Thursday, 4 August 2022

Lifeline Gippsland

Ms BATH (Eastern Victoria) (10:41): Next year Lifeline Gippsland celebrates 60 years of serving the community. Last week Shadow Minister for Mental Health Emma Kealy, the Nationals candidate for the seat of Morwell, Martin Cameron, and I sat with CEO Michelle Possingham to listen to where they are at in Gippsland. Lifeline certainly did the bulk of the heavy lifting during COVID and the COVID lockdowns, with a 45 per cent increase in calls throughout that period of time. Gippsland Lifeline have 75 dedicated volunteers, but they need many more, and this is a drive to encourage people to become world-class volunteers for Lifeline. The op shops that play an amazing role in servicing and providing that revenue raising for Lifeline have been under the pump during the lockdowns as well.

Michelle said it has been a privilege to be involved in an organisation which saves lives. No-one should go through their darkest moments alone, and we endorse all the work that Michelle does and all of her fabulous staff and volunteers do. They receive quite a pittance from the Andrews government—$150 000 a year—but receive around 11 000 calls. We have also lost two mental health providers this last week in Gippsland, and the money raised from the Mental Health and Wellbeing Bill 2022 must go to service providers, not just to funding the costs of departments and infrastructure in Melbourne.