Wednesday, 11 May 2022

Ministers statements: mental health funding

Mr MERLINO (Monbulk—Minister for Education, Minister for Mental Health) (14:30): I rise today to update the house on the $1.3 billion investment into Victoria’s mental health system announced in last week’s budget. It is an investment in the critical workforce needs of the system, developing a pipeline of skilled mental health professionals to deliver compassionate care to Victorians, with over 1500 new jobs supported by this budget alone. That is over 100 psychiatrists, 300 to 400 psychologists, more than 400 mental health nurses and over 600 allied health professionals. That means that since the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System’s report over 2500 mental health jobs have been created in Victoria.

We are also investing more than $490 million in acute hospital-based care. In Melbourne this will open an extra 82 mental health beds at the Northern and Sunshine hospitals. In regional Victoria we are opening 15 additional acute beds in Shepparton and acquiring land and planning for a further 49 beds in Ballarat and Wangaratta.

None of this can happen if you do not fund mental health properly—a key recommendation of the royal commission. Yet there are those in our community who have opposed this funding for two years. In March they pretended to backflip and claimed they will now support the royal commission recommendation, yet when asked if they would support the cut in funding replied ‘We’d like to’. These people were at it again last week. When asked if they would cut funding and repeal the legislation they said:

What we want to do is look at what we can repeal … If we can, we will.

Backflip on backflip—he might have his back turned to me, but he will turn his back on every Victorian and cut mental health funding.