Wednesday, 15 October 2025

 Katie HALL (Footscray) (14:55): I am pleased to make a contribution to the Mental Health Legislation Amendment Bill 2025. There is nothing more important than our reforms to the mental health system. No other jurisdiction in Australia is doing as much to reform the mental health system as Victoria. We are building a system that works for every Victorian, no matter where they live. We have already delivered significant reforms to grow the workforce, deliver new acute beds and services and improve infrastructure and importantly embed those with lived and living experience in all of our work. This bill is part of a suite of reform work and will amend the Mental Health and Wellbeing Act 2022 to transfer the functions of the Forensic Leave Panel to the Mental Health Tribunal to ensure that 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.

Whilst a number of speakers before me have touched on the bill’s function, I would also like to highlight the work that has been ongoing in this space and speak to the accomplishments of all those involved in bringing around these changes. I would also like to pay tribute to the mental health workers in my electorate of Footscray, who do terrific work, and of course with the new Footscray Hospital due to open in February next year we will have more specialist mental health services and a specialist alcohol and other drugs ward at the new Footscray Hospital, which I know will help people get the care that they need in the best facilities with the terrific health workers we have at Western Health.

I would like to also acknowledge the workers of Cohealth. Cohealth is a tremendous service in my electorate of Footscray, and of course Cohealth had its origins in the clinic established by the late Dr Moss Cass, who was the member for Maribyrnong but also a heart surgeon, and he founded the trade union clinic on Paisley Street in Footscray, which has evolved into Cohealth. Cohealth have some terrific services in Footscray, including a specialist service for people experiencing homelessness, and they provide a power of work to support people with addiction as well, which I know is very important to people in my community – that the people who need help are getting it where they need it. So I would like to extend that acknowledgement to the extraordinary workers of Cohealth.

More than $600 million has been invested to support, retain and grow this crucial workforce, and the mental health workforce has grown by 25 per cent. We have delivered more than 170 acute beds for adults, young people, women and older Victorians, including Hospital in the Home beds. We established a Mental Health Capital Renewal Fund, which received a further $10 million in the 2025–26 budget. The commission said that we needed a dedicated hub in each region, and we have gone further: six alcohol and other drug, drug and mental health hubs are already operational around the state, with two more to open, including in my electorate of Footscray, over the coming year. More than $140 million has been delivered to put consumers and carers front and centre, and we are delivering a lived experience leadership strategy. I have spoken in this place previously about one of my friends who works as a lived experience worker, and I know that the work has been transformative for him as well as for the patients he cares for.

We have delivered 15 locals across 17 locations, with more than seven to come this year, and we have supported over 27,000 Victorians with free and easy-to-access mental health care and support close to home without needing a GP referral or a Medicare card. We have expanded multidisciplinary social and emotional wellbeing teams to Aboriginal community controlled health organisations across Victoria and awarded 63 scholarships to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students undertaking undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications in mental health related disciplines.

The 2024–25 budget included $34.5 million to continue our network of mental health and wellbeing locals and to expand into those seven additional locations. Our 15 locals have supported over 27,000 Victorians to access free mental health care and support close to home. Sometimes taking away those barriers, like needing a GP referral or meeting particular eligibility criteria, is just what someone needs to get access to the help that they require. The first six locals commenced in October 2022 in Benalla, Wangaratta, Mansfield, Latrobe, Frankston, Greater Geelong, Brimbank and Whittlesea, which are all offering a service for people who walk through the front door. The second tranche of locals commenced in December 2023, with services available at Bendigo, Echuca, Dandenong, Lilydale and Mildura; in your electorate, Acting Speaker O’Keeffe, of Shepparton; and in Bairnsdale and Orbost. The seven new locals will be in the LGAs of Cardinia, Darebin, Maribyrnong, Maroondah, Port Phillip, Wyndham and Mount Alexander, and I am really pleased that Cohealth, who I spoke about before, have been provided the contract to operate the one in Maribyrnong. That will complement the work we are doing and the investment we made in this year’s budget for Salvation Army workers to support people experiencing homelessness and alcohol and other drug related issues in central Footscray.

The royal commission was very clear about the important role of the lived-experience workforce in our mental health and wellbeing system, which is why since 2020–21 we have invested more than $51 million in programs to provide education and training, career pathways and practice supports for our lived-experience workforce – investments being used to grow and develop the peer workforce to offer critical, safe and appropriate supports from people who have walked in the same shoes as those accessing the services. That includes a peer cadet program that has seen community mental health organisations support 75 consumer and family carer peer support workers to enter the workforce, the lived- and living-experience workforce development program, and we have had 68 leadership development grants and over 50 tertiary scholarships to develop emerging and established leaders in the workforce. We know that the lived-experience workforce is uniquely placed to provide specialist care and support to consumers in the mental health and wellbeing system, which is why we have backed them with nation-leading investment.

Our reforms as a government to mental health have been prompted by the royal commission that we held into mental health in Victoria, and the transformation of the mental health system is going to be hard and long policy reform and work. But for every person experiencing a mental illness or for every person who cares for someone with a mental illness, this reform work is crucially important. I am very proud to be part of a government that is undertaking this important work in our mental health system, and I commend the bill to the house.

 Annabelle CLEELAND (Euroa) (15:04): I also 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 a 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. This bill does four main things. First, as we have heard throughout the day, 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 supported 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 place, the question is not whether the system looks better on paper, it is whether it works for people when they are most in need of help. Acting Speaker O’Keefe, like your electorate of Shepparton, across my electorate of Euroa – from Benalla to Broadford, Euroa to Heathcote – people are telling me the same thing: help is harder than ever to find right now. In most communities psychologists are no longer able to take new patients at all, and support services can have more than a six-month waitlist. If you have ever supported a person through a crisis, you know that it is then and there only when you need help – not in six months. It just makes things so much worse.

Farmers, like so many people across regional Victoria, are still struggling through drought-related stresses with no local mental health outreach available. Carers are burning out because they cannot get respite support. In Kilmore a mother recently shared her story with me. Her adult son was in crisis – suicidal, distressed and unable to access care. The earliest psychiatric appointment was 14 weeks away, and when she asked what to do in the meantime, she was told to present at the emergency department if he became a danger to himself. That is not a health system responding with compassion or urgency; that is a system breaking under the weight of Victoria’s mental health challenges.

The Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System made it clear that police should not be the first responders to a mental health crisis. Yet in 2023 the government walked back its commitment to a health-led model, and we are back to police being called out to crises that should be met with clinical care. The clinical care element is so important to anyone that you speak to in this space. In towns like Seymour and Benalla our local police are doing everything that they can, and I thank them from the bottom of my heart, but they are not trained mental health clinicians. They should not be the ones making life-and-death decisions about someone in psychological distress. Mental health is not a police problem.

Ambulance Victoria is also struggling. Crews are stretched thin. We see that every single day in the news and we hear it every single day in our office. Waiting times are growing, and paramedics are telling me that without proper backup from community mental health teams they are left feeling helpless. The government talks about rolling out mental health and wellbeing locals, but in regional areas these services have been quietly delayed or abandoned altogether. My wonderful and compassionate team in my Benalla office see this every day firsthand. When people are unable to get a scheduled appointment at the neighbouring mental health local, they turn to us in crisis. I recently heard from a woman in Benalla whose story keeps me awake at night. Her raw words resonate. She is living with chronic illness, neurological complications and the trauma of long-term family violence. She has moved around Victoria trying to find safety, but every time she is met with the same barriers – a health system too hard to navigate and too ready to give up on her. She told me she can barely leave the house because of pain and injury. She has been dismissed by doctors, told her problems were mental, given a new prescription every time and then sent home. She tried to access disability support, but the process was so complex she gave up. She cannot afford private care. She is living on JobSeeker in her mother’s lounge room and is terrified about what will happen if she gets more unwell and more sick.

It was her honesty that struck me. She said, ‘I don’t want to die. I just don’t know what else to do.’ That is what it is like when a system fails someone – when someone who has done everything right still cannot get help, who has put their hand out for help repeatedly and has been ignored or had barriers put in place and they cannot get housing and they cannot find safety. Her story is not rare. It is so common – it is heartbreakingly common. She is the human face of this crisis.

In this bill there is a proposal to abolish the Forensic Leave Panel and shift responsibility to the Mental Health Tribunal. It sounds like an efficient measure, but it does raise important concerns about oversight and community safety. Last week a forensic patient on leave from Thomas Embling Hospital went missing for two days and was later involved in a violent incident. We heard that from our amazing shadow minister at the table, who has been such a huge advocate in this space, and I am so grateful I will just keep complimenting him. But I am grateful, in honesty, for his advocacy for mental health access in regional Victoria, because we have geographic barriers that are so extreme and so ignored by this government. I am so appreciative of the voice that he has had in this place.

Going back to the bill, this removal means that decisions about leave will rest solely within the Mental Health Tribunal. This is a body under enormous strain already. The bill also introduces new information sharing arrangements to support Victoria’s new electronic mental health and wellbeing information system. I will skip back to some of my local stories because I think that they are the voices that we have to bring into this place. What are the practicalities and what is the impact when legislation goes wrong? And also what is the impact when legislation goes right? Where can we help and where do we have to focus our attention? I recently met with some of our frontline staff at our region’s major hospitals, and they have described the exhaustion they face as services are stretched beyond capacity. Patients are being discharged early because there simply are not enough beds. There are some cases of patients in absolute crisis waiting more than 10 hours to see someone in emergency. In Broadford a farmer told me that during the last dry season a few months ago the hardest part was not the financial strain, it was the loneliness. And in Euroa a young mum described watching her partner deteriorate while waiting for care. She said, ‘It feels like the system just forgets about you once you drive past Wallan.’

These are not isolated experiences. I want to highlight the challenges our farmers continue to face. While it has rained and the grass is green, it is far from over when it comes to the pressure of this drought period. I caught up with local police in Euroa and we spoke about the heartbreak in our region. Three men – three good men – great fathers, brothers, friends, all farmers and all gone. And the police asked, ‘Is it the drought? Is it the financial pressures?’ The emergency services tax was really taking a toll at the time, and it continues, and there were the endless waits in our emergency departments. I do not know, and I said that I think it is none of them but I think it is all of them. I think it is the layer upon layer when you cannot see through the darkness, and when you reach out for help it is not there. It is when the weight piles up so high that the light at the end of the tunnel fades. And when the light goes out, sometimes you cannot find your way through on your own. And that is why the work of Leading Senior Constable Lucas Paul from Euroa police matters so much. Lucas has been instrumental in bringing a blue tree to Euroa – a simple but powerful symbol of hope painted to remind us that it is okay not to be okay and that no-one should face that darkness alone. And then there is Ivan Lister – I have mentioned his name before; he is a living angel. Ivan has spent years visiting farmers across our region, sitting at tables, walking through paddocks, holding the hands of brave men who have reached out for help. And as they take those first difficult steps towards getting help, he turns up with compassion and time, and in doing so he has saved lives. He has supported 20 referrals in the last couple of months. It is people like Ivan and Lucas who remind us that real change does not always come from policy, it comes from kindness and showing up.

 Lily D’AMBROSIO (Mill Park – Minister for Climate Action, Minister for Energy and Resources, Minister for the State Electricity Commission) (15:14): I move:

That the debate be now adjourned.

Motion agreed to and debate adjourned.

Ordered that debate be adjourned until later this day.