CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS

Mr HOLZBERGER (Forde) (09:43): Today is national headspace day, which gives us an opportunity to reflect on mental health in Australia. Something that I very much want to focus on during this term of government is men's mental health. Suicide in Australia is something that we don't like to talk about, but the figure is staggering.

There are nine suicides a day on average. Even more staggering is that there are 145 attempts. We don't like to talk about this, perhaps because we think we might encourage it, but, really, all that does is drive it underground.

So we need to shine a light on this. Of those numbers, something like 75 per cent are men. When we talk about men's mental health, we're not taking the focus away from women's health, but it is very often women in the community who raise men's mental health with me.

I don't want to turn this into a melancholic reflection on what is bad about mental illness and all of the problems that are out there. I want to concentrate on some of the solutions that we have at the moment. We were very lucky the other day in the electorate of Forde to receive a visit from Dan Repacholi, the Special Envoy for Men's Health.

This is the first time a position like that has ever been created at a federal level. We were able to visit the Beenleigh Men's Shed, the Pimpama Men's Shed and the Park Ridge Men's Shed. We visited the Men's Table in Tudor Park, and we visited Keystone Builders, who are working with MATES in Construction to introduce their very successful programs.

It was an opportunity to see what is being done both at a government level and at a community level. At the government level, we're investing something like $1.9 million to expand headspace services in Forde. We're setting up a Medicare mental health clinic in Forde.

It will service the northern Gold Coast, and that's on top of the one that was set up in Logan last year. This is part of a $1.1 billion spend that the Albanese government is putting in to improve mental health services in Australia. More than that, it's not just the things we can do directly to address mental health but the things we can do to address those stresses.

One of the biggest stresses has got to be the lack of housing, and that has been a complete failure over the last 30 years. That's why the Albanese government's program to build more homes, to make it easier for renters and to make it easier for people to get into a home is so important. All of these things will work together and address this scourge on men's mental health.