Thursday, 10 December 2020

Broadmeadows electorate mental health funding

Mr McGUIRE (Broadmeadows) (17:27): (5358) My adjournment request is to the Minister for Mental Health. The action I seek is an update on the state budget’s investments in the electorate of Broadmeadows for what has been defined as a shadow pandemic—mental health. This is in response to the broken system, to the royal commission and to a whole host of different initiatives in this outstanding budget.

One of the initiatives is called HOPE—hospital outreach post-suicidal engagement—and Broadmeadows will help to provide this. It is part of a statewide rollout of services for mental health so individuals can rebuild their lives. This investment is $20 million, but it will become part of a whole series of other investments as the Victorian government begins to rebuild our mental health system. Part of that is for the Victorian Collaborative Centre for Mental Health and Wellbeing—a new centre dedicated to bringing together the experts in our entire system, from researchers to academics and those who have experienced mental health issues firsthand. There is another $16 million to help Victorians with new training positions, education and opportunities for employment and even further funding to connect all of this up into better positions for graduate nurses, postgraduate mental health nursing scholarships and better rotations of junior medical officers and psychiatrists as well.

This is an incredible collaboration, and I would like to connect this up to what we are trying to do in Broadmeadows through the comeback strategy to coordinate world-leading practice with major institutions, to harness technology and to drive grassroots benefits. We are trying to anchor this on a new virtual hospital delivering health care at home atop a redeveloped Broadmeadows Hospital for acute care and then to have a collaboration with the Kangan Institute to get all the training and everything done as well.

What we are all looking for I guess is also the vaccine. CSL in Broadmeadows is working on that as we speak to produce that. It is the hope that we have to overcome this virus that has been virulent and grown into a pandemic, to get us to where I think we all want to be for a whole new year and to defeat the virus through the vaccine.

I want to leave this year using the words of William Butler Yeats:

Joy is of the will which labours, which overcomes obstacles, which knows triumph.

And I think that is where we want to be for next year. I wish everybody a happy new year and a great time—and see you next year.