PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
Ms PENFOLD (Lyne) (11:01): I welcome this motion and the recognition it gives to Mental Health Month, to Australians living with mental illness and to the families, carers, clinicians and community organisations who support them. I welcome investment in mental health, but I rise with concern. My electorate of Lyne stretches from communities around Maitland, Port Stephens and Dungog through the Mid North Coast and the Manning and north to Wauchope.
Across that enormous geography, I see three layers of unmet mental health needs that governments must address. The first is the underlying level of need. Both primary health networks in my electorate have documented the problem.
Healthy North Coast describes mental health as one of the most pressing concerns raised by its community and service providers. It found 41 per cent of people who needed mental health services said that they could not access them. The Hunter, New England and Central Coast PHN has reached strikingly similar conclusions.
Its comprehensive needs assessment found that access to and retention of psychiatrists and experienced psychologists was one of the most common mental health workforce concerns across its communities, particularly in regional areas. It identified long waiting times, cost, transport, fragmented services and shortages of specialists. The PHN also found rates of mental and behavioural disorders above the national average in communities including Dungog, Maitland, MidCoast and Port Stephens.
These pressures exist alongside significant socioeconomic disadvantage, and the disadvantage matters when accessing mental health care means paying privately or travelling long distances. That brings me to the second layer—the services that simply aren't there. This motion celebrates the rollout of 92 Medicare mental health centres, but there is no Medicare mental health centre in Lyne.
It celebrates 17 Medicare mental health kids hubs for children aged up to 12. There is no kids hub in Lyne. It celebrates 30 headspace services being upgraded to headspace Plus.
We have a headspace service at Taree doing important work, but no headspace Plus service has been announced in Lyne. And despite the pressure on Manning Base Hospital, Taree still does not have a Medicare urgent care clinic. Individually, governments can explain each of those decisions.
Collectively, they paint a troubling picture. They suggest an electorate of more than 130,000 people, spread across a vast regional area, is repeatedly falling between the cracks of new Commonwealth health infrastructure. This simply is not good enough.
The third layer is perhaps the most confronting: specialist care. Manning Base Hospital has a 20-bed acute mental health unit serving the Manning and Lower Mid North Coast. Yet I'm advised by people working within the hospital that there is currently no psychiatrist on staff.
Psychiatric support is being provided through telehealth. Telehealth has an important role in regional medicine, but telehealth should supplement specialist care in regional communities, not become a substitute. This is where I worry we are seeing an abrogation of responsibility to regional Australians.
We tell people to reach out. We tell parents to seek help early. We tell communities that mental health is just as important as physical health.
But when they reach out, the service isn't there, the waiting list is too long or the psychiatrist is hundreds of kilometres away. I spoke in my first speech in this parliament about the devastating floods that struck my community. I said that while the physical scars were there for everyone to see, the mental scars were less visible.
Those scars remain. Our communities have endured floods, fires, isolation and enormous financial pressure. So I welcome the intent of this motion, but I ask the government to look again at Lyne.
Look at what both our primary health networks are telling us. Look at the map, look at the data, look at the distances people are travelling, look at the services that are missing and then work with me to fix it. I'm asking the government to sit down with me, our primary health networks, NSW Health, our hospitals, our GPs and local mental health professionals, and to develop a practical plan to close these gaps across Lyne.
Mental Health Month asks all of us to check in with one another. Well, the government should be asking the people of Lyne, 'Are you okay?' Because I'm telling you we are not. Please work with me to make sure that when someone in my community reaches out for help, that help is actually there.