Wednesday, 15 October 2025

 Emma KEALY (Lowan) (11:00): I rise today to speak on the Mental Health Legislation Amendment Bill 2025. It is, I think, for everybody in this chamber a difficult conversation at times to have when we are speaking about mental health, mental ill health and diagnosable mental illnesses, because we all know – whether it is in our friends and family groups, whether it is through our workplace or whether it is through seeing it second hand – the impact when mental health is not managed well, when there is not access to services and when appropriate supports are not in place, particularly through some of the more challenging times in people’s lives when we have the terrible situation where we are going to funerals of those who have lost hope, who have taken their own lives, when you are attending a funeral and speaking to the family members and those around individuals who have taken their own lives. It is a profound discussion where people are wondering ‘What could I have done differently?’

Mental health impacts everybody, whether it is your own mental health or that of those around you. That is something that has been a source of great discussion and important debate within this chamber certainly over my time, over the last 11 years. It peaked in about 2018 when there was bipartisan support for a royal commission into Victoria’s public mental health system in recognition of the fact that Victoria’s public mental health system was crumbling. There was not a politician who would not admit to that, who would not agree that we needed to do something differently. It was an election commitment. It then became a reality, and it was quite a significant journey for people living with mental illness and ill health, for family members, for clinicians and other supporting practitioners, for everybody in the community. To read through even a snippet of the royal commission’s recommendations gives you great insight into not just how important it is that we get a mental health system in place in Victoria that Victorians need but also the need to look at implementing a better mental health service that gives Victorians the mental health supports that they deserve.

We all understand that when people are starting to go down that journey, whether it is a full diagnosis or whether it is situational depression or anxiety, the earlier that you can provide supports and interventions, the stronger the outcomes and the better the outcomes for the individuals. That is particularly so for young people. However, we are now a number of years down the track after the royal commission delivered its final report. Just by way of a timeline, the royal commission released its interim report in October 2019. Those recommendations went to the heart of what we need to see in Victoria and put in place in order to rebuild Victoria’s mental health system. The majority of those recommendations in the interim report focused on building a mental health workforce that would be there, prepared, ready, trained and able to implement the recommendations of the royal commission. That was October 2019.

We then saw the full final report handed down in February 2021. From that time we have seen an erosion of what the aspirations were, what people living with mental illness, their families, support networks and clinicians were promised and what is actually available in the community. For me, somebody who enjoys dealing with stakeholders at many levels, it has been disappointing to see the journey of hope and excitement – looking forward to Victoria again being the state that has a reputation not just in Australia but internationally of having one of the best, if not the best, public mental health system – perhaps somewhat erode over time. There have been some questions, but everybody has still had faith that Labor would deliver on its promises and implement all recommendations of the royal commission in full and on time.

Unfortunately, in the discussions I am having – and this would have been particularly increasing over the past 12 to 18 months and escalated after this year’s budget – people have lost hope. They see that this was nothing more than an election stunt. Everything that was promised has not been delivered, apart from the mental health tax – let us make sure that is in there – and they do not know where the money is going.

But the key thing is we have got people who are behind this. We have the highest suicide rate on Victoria’s record. We have the longest waitlists or number of people who are presenting to emergency departments with mental health related issues that we have seen. It is getting harder and harder to access mental health supports. We have seen that there is not progress towards doubling of Victoria’s mental health workforce by 2031; in fact what we are hearing is that it is harder and harder for employers to attract and retain mental health workers no matter what their qualification or experience. People are looking to move interstate and working in other states where they see that it is a more positive area to work, having a government actually focused on providing better care for constituents to make sure that they can access the mental health support they need when and where they need it.

But there are also a number of people – whether they are mental health workers, those with lived experience and living experience or the carers of people with mental ill health or illness – who feel that by sharing their story during the royal commission there was an emotional commitment and that what they said had been heard. They feel enormously let down and aggrieved, and they have lost faith with governments that the mental health system in Victoria will ever be fixed. It set people up to fail, when it was held in such a spectacular way. We all went down to the exhibition building, which was unheard of, to see the final report handed down in front of the entire sector and people who contributed to the report in many ways. We are now down at the point where the funding is being cut. Promises have been broken. We still do not know where the money is going. There is no indication of how and when these royal commission recommendations will get back on track.

I believe that no matter what the politics of this are and what side you are on, as parliamentary representatives who live and breathe the impacts of a failing mental health system each and every day – and we hear this through the constituents that we serve – we have an obligation to ensure that Victorians can access mental health support when and where they need it, and I think that there should be support from everybody in the chamber. We need to see more, we need to do more and we need action on the ground, but more importantly we need more workers, we need better access to services in all ways and we need to get back on track the royal commission’s recommendations as a matter of priority, because I do not want to attend another funeral of somebody locally who has taken their own life, I do not want to see a situation where hospitals are absolutely overwhelmed because people cannot access mental health support in the community early on and have then got to the point of trauma where they had to present to an emergency department and I do not want police resources to be taken up having to support people in mental health crisis or with the impacts of poorly managed mental health crises. Nobody wants to see that. Hopefully we can all make a commitment to do better and get the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System’s recommendations back on track.

This piece of legislation goes into two main areas, with some other matters also being addressed. The first matter is around transitioning the responsibilities of the Forensic Leave Panel to the Mental Health Tribunal. This has been instigated predominantly by the judiciary, whether it is the Supreme Court or the Victorian Law Reform Commission, and it is around the obligations and the burdens upon the judiciary of attending and their appointment to that panel. We know that the justice system is completely overwhelmed at this point in time, and therefore the Supreme Court has requested that there be an amendment to the appointments to the Forensic Leave Panel so that, rather than the judiciary being appointed to the panel, it would be a legal representative. We asked on notice what that would look like, and I do thank the Minister for Mental Health’s office for providing responses to those questions on notice that we received late yesterday. It is understood that in the new forensic division of the Mental Health Tribunal the presiding member of the tribunal will be a legal member who has been an Australian lawyer for a minimum of five years. The members would be supported in their role with extensive training and operational support and guidance.

The understanding is that another reason the Forensic Leave Panel has been disbanded, and those responsibilities through this legislation will be referred to the Mental Health Tribunal, is because the panel at this point in time is completely overwhelmed. There have been 226 applications representing 113 patients or residents over the past year, which constituted over 41 hearings. This is quite an obligation for the panel to adhere to, and so this is part of the burden of how this is managed in an appropriate way. The Forensic Leave Panel and forensic leave are seen as important steps towards rehabilitation for patients and residents, particularly patients who are in Forensicare facilities, including Thomas Embling Hospital. It is important that the balance is right, that the supports are right, and that this is done in a way that is appropriate and safe and supports the rehabilitation of those patients and residents within these facilities. However, we also need to ensure that the community is safe.

Unfortunately, there have been a number of situations, and particularly over the last week we have been able to read about this in the news, where patients and/or residents on leave, as approved and assessed by the Forensic Leave Panel, have not adhered to the conditions of their leave. On Saturday we saw a report in the Age by Rachel Eddie and Grant McArthur that drugs and violence are rife in psychiatric prison hospitals. It is of deep concern that we have people who are on leave who appear to be taking drugs in the community and are not being tested upon return to these psychiatric prisons. Furthermore, within this report it indicates that illicit drugs were on campus, which triggered an acute male patient in the hospital’s A block to set fire to his room while under the influence of illicit substances. There is an indication that that resident had not been on leave, and that of course means that drugs are being smuggled back into a psychiatric prison for use by other patients and residents. This is unsafe for patients. It is inappropriate to the highest degree. But I also feel for the staff who work in these organisations, and this was highlighted in the royal commission’s findings. Within Forensicare the staff have some of the highest, if not the highest, rates of workplace violence of any organisation across the state. It is a difficult role to work in these environments, and I commend the workers who are doing their best to support people with a diagnosable mental illness who are either a patient or a resident prescribed to be at Thomas Embling or other psychiatric support services such as prisons.

They are doing an incredible job. What they do is appreciated not just by our side of the Parliament but I am sure by everybody. It is a dangerous job. But they need to have supports from government to ensure that they are as safe as they can possibly be. It is clear there are insufficient supports to Thomas Embling Hospital, that the government is not providing support to staff in that facility, but it also is not providing support to the patients and residents within it. When you read that there are people on leave who are, in the inner-northern Melbourne suburbs, wielding a hammer, going on a crime spree, putting the people of Victoria at risk, when they are smuggling drugs back inside and causing harm not only to property but to each other and to themselves and to staff, then something needs to be fixed.

We have a situation at Thomas Embling where there is a significant expansion being undertaken at this time. However, at the same time, the government are cutting staff. They are cutting two senior alcohol and other drug specialists within Thomas Embling when it is clear there is a drugs crisis within Thomas Embling Hospital. It is the most inappropriate time that budget cuts should expose staff and leave staff more vulnerable and speaking out, concerned that their already extraordinarily high rates of workplace violence will just lead to more issues. It is clear the government has an obligation to support all prisoners in their rehabilitation, including rehabilitation from drugs and alcohol, but cutting the exact experts that are employed for that reason just means the problem will get worse. It will be worse for patients and residents, and it will be worse for the workers at that facility.

It will make leave much more difficult when you have got situations where there are crime sprees occurring, putting Victorians on the street at risk. We have got people who have absconded while on day leave and who just have not returned, and then the call goes out. There are insufficient staff to provide appropriate levels of supervision. And it is concerning that while there may be a condition of leave, through the forensic leave panel, that there be drug testing, they must agree to drug and alcohol testing. What happens if they do not? It is not happening routinely. When you have got an issue of drugs being smuggled into Thomas Embling Hospital and it is not a routine occurrence that you test people, that you check whether they have drugs when they come back into the building – because a metal detector will not detect drugs – it just beggars belief. The more you unfold some of this, it shows not that the legislation is flawed but that the system is flawed, and we need to provide more supports to mental health across the board.

The second element of this legislation is around the transition to an IT system whereby we will have a centralised portal for mental health records that will be accessible by some but not all public health services. This is something that we inquired about during the briefing. We were provided with some information around it in that currently it appears that hospitals will have access to those mental health records. The system will also have a relationship to Ambulance Victoria because, as is provided to us, Ambulance Victoria is a health service identified by the royal commission as requiring better access to information to effectively deliver services. Ambulance Victoria will have access to this electronic health information system; however, Victoria Police will not have access to this system. This is important, because at this point in time in Victoria the Labor government have walked back their commitment to move to a health-led response for mental health crises. The first iteration of the Mental Health and Wellbeing Bill 2022, as handed down by the then Deputy Premier when the mental health portfolio was important to Labor, outlined that all responses to emergency mental health crises would be health led.

Twelve months later the government walked that back, and we now have a police-led response in Victoria to mental health crises. This was something that the royal commission had identified, because it is not the best outcome for patients that a police officer turns up to a mental health crisis. There is the option for other services like an ambulance to be called in to respond to that, but the first legislated approach must be from Victoria Police. This is why the royal commission did not recommend that Victoria Police be able to access these types of records – for the one reason that they did not recommend that Victoria Police should be the first to respond to a mental health crisis. This is a very big oversight for the Labor government, and it must be drawn in parallel. If police are going to be the first responders, they need to have access to the mental health record – that is all there is to it. They must have that information, otherwise it is a less than safe situation for police and a less than safe situation for that person who has that record. It is very simple logic if you are going to keep a police-led response. Certainly from the police that I have spoken and on my understanding and that of everybody within the mental health sector, it is a far better response to have a health professional speaking to someone in a mental health crisis. It is far better to have someone with mental health expertise, and paramedics are trained in that area. It simply does not make sense to revert it back to police and to take away what is recommended by the royal commission, so I urge the government to reconsider. Fortunately, who will be able to access the system can be prescribed at a later date, and I urge the government to reconsider that Victoria Police will be excluded from that.

There is a side issue when it comes particularly to the stigma of mental health. People are concerned to put their mental health situation on the record if it may be exposed and accessed by people broader than their immediate clinicians. This is something that was of great importance to me that I asked about. There will be a standard system in place in terms of being able to retrospectively check who has electronically accessed records. The government has also indicated that there will be a level of role-based access control. So basically if you are not of a certain role, you will not have access to mental health records. I think that is appropriate, but it is very important that the government ensures that those securities are in place. I would hate to think that we have an ongoing issue where people feel there is a stigma around mental health and that they will be treated differently, particularly if they have a diagnosable mental illness as opposed to a situational mental health issue such as depression or anxiety, and that it will make them vulnerable so they do not access support for that reason. I therefore urge the government to ensure those controls are comprehensive but also that they are well circulated throughout the community so as not to be seen as retrograde.

I would like to speak to another aspect which was raised in others matters, and it was interesting because it was not actually mentioned in the second-reading speech of this legislation and it was not mentioned in the bill briefing either. That is one of the matters related to broad other matters for amendment within this legislation, and that is specifically in relation to a clause which requires a psychologist or the prescribing authoriser for restraint to go back and check on that person who had restraint put on them to ensure that they are okay. That is really something that should be in play and is a reflection that we have had situations whereby people who have been put into a position of restraint have then had impacts which were not foreseen, and in some cases it is death. It is something that unfortunately is a reflection of the understaffing within Victoria’s public health system, and this is of concern to me. It is of concern to me because we cannot implement the royal commission’s commitment that we eliminate restraint and seclusion practices within 10 years – that is by 2031 – if there is no workforce to support patients to get the best possible care.

And yet we are in a situation where, while there is a slight amendment and a tweak within legislation to ensure in law that there is a responsibility to go back to those patients who have had restraint applied, we still have the situation where there are not enough workers. There are so many issues around workforce. In fact Victoria’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Workforce Strategy 2021–2024 has not been renewed. We are now in a situation where Victoria does not have a mental health workforce strategy, which goes to show just how committed this government is to rebuilding Victoria’s mental health workforce. The government had committed to implement the recommendation of the royal commission to double Victoria’s mental health workforce by 2031 – we are nowhere near that. We are absolutely nowhere near that. I do not even think we have got any additional workers, which just shows that all of these commitments, all of these promises were something that happened before an election. When it comes to Labor, what they say and what they do are two different things, and it is Victorians that pay the price.

Now, this is not something that is just a fly-by-night where things shift – ‘We’ve got shifting sands and it’s very, very hard because we haven’t got a lot of money because we’re spending it all on the Suburban Rail Loop and not delivering on the mental health services that we need in Victoria’. What we have got in Victoria is a mental health levy. It is the one thing that we have seen Labor commit to. The first thing that they did was to implement a mental health tax. We have got a bizarre situation in Victoria where private hospitals that deliver mental health services have to pay a mental health levy, which means that they cannot provide as many mental health support services. What irony that we have a situation where a tax is actually reducing access to services. And when people from the sector and people like myself, the Shadow Minister for Mental Health, ask the question of the government – whether it is at the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee or through other mechanisms through Parliament – ‘Where is the money being spent?’, we cannot get an answer. Even leaders within the mental health sector, like Pat McGorry – Pat has done an enormous amount of work, particularly around youth mental health in the state – are calling out, ‘Where is the money going?’ It should be explained. There should be transparency about it, there should be accountability, but more importantly, it should be all directed into expanding services and particularly youth mental health services.

This is something we are hearing right across the board. I have heard this from Mental Health Victoria – and I will go back to the mental health and wellbeing workforce strategy. Mental Health Victoria is concerned that the Mental Health and Wellbeing Workforce Strategy 2021–2024 has not been evaluated, acquitted publicly and updated. There is insufficient investment to address retention, safety and diversification of workers, making it hard to imagine government will meet its target of doubling the workforce by 2031. The mental health and wellbeing locals have been completely abandoned. In my electorate of Lowan, we were promised one for Horsham, for Ararat and for Hamilton, and yet we are not even on the list of the Better Health website that shows where the future plans for where these locals will go; we do not even make the list, even though it was promised back in 2023.

This government has completely lost its way when it comes to implementing the royal commission’s recommendations. The government have got the money; Labor have got the money. They implemented the mental health tax. But then you have Mental Health Victoria and leaders within the mental health sector saying they cannot see where the money is going because it is not expanding the workforce and it is not expanding access to services. They are just seeing all of the terrible statistics around mental health getting worse and worse and worse. Let us not forget that these are not just statistics, they are not just numbers, these are Victorians. These are the people that are paying the price for Labor’s abandonment of mental health royal commission reforms.

We desperately need to see the recommendations and the reform of Victoria’s mental health system get back on track. We need to support the workers, who are doing an outstanding job and doing their very best to deliver the mental health supports that Victorians absolutely need and deserve, at the right place, at the right time and when they need it. We are not seeing that from Labor. We are just seeing spin and lies. We are not seeing transparency on where that tax is being spent, where the royal commission recommendations are at, what is being put on hold, what is being implemented and what is being scrapped altogether. Victorians deserve to know. Victorians deserve to understand what is happening with Victoria’s mental health reforms, because at the moment they are deeply disappointed with a Labor government that has let them down.

 Paul EDBROOKE (Frankston) (11:30): It is an absolute pleasure to speak on the Mental Health Legislation Amendment Bill 2025 today. Two years ago this Parliament made a promise to Victorians – a heartfelt promise – to build a mental health and wellbeing system where people are safe, where people are seen and where people are supported. The Mental Health and Wellbeing Act 2022 set that direction of course, and with that came the introduction of the mental health levy – which was not supported by those opposite, I might add. That Mental Health and Wellbeing Act 2022 set the direction for this government. It put people and their families at the centre of mental health and wellbeing policy, and it started that essential, critical work of the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System. It put in place the goals to make care easier to find, easier to navigate and, of course, worthy of people’s trust. This bill today goes a long way to ensuring that we can achieve those very, very important goals.

Can I begin by thanking everyone who made a contribution to the royal commission. To put yourself in a position where you are recalling trauma from the past and where you are sharing that trauma is brave and it is courageous, and it is something that puts people well outside their comfort zone, especially when dealing with things they might be under therapeutic treatment for still. I met quite a few of those people who made contributions to our royal commission, and I could not be prouder, as a Victorian, that we got the right information and that the commissioners made the correct decisions in putting those recommendations down on paper.

Big reforms, though, do not finish on the day the bill passes. That was now a long time ago, and we have still got work to do. These recommendations still need a steady hand, they need honest feedback and they also need practical improvements. That is why we are here today speaking on this bill. That is indeed what this bill delivers. It does three simple things, and we have heard a little bit about those from the member opposite. Essentially, it brings the work of approving leave for forensic patients and residents into a new forensic division of the Mental Health Tribunal. These are careful decisions about short, limited leave to attend therapy, reconnect with families, study, volunteer, work or receive help – steps in rehabilitation and reintegration with our community. The tribunal already hears many mental health matters. It has definitely got experienced members, clear procedures and a strong culture of giving reasons and being reasonable too. Bringing this leave work under the tribunal means more consistency in the system, more transparency and better support for people and for public safety.

It would also be remiss of me not to mention the Minister for Mental Health, Ms Stitt, in the other place, a minister who really understands the goals of this royal commission, a minister who actually cares very, very deeply about the mental health of Victorians. Her team, with advisers like Amy, who is in the chamber today, do a hell of a lot of work to make sure people like me can understand some of what we are reading and some of what we are hearing and to make sure that we are transforming our actions as per the intent of those royal commission recommendations.

I also want to give a shout-out to the mental health minister’s advisory council, which I am chairing at the moment, a mix of professors like Pat McGorry, people working in the industry and also those with lived experience and victim-survivors as well. It is a wealth of knowledge. We have had only one meeting, with me in the chair, but I have met with quite a few of the members of this committee individually. The hundreds of years worth of knowledge, about not just the problems in the mental health system and the problems of the past but the solutions and where we should be going in the future, is quite amazing. It would be an absolute shame for us not to be listening to those people.

Certainly some of the best results we get as government are when we listen to people at the coalface, we listen to people outside the box and we listen to people in private and public markets. We listen to people that are dealing with these problems every single day. We got those results – I would not say effortlessly, but when you make a commonsense decision like to ask people what they want, you will get fearless and frank advice. That is certainly what we got in the royal commission recommendations.

That leads me to the second tranche of this bill. This bill also strengthens secure information sharing between the new mental health record and the broader health system. In plain terms, the right clinicians will have the right information at the right time, which is essentially making the system more efficient but also better coordinated and, most importantly, safer as well. It will also drive more trust in that system for a community, I think, that as a whole is more aware of where their details are, especially health details these days, when we hear about these data leaks and different sorts of issues in the news. People want to know that their data is secure. People want to know it is only shared with the people it needs to be shared with. It also means, with those efficiencies that I spoke about, that people will not need to be retraumatized every time they see a different clinician. They will not have to retell their story every single time, therefore retraumatizing themselves, and for some people I am sure that can be a backward step in their journey to recovery. Transitions between hospitals, community services and mental health and wellbeing locals will be smoother because of this as well. That transition of data from one organisation to another will be smoother, and privacy protections will remain clear and strong.

The third thing this bill does is fix some technical gaps so the law basically does what we intend in protecting sensitive forensic matters from public FOI in the same way they are protected now and allows commission staff to share information if there is a serious and immediate risk to someone’s life or safety.

I want to spend a short amount of time talking about the effect this has on people: what this means for people at the coalface, what this means for people behind the clauses. For someone on a supervision order, a fair and timely decision about limited leave can be the bridge between clinical progress and real-world recovery. For a family, it means hope and a path back to ordinary life, and for the community it means confidence that decisions are being made by an expert body that knows this work and records its reasons. The forensic leave panel has done that work with great care, and I want to thank Justice Rita Incerti and all the members past and present for their work and for their service. This bill builds on that legacy by placing these functions within the tribunal, which has the scale, systems and experience to deliver consistency across the state.

There were a few common questions raised in the shadow minister’s contribution, and I would just like to address them.

Will this slow down leave decisions? No. The tribunal has the systems and experience to schedule and hear matters efficiently. Consolidation will only improve timelines and consistency, not hinder them.

Will people see more of my health information? No. Only authorised staff for clear care purposes will have access to your information and only when you are receiving care. The controls are tighter and more traceable and accountable than ever.

The last question that I feel was in a long, contextual way coming forward was: is this a step away from transparency? No, I do not believe it is a step away from transparency. It keeps the same protections that have always applied to forensic leave documents, and it preserves reasons for decisions and other avenues of oversight. It is a continuity measure, not a retreat.

To sum up, I would also like to point out that there have been many organisations and stakeholders that have been consulted about this. Sometimes when we get into these debates the public might be under the impression that there is a measure of doubt inserted into this debate by those opposite. But the amount of consultation on a bill like this is quite impressive and quite massive, and I think we have addressed those concerns. Most of all this bill is consistent with the faith that the Victorian community gave us – the social licence to have that royal commission – and it built a system that does not look away, does not give up; it keeps on improving.

 Rachel WESTAWAY (Prahran) (11:40): I rise today to speak on the Mental Health Legislation Amendment Bill 2025. I begin by stating the opposition’s position clearly, and that is that we will not oppose this bill. We will not oppose it, because it implements recommendations from the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System. It consolidates the Forensic Leave Panel into the Mental Health Tribunal. It also improves information-sharing protocols, and these changes align with the royal commission’s recommendations. But let me be absolutely clear: not opposing this bill is not the same as endorsing the government’s shameful record on mental health reform. The bill represents the bare minimum of administrative housekeeping whilst this government systematically betrays every promise it made to Victorians in regard to mental health. The Victorian royal commission delivered 65 recommendations. This government held press conferences, the Premier promised transformation and Victorians were told that things would change. And what did we get? A mental health tax and broken promises. They collected the money, they cut the services and that is going to be this government’s mental health legacy.

Let me turn to specific concerns about the legislation before us. First is the removal of the Supreme Court judge’s secondment to the Mental Health Tribunal. It is a concern of mine. This bill abolishes the option to second experienced Supreme Court judges to what is now the forensic division. Why would you remove the option to access high-level legal expertise for complex forensic mental health cases? It simply does not make sense to me, but possibly it is a resourcing issue. These are matters involving people found not guilty, by reason of mental impairment. These are decisions about leave arrangements for forensic patients. These are cases where getting the balance right between treatment, public safety and individual rights requires the highest level of legal and judicial expertise. The government has not even explained why we should remove this option rather than keep it available when needed. When it comes to forensic mental health we should be adding expertise and not removing it.

Second, and far more seriously, this bill does not address the catastrophic failures in monitoring forensic patients and their leave. There is clear evidence that conditions of leave are not being appropriately and safely managed. Residents and patients on leave are not routinely screened for drugs and alcohol upon return. There is limited supervision of patients and residents while they are on leave. We are transferring these functions to the Mental Health Tribunal, but we are not fixing the fundamental problem that the system is not adequately supervising people when they are granted leave. We are shuffling paperwork while safety gaps remain wide open.

But if you want to see the full extent of this government’s betrayal on mental health reform, look no further than what happened in 2023. The royal commission was clear: mental health crisis responses should be health led and not police led. This makes sense. When someone is experiencing a mental health crisis they need health professionals, they do not need police officers. But in 2023 this government substantially walked back the legislated approach. They reverted to a police-led response to mental health crises. And why? Because they had not resourced Ambulance Victoria adequately. They blamed Ambulance Victoria for the resource shortage that they had created – classic Labor. So let me get this straight. The government accepts the royal commission’s recommendations. They legislate changes. Then they blame Ambulance Victoria for not having enough resources, which the government are responsible for providing, and they walk back the reform. Victoria Police have been crystal clear about this. They have stated publicly that this puts unreasonable and additional pressure on their limited resources as they currently stand, and they are dealing with extreme workforce shortages at the moment. It is not in line with the recommendations of the royal commission.

But here is where it gets truly absurd. The bill creates a new mental health information sharing system, the electronic health information system. Good idea, right? Better information for better care – except the government intends to retain a police-led response to mental health crises but not allow the police to access this new system. It just seems ludicrous. Think about the absurdity of that for a moment. Police are frontline responders to a mental health crisis not because that is best practice but because the government will not properly resource the health-led model. But then the government will not give police access to the information they need to keep the people safe and provide appropriate care.

On top of this the government has cut $50 million to police resourcing, which makes their ability to fulfil their duties even harder. This is incompatible with providing the best care for people with mental health needs and incompatible with police safety. If you are going to dump a mental health crisis on the police, at least give them the tools that they need to adequately respond, and this government does not do either.

While the government passes administrative legislation, real mental health services in my electorate are being cut or left to die on the vine. Let me tell you about the Mental Health Foundation Australia in South Yarra. They receive $97,000 in government funding. That is roughly what a single senior public servant earns in a year for an entire mental health service – $97,000 for a mental health service, one bureaucrat’s salary. That tells you everything you need to know about this government’s priorities. They charge $30 a visit because they know our community desperately needs help. They rely on philanthropy to fill the gaps this government has created. While we debate information-sharing protocols, they are begging for survival funding, and it is getting worse. In December, just before Christmas, this government cancelled the School Focused Youth Service program – and I will refer to it as the SFYS – a program that has run since 1998, a program that works really well. For Stonnington, which includes part of Prahran, this means losing $420,000 every two years. SFYS funds staff and programs across government, independent and Catholic schools. This supports students in years 5 to 12 who are at risk of disengaging with school. Programs that work get cancelled, taxes that hurt get implemented, and that is the Labor way.

The government claims schools can use the Schools Mental Health Fund and menu instead, and that is rubbish. The menu is not designed to keep disengaged students in education. It is complementary, not duplicative. Moreover, successful SFYS providers, organisations with proven track records, are just not on the menu, so schools lose access to trusted providers who know these kids, who have built relationships and who get results, and the government made this cut while youth crime and social cohesion are major challenges across Victoria. You cannot keep kids engaged in school by cancelling the programs that keep kids engaged in school, but apparently Labor have not figured that out yet.

The royal commission recommended that all restrictive practices end in 2031. That is in six years time. Labor has made no meaningful steps towards achieving this goal at all. This is particularly exacerbated by Labor’s failure to address the critical workforce shortages flagged by the royal commission’s interim report handed down in 2019. That was six years ago – six years of warnings, zero of action. Lived experience stakeholders, the very people this royal commission was supposed to empower and listen to, are particularly aggrieved by Labor’s failure to address this recommendation. They were promised a seat at the table, they were promised their voices would be heard, they were promised transformation, and instead what have they got? Let me be blunt about what has happened since this government accepted the royal commission’s recommendations. They have had budget cuts, critical workforce shortages have not even been addressed and access to mental health support is now worse than before the royal commission. The promised mental health and wellbeing locals have been scrapped. The only thing successfully implemented is the mental health tax. They keep the tax and they cut everything else.

The sector feels betrayed by Labor. They should feel betrayed, because they have been betrayed. They can see no meaningful improvements in structure, access to services or even service delivery models. This is shameful. It is a shameful example of Victorians paying the price of Labor’s complete mismanagement of critical reforms for vulnerable Victorians. The government held a press conference and the Premier stood next to the royal commissioners. They made the promises, they introduced the tax and they collected the money – well done – and then they cut services, failed to address workplace shortages, scrapped programs and left people worse off than before. Press conferences are free, mental health services cost money. So Labor do the press conferences, they cut the services and they tax you. The people of Victoria were promised transformation. They were promised a mental health system that would be the envy of the nation, and we have had very little.

On my final point, I do want to acknowledge that in the seat of Prahran and in neighbouring seats we have seen a significant amount of youth mental health issues and youth suicides in recent times. It is something that I feel absolutely passionate about, and our system of government, the Allan Labor government, is letting these people down. We need resourcing in these areas.

 Eden FOSTER (Mulgrave) (11:50): I rise today to speak on the Mental Health Legislation Amendment Bill 2025 as both an elected representative and a psychologist. I view this legislation through a dual lens – one of effective governance and another of deep commitment to person-centred clinical outcomes. This amendment is part of the continued transformation of Victoria’s mental health and wellbeing system, a transformation driven by the vision of the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System and delivered through the Mental Health and Wellbeing Act 2022. This act marked a turning point in how we think about and support mental health in Victoria. It redefined our approach from one focused only on illness to one that promotes good mental health, wellbeing and inclusion for every person. It placed people with lived and living experience at the heart of the system, recognising that their voices, their preferences and their values must guide every aspect of service design and delivery.

I want to acknowledge the many people who made this progress possible. To our mental health workforce, the backbone of our system, thank you. To my former colleagues as well, thank you. You support Victorians in their hardest moments, often under immense pressure and in a time of significant reform. To our sector partners who developed training, led engagement and worked alongside the Department of Health to implement the 2022 act, thank you for your dedication. And to those with lived and living experience of mental ill health, along with their families, carers, supporters and kin, your insight and advocacy continue to shape this reform. It is through genuine partnership that we will build a system in which every person feels safe, seen and supported.

When legislating about and for the people who make mental health care possible, and as effective as it is in Victoria, I think of the service providers in my electorate of Mulgrave and the South-East Metro Region more broadly. Whether it is the exceptional professionals at Monash Health in both Clayton and Dandenong and also the Monash Health Community Springvale or the numerous clinics that are throughout my electorate, my constituents are well served by these eminent practitioners and the system that supports their incredible work.

As good as the system may be, however, reform is not static. The 2022 act was designed to evolve alongside our service system. The bill now before the house makes a number of important updates to ensure the act continues to operate as intended. Firstly, this bill enables information-sharing reforms, as recommended by the royal commission in recommendation 62. This includes the introduction of a modern, fit-for-purpose electronic health information system. Our current IT system, the client management system, is more than 30 years old. It has served its time, but it can no longer support the needs of a reformed, expanded mental health system facing greater demand than previously anticipated. The new EHIS will revolutionise the way we deliver care. It will allow care teams across hospitals, community-based services and new mental health and wellbeing locals to access the right information at the right time. It will make transfers of care safer and better coordinated.

I hear that the member for Prahran would like to see police have access to this same information that health professionals have access to. I know many in the community, particularly those suffering from mental ill health, may be quite concerned about police having access to such sensitive information. With all respect to the member but also with respect to Victoria Police, I do not think they have got the training that is appropriate to having access to such sensitive information, so I am deeply concerned by that suggestion by the member for Prahran.

But what this does mean for staff is less paperwork. For staff in hospitals and for staff working with the system, it means less paperwork and more time with patients. For consumers it means no longer having to repeat their stories, sometimes painful ones, again and again. Key information will follow them wherever they receive care, empowering them to take an active role in their treatment and recovery.

As a psychologist, I saw too many times my clients tell me that they did not want to retell their story, so having this system supports patients, supports clients. The new system is being built with strong privacy, security and governance at its core. Access will be tightly controlled and the Department of Health will ensure compliance with Victoria’s privacy and data security standards. There are clear penalties for any unauthorised access or breach. In time the EHIS will connect with other key reforms, including a comprehensive data repository and a new consumer portal that allows Victorians to securely view and share their information.

This is about building an integrated, transparent and person-centred system for the future. It is also a necessary step towards a truly integrated mental health system. Fragmented information is often a barrier to safe, continuous and effective care. In a crisis, having timely, accurate records can be lifesaving. Secondly, the bill streamlines governance and safeguards in our forensic mental health system by transferring the functions of the Forensic Leave Panel to a new forensic division within the Mental Health Tribunal. This change will make the system more efficient and consistent. The tribunal already has the expertise, structure and procedures needed to handle complex forensic matters. By consolidating these functions, we are ensuring that forensic patients continue to receive fair, transparent and timely decisions while upholding both community safety and the rights of individuals.

As others have done in this debate, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the members of the Forensic Leave Panel, and in particular its president Justice Rita Incerti, for their outstanding work. Their commitment has upheld the integrity of our forensic mental health system and safeguarded the rights and recovery of those in their care.

Finally, the bill makes a series of minor technical amendments to ensure the act operates smoothly. These include updates to the Freedom of Information Act 1982 to maintain protections for sensitive forensic information and clarification of the health secretary’s powers to share relevant information with the Coroners Court. These are careful, considered changes that reinforce accountability and transparency across the system. The issues that our system faces call for reform, not revolution, and this bill is a meticulously developed effort in delivering just that.

When I was first presented with this legislation, I did what I often do and considered it first as a legislator and representative for the Mulgrave people and second as a trained psychologist with years of experience in study and practice. I know firsthand the limitations and fault points of our current system. I have seen and heard of too many clients and patients who fall through the cracks of a system which can be too archaic or too slow to react to the needs of Victorians who seek support. I believe that the amendments under consideration today stand to fundamentally benefit the Victorians we have set out to help. The best administration settings and bureaucratic structures are the ones that the average Victorian engaging in these services never has to hear about or get their head around. It is this reality that the legislation sets out to deliver, and I am hopeful that mental health outcomes in this state will be better for it.

The bill under consideration today is about more than just legislative housekeeping. It is about ensuring that the promise of the royal commission and the vision of a mental health system built on compassion, connection and human dignity continue to be realised. By working together across government, across services and with people who lead these lives, we are building a system that is fit for the future, grounded in care and driven by the belief that every Victorian deserves to live well. I might end my speaking there, but I commend the government for the work that it does in fulfilling the recommendations of the royal commission, with today’s bill being part of that, and I commend the bill to the house.

 John PESUTTO (Hawthorn) (11:59): I rise to speak on the Mental Health Legislation Amendment Bill 2025, and as my colleagues on this side of the house have made clear, we will not be opposing the bill. But in saying that, I do think the government stands condemned for its continuing failure to properly invest in access to mental health support services that are needed to desperately meet what we know is rising demand for supports right across our community from all age groups. This bill, as with so many other bills, deals with the surface, but it does not actually address the crisis which rages through many parts of our community where people cannot access the supports they need and where those who are working in the sector, whether it is frontline law enforcement or those in counselling and other allied services that are desperately needed, cannot meet that demand because of the failure of this government to properly plan and adequately fund mental health in our community.

This bill deals with a very important set of legislative regimes, and in particular it deals with the issue of forensic patients and residents in custodial settings. These are patients and residents who are under such orders which have been imposed by our courts for people who either are found to have been unfit to stand trial or, having committed physical acts which have led to injury or other property damage, are found not guilty by reason of their mental impairment. We have a very large part of our justice system which deals with accommodating these custodial settings for such residents and patients. This bill does deal with some what I would call process and administrative issues, which we do not oppose, as I said, but which do not address some of the crises which I will come to later in my remarks.

One of the stated purposes of the bill is to transfer the functions from the Forensic Leave Panel to the Mental Health Tribunal. On its face it does not sound like it is a very contentious move, and that is why we are not opposing it. But I do want to state for the record our concern that one of the reasons for this amendment is that members of the Forensic Leave Panel and the judiciary have concerns about the level of demand, and they are not in a position to address the hundreds of applications that come before the Forensic Leave Panel in a timely way. Decisions of the Forensic Leave Panel are crucial, and they are crucial because they are either granting or rejecting applications by people under custodial supervision orders to either have onsite leave or leave the site of, say, Thomas Embling, to take leave outside of that facility. If the leave panel gets it wrong, the consequences could be catastrophic. To give you an example, they nearly were. Just last week it was reported that a forensic patient was on leave and was seen carrying a hammer and engaging in a crime spree. That is what can go wrong, and we know that in the past this has happened: forensic patients and residents have breached the terms of their leave. The point is that the essential supervision that must accompany any decision of the Forensic Leave Panel means that when we consider the transfer of those responsibilities to the Mental Health Tribunal we do not want any weakening or dismantling of the strongest possible standards for those decisions, because not only are those patients and residents at risk but, equally importantly – perhaps more importantly – members of the public are at risk if that is got wrong. The skills and capabilities that should surround and permeate that whole process cannot in any way be weakened by this change.

Another stated purpose of the bill is information sharing – again, not contentious. It should have happened yesterday. But it is here, so we do not oppose it. But we do have a concern that Victoria Police are not going to be able to access that information. I was listening to the comments by the member for Mulgrave, whose work in the sector I greatly respect, but I do respectfully disagree. The member for Mulgrave stated that she had concerns about Victoria Police members having access to that information. I would offer a different perspective. I think it is essential that they have that access. Imagine this: you go to a premises – say, an apartment complex – to deal with a mental health crisis and you hear, for example, banging and screaming on the other side of the door.

As a member of Victoria Police, don’t you think it is reasonable that you know what might lie behind the door? I think it is eminently reasonable, and I think it is unfair to deny that information to somebody who is actually on the front line, who actually has to go behind that door and de-escalate that situation at great harm to themselves and their fellow police members. I think it makes perfect sense; in fact I think it is a gross failure not to include them in the information-sharing processes that this bill will induct.

I want to turn to some of the issues that flow from this. When forensic patients and residents who are onsite or offsite leave, we have seen a failure of supervision and monitoring. When I spoke earlier in my remarks about the government making changes like this but not addressing the crisis, this is part of that. This is what I mean: a failure to invest in the resources so that those caseworkers and officers can be funded to undertake the monitoring supervision. We have seen, for example, in corrections many caseworkers whose caseloads have doubled. Now, it is just not achievable and it is just not sustainable to keep heaping massive and increasing workloads on these officers. It is vital that people on leave from these facilities are monitored and supervised adequately, and that is a real failure in this bill.

A second issue I want to address, which the shadow minister and member for Lowan very eloquently addressed, is the failure of this government to implement the recommendation of the royal commission to shift from a police-led response to a mental health response. That means that we are not going to achieve the recommendations of the royal commission, because there is continuing delay because the system is in crisis. I think it is an inescapable conclusion that one of the reasons the government has been unable to effect that transition to a mental health-led response is because the crisis continues in our system. And why should the crisis continue? That is the question. It is not as if the government does not have the potential revenue to fund the measures that the royal commission recommended. The mental health levy, which this government introduced and which this government promised would fund improvements right across the board in mental health, will raise this year and in the next three years over $5 billion in revenue – more than $1.2 billion a year and growing. Where is it going? All of the revenue that this levy is raising – over $5 billion over the next four years, including this year – where is it going? We know that there are resourcing constraints right across the mental health sector, and yet this government is not being transparent on where that money is going.

A good example of a failure to use that revenue to invest in better mental health outcomes is the mental health locals. This government promised mental health locals, and it has not delivered them. It has delivered a few, but it has breached its promise to actually – including in Melbourne, where demand for mental health services and support is growing. So what is happening with this mental health levy and the revenue that is supposed to come from it? We are certainly not seeing it on the ground. I will give an example in my own electorate I have heard the Premier and various of her ministerial colleagues talk about Bills Street, which is there to provide essential social and affordable housing for Victorians in need in my electorate. Yet one of the criticisms I had and many others in my community had at the time that this government approved Bills Street in Hawthorn was that it did not have ready access to any mental health supports or allied services, and nary a week goes by when I do not have somebody calling me in my office in a state of distress and crisis because they cannot access mental health services; there is nothing around. Despite what the Premier and her colleagues have said, there is no immediate access to public transport even, so those people who have acute needs – some more than others, admittedly – for mental health support cannot readily access that. That is because of the failure of this government to properly invest in and support our mental health services – those who need it and the critical workforce which is needed but which still suffers from the shortages that will not see better outcomes.

 Paul MERCURIO (Hastings) (12:10): I rise to give my contribution to the Mental Health Legislation Amendment Bill 2025, which is about making our mental health system stronger, safer and more responsive to the people who depend on it. I apologise in advance if I sniff and cough. Unfortunately I have got a bit of a bug from my grandchildren, which is just the way it is – it keeps going around; they keep giving us the love – so please excuse me.

I would like to thank the previous members, the member for Frankston and the member for Mulgrave, for their very pointed contributions and very clear, concise ideas. I might just mention that the member for Mulgrave, who has experience as a psychologist, has talked to people who are affected by this bill and who have concerns about the police knowing and having intimate details about them. She was speaking from experience about people she cares deeply for and helps. The member for Hawthorn respectfully disagreed. He does not have the same lived experience, and he was concerned about the police – and it is fair enough to be concerned about the police; the police do an incredibly difficult job. I talk to my local police all the time, and they are brilliantly trained to deal with all manner of things. I assume that if a police officer turns up and there is banging behind a door, they are trained, they understand how to deal with that, and they keep themselves and the people who are in harm’s way and who are affected safe.

I want to talk a little about a friend of mine. I will not name him, but I want to talk a little bit about his experience. Part of that experience is that he has called the police himself because he feared he was going to harm someone. He has severe mental health issues, and he will call the police and say he may self-harm or harm someone, and the police come to him along with the ambulance. They understand very well how to deal with these situations. I just wanted to make that comment in refutation, I guess, of the member for Hawthorn’s brief comment.

I want to talk about some of these amendments, and I want to celebrate that they are a good thing. Sitting here and listening to the other side you would think all is doom and gloom and that nothing is working, and that is not the case at all. I do celebrate the work that has been done here, and I celebrate the people who have worked on this bill. The amendments might look technical at first glance, but they are practical and they are people-focused changes that matter. They will support treatment, improve safeguards and deliver on the vision set by the historic Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System that this government began. The bill makes three changes: it transfers the functions of the Forensic Leave Panel to the Mental Health Tribunal; it strengthens information-sharing provisions so they work as the royal commission intended; and it makes minor amendments to ensure the act continues to operate as it should and as it needs to for people like my friend, who have fairly severe mental health conditions. The Mental Health and Wellbeing Act 2022 itself was a landmark reform. It reset the legislative foundation of our system, promoted good mental health and wellbeing and supported services that reflect the needs and preferences of Victorians. Importantly, it placed people at the heart of the system, making sure the voices of those with lived and living experience and their families, carers and supporters shaped the way services are designed and delivered.

I want to take this opportunity to thank the many people who helped make the 2022 act a reality: those within the sector who developed education and training resources, led engagement and worked closely with the department; our mental health workforce, who are the backbone of the system, providing world-leading care during a time of enormous reform and change; and most of all, people with lived and living experience and their families and supporters for continuing to guide and partner with us to achieve better outcomes. When we listen to the communities that these changes affect we get better results – and we listen all the time. We have people in Parliament today wanting to talk about some mental health issues. We know the difficulties that they face, we understand the challenges that they face and we are forever working to help support and change things.

This bill is about tweaks. We, as a government, bring legislation to this Parliament and then we constantly tweak and change it so we can make it better as things change in the community over time. This bill is part of the natural evolution of that act. As the system grows and reforms take shape, we must keep adjusting the legislative framework so it remains strong, responsive and fit for purpose.

The first major change in this bill is the transfer of functions from the forensic leave panel to the Mental Health Tribunal; much has been said about this already. The forensic leave panel has played an important role in supporting rehabilitation and community reintegration by hearing applications for supervised leave. That leave is not just an administrative process; it is a vital part of treatment and recovery. It is about people. It is about humanity. Under this bill the forensic leave panel will cease and its functions will move to a new forensic division of the Mental Health Tribunal. This tribunal is well placed to take on this role. There is already significant overlap in expertise, with psychiatrists, psychologists and community members who have the right forensic knowledge and experience. The tribunal has well-established processes for hearings, issuing decisions and reasons and already has relationships with forensic patients at designated services. That is another thing you might recall: unfortunately some of these patients and people that are coming before the board are well known and their stories and histories are well known. This change streamlines the system, reduces duplication and provides a more efficient safeguard. It will help people get timely access to leave that supports their rehabilitation while still maintaining strong protections for the community. I also want to extend my thanks to the members of the forensic leave panel, particularly president Justice Rita Incerti, for their dedicated service and the integrity that they have brought to their work.

The second major reform in this bill is information sharing, and much has been said about that already. The royal commission told us clearly that we need modern IT systems if we want a mental health system that is safe, coordinated and consumer focused. The existing client management system is more than 30 years old and no longer fit for purpose. That is why we are delivering the new electronic health information system. This system will create a statewide record so the right information is available to the right care provider at the right time. It will allow staff to spend more time with patients instead of duplicating paperwork. It will mean people do not have to retell their stories every time they walk through a new door. And it will empower people by giving them access to their own information and the ability to play an active role in decisions about their care. Taken together, these amendments continue the work of the 2022 act and the royal commission. They are about building a system where every person feels safe, feels seen and feels supported, where services work together instead of in silos and where the law underpins good care and good outcomes.

Victoria is leading the nation on mental health reforms. We have invested more than $600 million to support and grow the workforce, delivered over 170 acute beds and rolled out 15 locals, with more to come. I think the member for Hawthorn said there were just a couple. It is unfortunate that they underplayed that, but there are actually 15 locals already rolled out and more to come. And we have backed the lived-experience workforce with more than $140 million. We have launched a suicide prevention and response strategy and expanded services for young people and First Nations communities, and we continue to invest in regional Victoria so no-one is left behind.

I am very excited by the Frankston Hospital $1.1 billion build. It will be opening soon, and the mental health ward there is absolutely fantastic. In designing that ward they have again taken in the lived experience of what people need and what they go through.

I have run out of time to talk about my friend, but he is in a very dark place. I still do not believe that they still do electric therapy – what is it?

A member: Electroconvulsive therapy.

Paul MERCURIO: Yes. What is the movie? I was thinking about it.

A member interjected.

Paul MERCURIO:One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. He is still going through it. I commend this bill to the house.

 Jade BENHAM (Mildura) (12:20): As the member for Lowan would have stated in her contribution, we are certainly not opposed to anything that helps mental outcomes for patients, carers and those suffering in Victoria. When we talk about the lived experience of those with mental health conditions and illnesses, as per usual in this place I bring my own lived experience to tell a couple of stories with the view of what it means for practical implementation on the ground. I remember the days when the terms ‘mental health’ and ‘mental illness’ just were not language that we used if someone was suffering with depression – or manic depression, as it was called then. The member for Hastings was just talking about One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which paints a pretty grim picture of how those with mental illness were treated in the past. If you go to some of the asylums around Victoria – Ararat comes to mind – women were put in there if they argued with their husbands and for various other ‘ailments’, such as being a strong-willed woman. Gosh, can you imagine if those things had not changed? Mental health reform, particularly implementing the recommendations from the royal commission, is vitally, vitally important.

We talk about mental health locals. We have a mental health local in Mildura, which is a walk-in service, and it does a great deal of work. I have spoken about this very publicly for years and years and years: in 2020 my husband launched a campaign because he has suffered with depression since he was a teenager. We know that teenage boys often do not talk about these things, but he did, thankfully. He is a very good communicator, thank goodness. But for those living in a small town and living in many regional areas, getting assistance for mental health issues and mental illness is a real struggle. It continues to be a real struggle, which is why implementing all of the recommendations from the royal commission is so vitally important. In 2020, during one of his – they ebb and flow – recovery periods from a low period, my husband decided that if we had at our local health service the ability to just walk in, without needing to go to a GP first, without a referral, when you are actually in crisis, what a difference that would make.

He had never run a marathon before in his life, but he decided that he may have the ability to raise 50 grand; 42 was the original target – $1000 for every kilometre. He went to the health board – at the time a friend of ours was the chair of the health board – and said, ‘If I raise 40 grand could we get a social worker to run a walk-in clinic?’ They agreed. Then COVID hit, so he could not run the Melbourne Marathon that he had originally planned to, but he did raise about $55,000, which then enabled Robinvale District Health Services to set up a walk-in mental health clinic in 2020. Just previous to that, just before COVID and during COVID, there was what we called an epidemic of suicide in Robinvale, which is not uncommon in rural areas, because of the isolation challenges. Sometimes there is not a reason. It was such a passion of his because of his lived experience that he decided that he would start to talk about it. He does not like talking publicly, for a start – he does not like leaving the house or the farm a lot of the time – but he was driven to be brave because he knew it would save lives. After that clinic opened in September 2020 – he ran his marathon that October – it went from being open one day a week to being open three days a week. It was very well facilitated by Robinvale District Health Services, and it did ultimately save lives.

Lived experiences – when we talk about them in the mental health space, both for those that have been through the system and been through the illnesses and those that have cared for those that live with mental health issues – are also some of the most valuable insights I think that any government, any department or anyone can take note of. Those carers – and it is carers week of course this week – that care for someone with mental illness have some really valuable insights. There is no handbook for this stuff. I know many have tried. There are many books on mental health, but there is really no handbook; the most valuable thing that we can bring to the table is lived experience.

It was one of, I suppose, the things that brought my husband and I together, after I had gone through a bout of chemical poisoning. This is the thing as well that academics may not bring to the table. Sometimes it may be environmental – we know that. It may be physiological as well, and this is something we have seen with farmers over the course of time, which you would be well aware of. Even as recently as 20 years ago there was no protective gear worn while you were spraying crops. There were no cabs on tractors – not like there are now, where you get in the thing and push a button and start it and it does it itself. When my dad grew up farming, there were no cabs – he has still got his old International tractor – when spraying pesticides and herbicides. They build up, particularly if you are someone with a low-functioning liver, like I was. This can lead to chemical poisoning, which alters the chemical processes in your brain. I ended up having to battle being bipolar and depressed for five years in my late 20s and early 30s, which was so tough. I had no idea what was going on. Why would I? I just thought I was happy one day and not the next, and sometimes I thought it was fun. It was not fun for those that cared for me, which is why I say that the carers of people with mental illness have incredible insights.

But it is that lived experience and the dark humour I think that follows if you are lucky enough to come out the end. I think – well, I know – that sometimes obviously you get to a point where you just want to make the whirlpool in your head stop. You will do that by any means possible, without any rhyme or reason – or at least thinking about these things – and the outcomes of that are obviously devastating and tragic. I have lost far too many friends to mental illness, starting from the time when I was in year 10 and lost one of my very good friends, and there were no signs. So everyone’s story is different; everyone’s lived experience is so different. All except one of my friends that we have had to say goodbye to as a result of mental health have been male – boys mostly, but sometimes older gentlemen. My best friend’s dad battled it because of chemical poisoning and a physiological reaction in his brain his entire life.

It is something that affects us; we feel it out in the regions. It is a constant battle, which is why the implementation of the recommendations from the royal commission are vital. The royal commission did not happen for no reason. The recommendations were not for fun. They are vital so that the outcomes for those living with and caring for patients with these conditions improve and so that we can have less tragedies and less epidemics of suicide across the state. Like I said, and as the Member for Lowan has stated, we are not opposing this bill.

 Martha HAYLETT (Ripon) (12:30): I rise today to speak on the Mental Health Legislation Amendment Bill 2025. As the member for Ripon I am contacted regularly by parents who have lost sleep worrying about their child’s mental health, workers who have lost colleagues and people living with mental ill health who want access to better care closer to home. This bill is for them, creating a safer, fairer and more connected mental health system. It will amend the Mental Health and Wellbeing Act 2022, the Crimes (Mental Impairment and Unfitness to be Tried) Act 1997, the Freedom of Information Act 1982 and the Health Services Act 1988 to transfer the functions of the Forensic Leave Panel to the Mental Health Tribunal, ensure information sharing provisions of the act operate as recommended by the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System and make minor and technical amendments to ensure the act operates as intended.

These amendments will help with the creation of a new statewide electronic mental health and wellbeing record and mental health information and data exchange to facilitate a more connected system. Importantly, legislative safeguards are in place for the electronic health information system under chapter 17 of the act and apply to any new services granted access to the system. At every step of our reforms to the state’s mental health system we have put people’s voices and lived experience first. This bill will strengthen our earlier reforms by removing unnecessary complexity that can get in the way of care. It will also make clearer pathways so that families, carers and the person receiving support can expect a system that meets them where they are. It will streamline processes without diminishing safeguards, give people more control over their care and give clinicians better information to do their jobs.

One of the most practical reforms in this bill is the transfer of the Forensic Leave Panel’s functions to a new forensic division of the Mental Health Tribunal. Clinicians, legal practitioners and families have told government that duplication of quasi-judicial processes wastes time and creates confusion for people already under stress accessing the mental health system. Bringing forensic leave decisions into the tribunal is sensible and evidence informed. The tribunal already has expertise, judicial rigour and the procedural structures needed to conduct hearings and make reasoned decisions. Consolidation will mean decisions are made more consistently and efficiently. It will also maintain protections for the individual and community safety, supported by members with the right forensic expertise. I pay tribute to the members of the Forensic Leave Panel, as I know many other members in this place have done today, and in particular to Justice Rita Incerti, whose service has upheld rights and safety for so many.

Families tell me repeatedly how exhausting and retraumatising it is for a loved one to recount their history every time they present for care. This bill paves the way for the electronic health information system and the mental health and wellbeing record that our system so desperately needs. The existing mental health IT system, known as the client management system operational data store, is a 30-year old system unable to meet the needs of a reformed and expanded mental health system. Creating a modern integrated system will mean the right information is available to the right clinician at the right time. It will reduce clinical risk at transitions of care and give consumers real ability to see and use their own information, freeing up time for care and making every interaction safer and more meaningful. This is particularly important in our rural and regional areas, where seamless information sharing will make a real difference. When a person moves between local services, emergency departments or specialist clinics, their care should not be fragmented by geography or system boundaries. Our government committed $64.7 million to deliver a new fit-for-purpose IT system. Once complete, this IT system envisioned by the royal commission will benefit teams across public health services and community mental health services, including mental health and wellbeing locals and preventative and recovery centres. Importantly though, people will only accept an electronic mental health record if they can truly trust it. That trust must be earned and legislated for, and this bill embeds privacy and governance protections to do just that. We owe it to people who have been the most harmed by our system to get these protections right. A secure well-governed record will help people feel safer by engaging with services and will ultimately support better clinical outcomes. There are also a number of technical amendments in this bill that matter a great deal on the ground. Clarifying administrative powers, closing legislative gaps and correcting drafting technicalities will prevent confusion for clinicians, administrators and the people using services. These fixes will mean fewer legal disputes and a more seamless experience for people seeking help.

Representing the most rural electorate on this side of the chamber has made me acutely aware of the challenges many country Victorians face in accessing mental health support. Limited options and big distances between care makes having an integrated system and better information even more critical. This bill will help ensure that a farmer in Raglan, a young person in Clunes or an older adult in Bridgewater receives the same continuity of care as someone in Melbourne. It will help make sure that when someone reaches out for help, their story follows them and they do not have to repeat their story time and time again, which risks retraumatising them. It will mean that their loved ones will not have to navigate multiple systems to keep them safe.

I want to thank all those who helped contribute to this bill: the families, the carers, the clinicians, community organisations and legal advocates. Their voices reshaped our thinking and kept us honest about where the system falls short. To the mental health workforce, we know that you are very stretched and often working in difficult conditions, and that is exactly why we want to rebuild the mental health system in this state and why we had the royal commission into the mental health system. This bill is designed to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy and give those mental health workers better tools and clearer processes to focus on what matters most: supporting people’s mental health.

Passing this bill is not the end of reform – it is an important step in an ongoing journey to make sure people do not fall through the cracks. We are making progress every single day in fixing a system that was fundamentally broken. By working together we will continue to build a mental health system where every person feels safe, seen and supported. Before I finish my remarks, I do want to just sincerely thank the Minister for Education for all of the work that he has done to embed mental health support into our schools. I know that has had a huge impact on a lot of our rural and regional schools. The mental health menu is providing so many more options across our region to be able to get immediate mental health support for our students. That is really paying dividends. Principals and teachers that I hear from across the 54 schools of Ripon are benefiting from that – it is just phenomenal.

We also have some bespoke ways that we have really supported people and their mental health locally. I want to give a big shout-out to One Red Tree Resource Centre in Ararat, which we have backed with millions of dollars to make sure that provisional psychologists can come into our schools and into our community organisations to provide much more psychological support across not just Ararat but the broader Grampians region. There is still a lot of work to do – we know that – but we are a government of reform, of practical support and of making a difference not just in metropolitan Melbourne but in rural and regional areas. That is why this bill is so important. As I have said, it is a step forward, but there is still a lot of work to do. I commend the bill to the house.

 Jess WILSON (Kew) (12:38): I rise to speak on the Mental Health Legislation Amendment Bill 2025. This bill makes further amendments to the Mental Health and Wellbeing Act 2022 and related legislation. It represents the second round of changes since the act came into force, and its main purpose is to tidy up the system’s administrative and operational settings. The bill does four main things: first, it abolishes the forensic leave panel and transfers its functions to the Mental Health Tribunal. This change responds to workload and resourcing pressures within the existing panel and is intended to streamline decision-making about leave for forensic patients. Second, it introduces new information-sharing arrangements to enable the rollout of Victoria’s new electronic mental health information system. This system is meant to improve coordination between hospitals, ambulance services and community providers. Third, it clarifies provisions about support decision-making to ensure that when decisions are deferred to a nominated support person, it is the views of the patient, not the support person, that guide the outcome. Fourth, it requires a psychologist to examine a person following the use of restrictive practices.

These are technical amendments, but as with any legislation in this space, the real question is not whether the system looks better on paper but whether it works for people when they most need help.

That brings me to a family in my electorate who I have come to know well, Tamara and Richard Wraith. Tamara and Richard tragically lost their daughter Amber to suicide in April 2022. Amber was only 19 years old. She was bright, creative and deeply loved. But tragically, Amber was diagnosed with a complex mental health illness in 2019, including severe depression and anxiety, with her psychiatric condition deteriorating over the years that followed. Despite seeking help, Victoria’s health system failed Amber. From the outset, I want to express my deep admiration for Tamara and Richard and their family. Despite having lost their daughter and the unimaginable grief that they will carry for the rest of their lives, Tamara and Richard are determined to focus their energy – and Amber’s legacy – on improving our health system so that other young people and their families never find themselves in the same situation.

I have met with Tamara and Richard several times. I have listened as they have gone through the details of their daughter’s treatment and the endless list of missed opportunities to keep her safe. I am broken by their grief, but I am so deeply moved by their strength and determination to ensure Amber’s legacy is one of reform to our mental health system. Since Amber’s death, they have dedicated themselves to understanding how and why the system failed. Their advocacy has prompted a root cause analysis at St Vincent’s Hospital, a review at Headspace Hawthorn and eventually a coronial inquest. What is clear is that Amber had done everything right. Her parents had done everything right. But despite their tireless efforts to get her the help she needed, the system failed her. When the coroner’s findings were handed down earlier this year, they confirmed what the family already knew: Amber was discharged from emergency care without a proper safety plan, clinicians failed to gather information from her family or her treating doctors and there were serious gaps in communication between services. The coroner acknowledged these deficiencies but made no clear findings about how or why they were allowed to happen. That lack of accountability has left the Wraith family without real answers and left the system without clear direction. It is not good enough.

In response to Amber’s death, Tamara and Richard established Amber’s White Light, a foundation dedicated to improving care for young people with complex mental health issues. They are working with Black Dog Institute to see their suicide prevention guidelines for emergency departments implemented in emergency departments right across the state – clear, evidence-based protocols for identifying suicide risk and managing crisis presentations. Through Amber’s White Light, they have funded a research project at Monash University’s HER Centre Australia to develop a world-first objective, biologically based diagnostic toolkit, including blood tests for key biomarkers, a rapid eye movement test and a structured research-derived questionnaire.

They are doing this work because, despite years of reviews and a royal commission, the system is still not delivering. The royal commission was meant to give us a road map. It spoke of a system built on compassion, continuity and lived experience. But those recommendations must be translated into clinical practice. That means mandatory, evidence-based suicide risk assessment and safety planning in every emergency department; consistent diagnostic tools to identify complex conditions and psychosis early; integrated data and communication across hospitals, GPs and community services; and genuine inclusion of carers and families in every stage of treatment. Amber’s story lays bare the consequences of a system that remains fragmented and under-resourced. It is now more than four years since the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System delivered its report. That report was meant to mark a turning point – a commitment to rebuild the system from the ground up. Instead, progress has stalled. Instead, again with the bill before us today we are playing around the edges.

The shift in mental health-led crisis response has been reversed.

We are back to a police-led model, even though the royal commission made it clear that this approach can be traumatic for people in crisis. The government talks about reform but has failed to deliver the workforce funding and the services needed to make it real. Promised mental health and wellbeing services have been cut back, budgets have been trimmed, clinicians are stretched beyond capacity and access to care is now worse than it was before the royal commission began. This bill makes administrative changes, but it does nothing to fix the fundamental problems: the lack of accountability, the lack of follow-through and the lack of investment in frontline services and care.

Tamara and Richard should never have had to become investigators of their own daughter’s death. They should never have had to write to ministers and to read clinical notes just to find out what went wrong. But through Amber’s White Light, they have turned that pain into purpose. We often talk in this place about infrastructure, about roads and bridges and rail, but the infrastructure that saves lives is not made of steel or concrete; it is the strength of a system that meets people with empathy and coordinates care that does not leave families to navigate crises alone. When a young woman like Amber can present to a hospital in clear distress, leave without a safety plan and die days later, it shows that a system is not just under strain, it is broken. We owe it to Amber and to every young person who has been failed by this system to do more than pass the technical amendments before us today. We owe them real reform, and that means implementing the royal commission’s recommendations in full – not half measures, not delays, not cuts dressed up as efficiency. It means learning the hard lessons from Amber’s story: where the system failed her, and how it can be fixed so that young people right across this state are saved into the future.

This government has had four years to act, and Victorians are still waiting. We owe it to Amber and we owe it to all those who have lost their lives to finish the job before us. I sent this speech to Richard and Tamara for their review today to ensure that they were comfortable about me speaking to Amber’s story, and I just want to read a comment that her mother sent back. She said:

I can sense you have tried to imagine the unimaginable & walk in our shoes as parents, and with me as a mother.

To Tam: I cannot imagine the pain you have gone through. I cannot imagine, to be honest, how you get up out of bed every single day and fight to ensure that people – young people and young women like Amber – never have to face a system that does not meet the needs of those with serious mental illnesses. As a state, as a government, as a Parliament, we should do so much better to ensure we put the services around the people who need it most so that when they present to an emergency department in distress and in need, the system meets them with the clinical tools to ensure that they are safe and that the consequences that we saw with Amber never happen again.

 Tim RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (12:48): It is a pleasure to rise and speak on the Mental Health Legislation Amendment Bill 2025. From the outset I want to cover off some of the things that were said by the lead speaker on this and the narration around the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System, which I find to be extraordinary. It has been absolutely extraordinary, some of the commentary that has been made on this royal commission.

This was a royal commission that made a number of key recommendations in its interim report and its final report, 74 that were generational in their significance and that have been a huge reference point for federal reforms around mental health and wellbeing. The notion that, after four years of trying to address generational challenges around how we get people the mental health and wellbeing support that they need – comments by the lead speaker and others – suddenly the whole place has had to change, I cannot underscore how naive that is in the policy frame that we find ourselves. This is a generational, decade-long reform that acknowledges how broken the system was, and it is an extraordinary thing for those opposite to come into this place now, having opposed the mental health levy and the allocation of those funds to fund these reforms, to criticise that very policy setting here today, and to then suggest that nothing has changed.

It is a degradation of the mental health and wellbeing workforce, the lived experience workforce that is the central nervous system of these reforms, and it underscores the policy naivety of those opposite on the significant intergenerational reform that the mental health royal commission and the Royal Commission into Family Violence sought to initiate. The notion that some 1460 days later suddenly no-one would be in mental health distress is a real undermining of the policy setting that we find ourselves in. And those opposite were opposed to some of those reforms, including the significant mental health funding levy.

I have been astonished at the commentary that has been had, the absolute attack on the workforce and those with lived experience that are the central nervous system, and the suggestion that nothing has been done in this space, that there has been nothing created. There has been a massive, overwhelming change to how people with living and lived experience have impact, including those that are impacted by the loss of a loved one, maybe one of the more than 770 Victorians that we lost in the recent year. The launch of the suicide prevention response strategy and the launch of the wellbeing plan by the parliamentary secretary and the member for Frankston – these are all big, hallmark reforms that hold the government to account.

A basic reading of the executive summary of the suicide prevention response strategy would show how accountable this government is, but clearly no-one on that side has bothered to even read the hallmarks of these reforms. It is astonishing that we are 55 weeks from the caretaker period and those opposite come in with ham-fisted policy points and dot points like that, because it matters to Victorians. To so flippantly undermine these recommendations that are of generational significance, it scares me to think of what they would do to the mental health workforce, to the lived experience workforce, and the disconnect that those opposite have between policy and the hard yards of reform that is done time and time again.

When we come to recommendations and changes like this that add, strengthen and contribute, there is this notion that this is a bad thing to have this come through in the bill. We have had two monster reform changes to this act. When former Deputy Premier James Merlino moved those reforms, they were substantive, and then the minister at the table Minister Williams, who was the Minister for Mental Health and suicide prevention, moved another tranche of reforms. For those opposite to come in here and say these amendments that are important are just technical amendments blatantly undermines all that work and the reform that has been done to this point. I do not know whether they are just not briefed, not across the detail or flippant in how they approach this policy space, but it is a warning to all Victorians. When you are that underprepared and you are that flippant about significant intergenerational reforms, you will not value it when it comes to election time, you will not value it when it comes to what cuts you will put up, and we know the mental health levy will be one of the first things they will cut. It will be the mental health workforce and Victorians living with mental health and wellbeing challenges in our community that will be the first impacted by those opposite and their changes.

These are critical changes that those opposite might describe as administrative. This bill and its amendment to the Mental Health and Wellbeing Act 2022 build on significant reforms over that time. The transfer of functions from the forensic leave panel to the Mental Health Tribunal, ensuring information-sharing provisions of the act operate as recommended by the royal commission – that is a really important element. That is again building on some of the hallmarks of what we learned around sometimes the system can victimise and impact people, so we are making sure that we are aware of that, and amendments as the act evolves and changes, and I think that is a critical feature going forward. Having been a parliamentary secretary in this space and having the privilege to meet so many people who front up each and every day for the mental health and wellbeing support of others, you see how incredibly complex this system is.

I acknowledge the heartfelt and important contribution of the member for Kew about a member of her community with lived experience of the people that we lose. There is a horrific toll of suicide in our community. We know that over 150 people are affected by the ripple effect of someone that we lose, and that trauma can be intergenerational, that trauma can last and be visceral in any moment. It is one of the most heartbreaking elements of despair when we lose someone to mental ill health.

We want a system where, when people go and help-seek, they get the support and care they need. But I will tell you – and this is a really important shout-out – there are a number of people that we do not ever see, that will be blind to us, who do not help-seek and we lose, and that is the majority of people who have not interacted with a mental health service, who have not presented to their GP, who have not gone through any frame of mental health and wellbeing care planning. We lose them, and that is a whole-of-society stigma that we face in mental health and wellbeing care.

Seventy-five per cent of people that we lose to mental ill health are men and boys. There is a huge intersection between how we raise men and boys in our community – and the role that I have is Parliamentary Secretary for Men’s Behaviour Change – what it means to be a man and a boy in the community, what it means to show vulnerability and what it means to front up when you need help. We know as lads we do not do it anywhere near as well as we could, and of the violence perpetrated in our community 95 per cent is committed by men and boys. There is an intersection here, so if we are to get that awareness up, if we are to lower the mental health and wellbeing toll over time, we need to lower the systematic barriers – that is, when someone presents to an ED or presents to their GP, they are referred and get that support that they need, and the levels of mental health support from 1 through to 5 are there when they need them and meet people where they are at. They are absolutely the hallmarks.

For the majority of people that we lose who never interact, what is their story? There is a societal element and change, a cultural change, that we need to lower the stigma around help-seeking by saying that it is not vulnerable, it is courageous to come forward and be supported; by creating in every single frame an inclusive, loving and supportive environment for people in mental health and wellbeing distress; and by ensuring that we are always there. We see that as the biggest challenge for government, the reforms and that whole cultural piece, and particularly for the over-representation, the three out of four that we lose who are men and boys in our community.

When we think about some of the reforms and what is brought forward – and just not even to commentate on that – we know that a lot of those that go through distress will not interact with a service and we will lose them as fellow Victorians. That is the whole cultural piece. That is what the wellbeing plan calls out. That is what the suicide prevention response strategy calls out – the hard-to-reach elements of the cultural reform that are narrated. And that is why the lived experience workforce in all elements of support, from community-based, from workplaces, from sporting organisations and from mental health and wellbeing support – the peer workforce – are so very critical to the work that we do.

I just wanted to put that on the record. The absolutes and the narration around where these reforms have gone is stark to those opposite and their policy setting, opposed to the mental health and wellbeing levy, opposed to a lot of these reforms. And we know that they would be some of the first things that would be cut if those opposite ever have the chance to serve Victorians. These types of discussions and shadow ministerial speeches give you the window into that. Their speaking points that undermine the reforms and talk down the reforms are all about taking them away from Victorians. We hear it loud and clear. We will defend the mental health and wellbeing royal commission reforms and will keep delivering mental health and wellbeing support for Victorians into the future.

 Brad ROWSWELL (Sandringham) (12:58): I also rise in the time remaining before the lunchbreak to address the Mental Health Legislation Amendment Bill 2025. I was listening to the member for Mordialloc’s contribution, and I think the way that the member for Mordialloc categorised some of the contributions from the opposition was unfair. I think that we are seeking to engage with these ideas and the bill that the government has presented in a way that is constructive and that also draws upon the truth of the matter as we see it, and as previous opposition speakers have addressed, the opposition’s approach to this bill is that we will not be opposing it.

In its final report the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System stated that, given that most people experiencing a mental crisis have done nothing illegal, the involvement of police can be humiliating and traumatic. In 2022 much was made of the government’s intention to move a health-led response. In 2023 the government substantially walked back the legislated approach to the mental health crisis to a police-led rather than a health-led response.

Sitting suspended 1:00 pm until 2:02 pm.

The SPEAKER: I would like to acknowledge in the gallery the Consul General of the Republic of the Philippines, Jesus Domingo.

Will Fowles: On a point of order, Speaker, on 27 August I raised a point of order about the operation of the house and the lack of communication from the government in relation to things that were happening on that day. On that day in response you said that members ought to be having open conversations with all parties in relation to the running of the chamber. I want to bring to your attention as Chair that when the house was extended yesterday once again the government did not share that information with the crossbench and we found out about it only in the chamber. That information had been shared with the Liberal Party, the National Party and the Greens. I would like you to please again encourage the government to have those conversations, as you previously ruled.

The SPEAKER: As members would be aware, the running of the house is a matter for the house. I will have a conversation with the Leader of the House.

Business interrupted under standing orders.