the work that he undertook in making sure that what we have here to debate is a reform that will change our state forever. I also want to thank the member for Albert Park. The genesis of this reform was perhaps sitting in his bailiwick when he had the role of Minister for Mental Health. I also thank the departmental officials and the minister’s office for the passion and drive, intellect and insight that have gone into this legislation. Others who I will talk a little bit more about later are members of the workforce, and many of us have had long, important and deep conversations with members of the workforce. Particularly in this context I would like to thank the Health and Community Services Union for always being generous with their time, the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, of course, and clinicians, psychiatrists and allied health professionals.

This is an incredibly significant step towards rebuilding a mental health and wellbeing system that has been broken for far too long. It represents the delivery of important recommendations of the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System—the day we announced this royal commission into mental health is one of those days I will always remember and reflect on as a proud member of this government but actually a proud member of the Labor Party and the labour movement—and introduces reforms that will lay the foundations for the transformation of the system into one that is well resourced with the best professionals and sustainable, ongoing investment. Of course that sustainable and ongoing investment is a really key part of the recommendations of the royal commission.

I am proud to be part of a government that in the first 18 months since the release of the final report has actioned 90 per cent of the royal commission’s recommendations, and that is an extraordinary achievement. This achievement is testament to the strength of the commitment to the delivery of tangible outcomes that will benefit Victorians. It will ensure that rights-based objectives and principles are embedded and the inclusion of lived experience roles are central in the highest levels of the new and existing governance and oversight entities that form the basis for this legislation.

It also introduces a new category of mental health and wellbeing professional, which includes people who perform duties in connection with the provision of mental health and wellbeing services. It means that on every level of this new system there will be a more diverse and more robust workforce than the system currently has in place. A key finding of the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System was the need for people with lived experience to be designated for this kind of position, and with the passing of this bill people with lived experience of mental illness and psychological distress, families, carers and supporters, as I said, will be at the centre of this system.

We are bringing together a new governance framework in this bill, and the new mental health and wellbeing system will be based on these principles of prevention and community wellbeing. That is a really important reminder I think we all need and an opportunity to thank those people who the member for Gembrook referred to as well—the people who often see the most acute and desperate need of people who are really very unwell. We are making sure that we have the focus on these principles of prevention. These are the areas that the royal commission, alongside Alfred Health, identified as lacking. Without a framework such as that outlined in this bill the system as it stands could not meet the needs of service users and communities.

Alongside a real lack of community and consumer leadership, there were concerns about limited public investment into mental health, and that was a feature of the royal commission. We are addressing this issue of investment with great enthusiasm. It is something I am particularly enthusiastic about, as I know those on this side of the chamber are. The 2022–23 Victorian state budget has invested $1.3 billion for brand new initiatives, which will build on last year’s record investment of $3.8 billion. These are large numbers. It is important to recognise that investment does form a foundation, but think about the lives that this will affect and the consequences of this extraordinary investment. We know that there was $490 million for acute hospital-based care, which includes mental health beds in key growth areas, something that many of us—I am thinking particularly about some of us who represent growth areas—are really conscious of, and $12 million in mental health and wellbeing support for families whose infants or children and young people are accessing acute care in regional Victoria. These are the areas of investment that are relevant and important to so many in our community that we represent, and it is important to note that these investments will save lives.

The royal commission also highlighted the need for greater investment into the mental health and wellbeing workforce. As I said, that is very much a group whose voices we have been able to ensure are very well represented. In Cranbourne we are very fortunate to have some really strong relationships that many people have with each other as well as with their schools, sporting clubs, churches, youth groups, dance troupes, peers and of course our Scouts. It is really important for me as the member for Cranbourne, as somebody who serves this community, to recognise the important role that they have played and continue to play and how grateful we are for that continued role. But as somebody who represents a diverse and multicultural community I also want to place on the record the value that organisations like Sikh Volunteers Australia and the South Sudanese-Australian Academic Society have added to our community in caring for each other. That is that sweet and optimistic peace that I often speak about. I do want to say with great optimism how grateful I am as well to our teachers and educators, who I know have really been so pleased with the enthusiasm and investment in our mental health reforms and the impact that that will have on our schools.

Those on this side of the chamber I know are incredibly proud of this reform. It seems fitting that with only a few sitting weeks left we have the opportunity to contribute. I am grateful to the current minister, the previous minister and the workforce, but really to each of our colleagues as well, for recognising that people who are experiencing mental ill health deserve to be put at the centre of our reforms. I commend the bill to the house.

Ms HALL (Footscray) (15:40): Deputy Speaker, congratulations on your election. I am very pleased to make a contribution on this landmark reform in the Mental Health and Wellbeing Bill 2022. This bill is an important milestone in the 10-year mental health reform program required to give full effect to the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System, and it delivers on a key recommendation. I think about significant moments in the 59th Parliament as we enter the last few sitting weeks of this Parliament, and two really significant events were of course the handing down of the royal commission’s report at the Royal Exhibition Building as such an extraordinary moment for us as a Parliament but also the former minister’s—the member for Monbulk’s—second reading of this bill. That was just such an extraordinary speech, setting out all of the hard work that we have to come in the years ahead as we implement the royal commission recommendations.

It is a very proud moment for our Parliament to have this bill before us. As many people have acknowledged, the culmination of this work recognises that the mental health system is currently not working for patients and their carers. It was lovely to hear the new Parliamentary Secretary for Mental Health and Social Inclusion, the member for Mordialloc, outline and reflect on some of those aspects of care that have been failing us. I congratulate the member for Mordialloc on his new role; I think he will make an amazing contribution. If there was one message to take away from the royal commission, that was it. While our understanding of mental health has come a long way over recent decades, the system simply has not kept up with these developments. This bill puts people with lived and living experience of mental illness and psychological distress, as well as their families, carers and support networks, at the centre of the mental health and wellbeing system.

I would like to use this contribution to carry on with that theme of putting people with relevant and lived experience first, and I think the best way I can articulate that is by reflecting on the experience of my friend Joe, who is one of your constituents, Deputy Speaker, and his lived experience with mental health issues and also his experience of seclusion. I will speak more about seclusion later in my contribution. I have spoken about Joe in this place before, of course with his consent and with his contribution as well. Joe lives with bipolar and has been hospitalised twice, including at Sunshine Hospital. Both times he was hospitalised he was placed in seclusion, which he described to me as being a very traumatic experience. Joe had an alcohol addiction which took him away from us, his friends and his family for some time. He overcame the addiction, and we are very proud and thankful that he did. Any one of these experiences alone would be enough to make someone want to withdraw from the system and perhaps limit their engagement and interaction with the mental health system, but not Joe. In January last year he answered a job ad to become a lived-experience peer support worker at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, part of their incredible multidisciplinary team within the psychiatric unit. He uses his lived experience to help people every single day; he validates their experiences and their feelings instead of undermining and retraumatising them. He told me that peer work is about building genuine connections with people and helping them by giving them a voice at what is usually the most traumatic and dehumanising time of their life. To take your own experience and use it to make someone else’s a little bit easier I think takes incredible strength. So I am very proud of my friend. His story is just one—one that I use when I am speaking about our reforms to the system—that speaks to the importance of having lived experience, patients and carers, at the centre. It highlights exactly why things need to change.

The bill goes above and beyond the recommendations of the royal commission. This includes the establishment of Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing Victoria. As Parliamentary Secretary for Youth, this is something I am really excited about. Throughout our consultations for the Victorian youth strategy, mental health was a key theme that we heard spoken about many times. It is one of the key challenges faced by our young people. The bill includes specific decision-making principles in relation to compulsory assessment and treatment and restrictive interventions. It provides for a reduced maximum duration of community treatment orders, from 12 months to six months, and changes to support a health-led response to mental health crises.

I am pleased to note that the bill includes a statement of recognition and acknowledgement of treaty processes. In fact it is one of the first pieces of health legislation that incorporates a statement of recognition. It acknowledges the Andrews Labor government’s commitment to Aboriginal self-determination in achieving positive mental health and wellbeing outcomes. It recognises the key role of the Aboriginal health sector in the delivery of Aboriginal mental health and wellbeing services, and it supports healing, acknowledges trauma and provides a foundation for future legislative reform to strengthen Aboriginal self-determination within mental health and wellbeing processes.

In keeping with the principle of putting people first, this bill aims to increase the uptake of safeguards such as advanced statements of preferences and nominated support persons. Any adult will be able to witness the making of these documents, not just an authorised witness. This will make it much easier for these documents to be signed and accessed and for people to be able to announce and safeguard their wishes.

As I mentioned before, a change that is really important to me, in reflecting on my friend Joe’s experience of the system, is the change related to restrictive interventions, including seclusion. These also include bodily restraint or chemical restraint. The royal commission recommended that the Victorian government act immediately to reduce the use of seclusion and restraint, with the aim of eliminating these practices within the next 10 years. The government recognises the complexity of this issue. Therefore we will set targets outside of the legislation to progress this goal while still balancing the needs of patients and the workforce.

This bill will also expand the current regulations of restrictive interventions by including the regulation of chemical restraints. Currently chemical restraints, which the bill defines as being used to control a person’s behaviour by ‘restricting their freedom of movement’, are unregulated. Once this bill is passed they will only be able to be used on a person to prevent imminent and serious harm to that person or another person.

Another important recommendation of the royal commission was for the establishment of a new independent oversight body, the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission. The commission will have a wider role than the mental health complaints commissioner. It will hold the government to account, reinvigorate system leadership, report on how the system is operating, monitor the implementation of the royal commission recommendations and handle complaints about mental health and wellbeing service delivery. Crucially, it will be able to receive complaints from anyone about health services sought and received by themselves or another person.

In conclusion, I am thrilled to be able to make a contribution to this very significant reform. I am very proud of the Andrews Labor government’s efforts to reform a system that is broken, has been broken and has failed patients. I commend the bill to the house.

Mr FOWLES (Burwood) (15:49): Deputy Speaker, what a pleasure it is to address you in those terms. Congratulations on your elevation to that very high office. I know you will do an outstanding work, so thank you in advance and thank you for your contributions when previously you have been in the chair.

The opposition are pretty fond of sort of saying that the problems in the mental health system happened on Labor’s watch: ‘They didn’t need a royal commission; they should have just fixed it’. That is a dramatic oversimplification of some of the issues in the system and is clearly just a base political attack that does not have any foundation in reality or truth—and certainly not in decency. I think it falls to those on the government side to point out not just to those opposite but to members of the community more broadly just how significant the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System was and is, just how significant the implementation of its recommendations are and why those things are so important.

Unlike others, we accept the science. We got experts involved. We had a royal commission to surface all of those things which are very, very important when you go to contemplate establishing a new system from the ground up. Others might think that they have all the answers to everything, and I know there are a bunch of sort of epidemiologists and experts in other fields amongst those opposite. They think they have got the answers to everything. We do not share that arrogant world view. We instead have said that we will get the experts to help us put together a new system, a new mental health system that will better serve the needs of Victorians. We know how significant it is. I am one of the one in five Victorians who will experience mental ill health in their lifetime. We know how significant these issues are right across the community.

In fact, even since the findings of the royal commission have been handed down we know that there have been some changes in the presentation of mental ill health in Victoria, including in particular the preponderance of young people presenting with mental illness. That is why we have actually gone beyond the recommendations of the royal commission in establishing Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing Victoria. Now, that is one of those rare organisations where the acronym is almost as hard to say as the original—YMHWV. I think it is just probably better to call it Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing Victoria. Our response in very specifically addressing mental ill health amongst young people is significant. This is not something that has been done particularly broadly in other parts of the world. This is a new way of tackling these specific issues relating to young people head on. It also reflects the fact that the focus of the Victorian Collaborative Centre for Mental Health and Wellbeing (VCCMHW) will be on adults and indeed on older adults.

Given the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on young people, the importance of young people addressing mental health concerns early in their life and early in their journey of mental ill health warrant the need for the creation of this particular agency, YMHWV—I am already tripping up on it. Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing Victoria will provide system leadership in youth mental health and wellbeing. That work will be complementary to the VCCMHW. It will work very closely with the VCCMHW, and indeed the VCCMHW will provide a board member to the board of YMHWV—got it that time—to identify and promote opportunities to increase collaborative translational research between multiple organisations, multidisciplinary experts and people with lived experience to improve the mental health and wellbeing of young people across Victoria. It is a pretty important aim—to improve the mental health and wellbeing of young people right across Victoria. But you cannot do that—you cannot have the YMHWV doing its work—if you are not undertaking serious and substantial system-wide reform, and that is exactly what this government has delivered.

Those opposite say that the fact that they have not taken up the recommendation about revenue measures to fund this is entirely defensible because it should just be accommodated within the budget. Well, it is expensive, and if you are going to on the one hand say that we should not be running deficits but on the other hand say that we should just accommodate this—in the case of what we have committed to, $3.8 billion over 10 years—within the budget, then the question has to be: what are you going to cut to fund mental health services? What is it going to be? Because you simply cannot get the sums to add up if you do not have a revenue measure without making cuts elsewhere in the health system, the education system. Is it cuts to police? Who would know? I think it is absolutely imperative that those opposite share with Victorians what their plans are—what their cuts are going to be to be able to fund the mental health system to anything like the same extent that we have.

While the royal commission was underway we invested $869 million in November 2020 to address the critical demand and to improve the mental health system, even as we were waiting for the report to come back. In fact since then we have invested more than $252 million on pandemic-specific issues. Most importantly in the 2021–22 state budget we provided $3.8 billion to kickstart the next decade of mental health reform, focusing on funding services to provide greater clinical care and community support to Victorians in need. It is funding the missing middle, because what you have at the moment is a system where you can go and see your GP; if you think you might be experiencing mental ill health, you might get a plan to visit a psychologist; if you can get in to a psychologist, great, you have that level of care; and then at the extreme end, at the acute end, you may be able to get a psychiatric bed. What you have is this enormous gap in the middle where people need more than a fortnightly psychological consult but they are not at a point of acuity where they need a bed and 24-hour care. So the missing middle is this substantial piece where we need to be able to offer people the more intensive services to address mental health crises before they become acute. So at the subacute level, but more than the sort of ‘I’m feeling a bit off’ level, there is this enormous gap, and that is exactly what the government is setting out to address. I know that the new Minister for Mental Health will do an outstanding job in this space, and I want to thank one of the ministers at the table, the Minister for Tourism, Sport and Major Events, who in his work as Parliamentary Secretary for Mental Health did some fantastic work as well.

The consultation around these changes has been extraordinary: we have listened, we have consulted, there have been hundreds of submissions. They have all fed into the process in which we have built these investments and this new mental health system architecture. Indeed on top of the $3.8 billion we invested in the financial year 2021–22 budget, we backed it in in the financial year 2022–23 with another $1.3 billion of further investment.

But of course all of that is at risk because halfway through financial year 2022–23 we have an election, and if those opposite are elected, we will see that there simply cannot be the delivery of these commitments that the Andrews Labor government has made without cuts elsewhere in the system or without cuts to these commitments, because they have refused to take up the royal commission’s recommendation to introduce a revenue measure to fund this critical expansion in public health care. That is ultimately what we are talking about. This is public health care, and the only question for Victorians at this election is: do you want mental health care to be part of public health care or do you not? We say on this side of the chamber that public health care is so important that it ought to be funded and that it ought to include mental health care. If you need a specific revenue measure to make sure that that happens, then you go about doing it. That has been the commitment of this government, and that is exactly why it will be taking these commitments to the state election in November. The investment is going to be the turning of the tide for mental health in Victoria. We are very, very proud to be delivering this investment. We are very proud to have instigated the royal commission. We are very proud to have accepted every single one of the royal commission’s recommendations and indeed to have gone further in the creation of the Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing Victoria agency, allowing them to do very specific things to support the mental health of young people.

I frankly could bang on on this topic for a very long time indeed, but I am cogent of the fact that we are about to enter the period of the grievance debate. I think somehow we have managed to synchronise the clocks beautifully here, because my 16 seconds neatly times with us approaching 4.00 pm. So without any further ado, I do commend this bill to the house, and I wish it indeed a very speedy passage.

Business interrupted under resolution of house today.