ADJOURNMENT

Mr HOLZBERGER (Forde) (16:48): Today is World Suicide Prevention Day, and it's also R U OK? Day. This being one of the last speeches in this place for this week, I did want to take an opportunity to reflect on our humanity and our vulnerability.

From my own experience with suicide, coming from the regional city of Broken Hill, I definitely know far too much of what goes on with suicide, both for people who actually succeed and for people who attempt and fail suicide. There are three people that I grew up with, Jezza MacDougall, Benny Dolan and Julie Carr, who are no longer with us today, because they succeeded and they took their own lives.

While that loss is something which affects me personally, it is nothing to the desolation that their family must feel about what's happened. It reminds me—when I think about Broken Hill, it only really dawned on me recently why it is that I love where I live today so much. That's because it reminds me of my hometown.

Logan and the northern Gold Coast are very much a regional city, stuck as we are between the metropolis of the Gold Coast and the metropolis of Brisbane. With that comes all of the benefits of living in a regional city—real people, hardworking working-class people that are just trying to get ahead, trying to make ends meet, salt-of-the-earth people. It comes also with all of the negatives—difficulty of accessing health services and mental health services, difficulties around poverty and disadvantage and lack of opportunity.

The other night, we had a networking event for men's mental health where we brought together people that have been actively involved in the community, that have suffered themselves but that have managed to turn that negative experience into opportunity. One of those people is somebody called Khan Sheenan, who is a remarkable guy. He is somebody that was denied all of the opportunities in life and who spent his early years—he's now about my age, but he spent his young years homeless in the streets of Beenleigh.

Khan also later in life lost his own daughter Indiana to suicide, two weeks before her 16th birthday. When you listen to Khan, Khan is very much the embodiment of what opportunity means. You will not meet somebody more intelligent or more reflective nor somebody with a greater heart than Khan.

I asked Khan, 'If you were going to give a message in 30 seconds or so in the House of Representatives, what would it be?' He said: 'Stay connected with your kids. Keep it simple, because you can get a bit lost. Just be in the present.

Stay with them. Give them space, but just remember to not let that space become distance.' Khan said to me he thinks of the Indigenous word dadirri. He said it really means 'quiet listening'—put down your phone.

But it means a bit more than quiet listening. It means deep and respectful listening. It means reflecting and contemplating.

It means listening to others, yourself and country, and it means patience before responding. We all have been touched in this place by the scourge of suicide, the scourge of attempted suicide and the scourge of mental health. Today, as we all leave this building to go to all the corners of Australia, when there's not too many more here, it's going to be lit up for World Suicide Prevention Day.

I hope that light shines not only on the building but on the scourge of mental illness. (Time expired)