Thursday, 16 September 2021

Ministers statements: mental health in schools program

Mr MERLINO (Monbulk—Minister for Education, Minister for Mental Health) (14:46): I rise to update the house on how the Andrews government is supporting students during the global pandemic. But I will just take you back to before the pandemic. In our first term we more than doubled the investment in student mental health and wellbeing compared to the previous Liberal-National government, which meant that our schools were already well placed to support vulnerable students. But this has no doubt been an extraordinarily difficult 19 months, so we have given schools and students additional supports and tools that they need. Whether it is our $200 million School Mental Health Fund to provide evidence-based tools to help schools evaluate and diagnose the needs of students, our investment of $51 million and then $31 million ongoing—

Ms Kealy: On a point of order, Speaker, the minister is deliberately misleading the house. The $200 million School Mental Health Fund does not roll out until October next year, or 2023 for metropolitan schools. It does not help students today.

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Lowan will resume her seat. She knows that is not a point of order.

Mr MERLINO: Voting against the royal commission—that helps students, does it? Voting against funding mental health—does that help students?

Members interjecting.

The SPEAKER: Order! The Leader of The Nationals and the Premier!

Ms Staley: On a point of order, Speaker—a raft of points of order actually—responding to interjections is disorderly. I would ask you to ask the minister to stop. Attacking the opposition in question time is disorderly.

The SPEAKER: Order! I ask members to ensure that if they are raising a point of order, it is a genuine point of order, and I ask the minister to not attack the opposition across the table.

Mr MERLINO: Mental health practitioners in every single government secondary school and specialist school; mental health training for 1500 staff; expanding our mental health in primary schools pilot with the Murdoch institute; our $250 million tutor learning initiative, over 6400 tutors supporting our kids; putting wellbeing at the centre of our revised framework for improving student outcomes—but there are other, alternative policy approaches. There are those who think that students are separate from education. There are those who want to sack teachers. There are those who want to ban Safe Schools, a program that saves lives. There are those who deny the onsite transmission of COVID-19 occurs in schools, despite likely transmission in at least 23 schools this year. There are those who voted against sustainably funding mental health. There are those who think that investing in schools is a distraction.

Mr Guy: On a point of order, Speaker, on relevance to the house, I think the education minister’s attacking of those opposite is frankly—

Members interjecting.

The SPEAKER: Order! The Leader of the House!

Mr Guy: Maybe he has a little bit of angriness and can calm down a bit and come back to answering his question.

Members interjecting.

The SPEAKER: Order! The Minister for Education was treading a fine line, and I think he went close to attacking the opposition. The minister has been warned.

Mr MERLINO: Thanks. And there are those who have a policy approach suggesting that schools receive too much funding and class sizes should be bigger.

Ms Staley: On a point of order, Speaker, rulings from previous Speakers have held that it is out of order to attack someone and then just not use their name right at the end. You cannot have a string of attacks on somebody and leave out their name and that means that you are not attacking the opposition. It is clearly what the Minister for Education is doing. You have asked him not to attack the opposition. He went straight back to it.

Ms Allan: On the point of order, Speaker, I do not think it is within the standing orders for the opposition to take a point of order just because they are feeling a bit precious or wanting to admit guilt on a particular policy issue. I have been listening very carefully to the Deputy Premier. He is quite rightly canvassing a range of legitimate policy debates and questions before the Victorian community, and I would suggest that is entirely within the standing orders.

Ms Ryan: Further to the point of order, Speaker, I was also listening to the Deputy Premier, and I do not think it is a valid reason to attack the opposition simply because he is a policy-free zone and he has been cut out of his government’s own decisions.

The SPEAKER: Order! I have warned the minister about attacking the opposition. I do not believe when he stood up he did directly attack the opposition. The minister has been warned, and he is invited to continue.

Mr MERLINO: The Andrews government will continue to support students and reject the policies of those opposite.