Wednesday, 18 June 2025

 Rikkie-Lee TYRRELL (Northern Victoria) (12:13): (953) My question today is for the Minister for Mental Health. Kids Helpline is Australia’s only free online and phone counselling service for young people aged five to 25 years old. It is delivered by charity organisation Yourtown. In 2024 the Kids Helpline responded to over 130,000 calls from across Australia, with 18 per cent of those calls coming from Victoria. It has been reported that Yourtown requested funding from the Victorian government for the 2025–26 financial year to help meet the increasing demand for the service. Can the minister please confirm Kids Helpline requested $4.4 million from the government before the delivery of the 2024–25 state budget?

 Ingrid STITT (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Mental Health, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (12:14): I thank Mrs Tyrrell for her question. It is an important issue. I know in regional Victoria in particular having suicide prevention and mental health supports is incredibly important for the community, whether that is dealing with significant emergency situations and the debate that we have been having in this place today around drought or whether that is more generally because of other issues to do with mental health and wellbeing. Of course there were important recommendations contained in the royal commission’s final report around making sure that we were looking at consolidating and supporting the important mental health support lines that exist. There are a number of those that the Victorian government continues to fund, including Lifeline. In relation to Kids Helpline, this is an organisation that is predominantly supported through the Commonwealth government, but I do want to acknowledge that they do play a particular role and obviously support a particular cohort of young people.

I want to also make it clear that the Victorian government works closely with the Commonwealth on all of our mental health reforms, including most recently at a ministers meeting. We agreed that young people would be a key focus for our investment and reform work at both Commonwealth and state and territory levels. In Victoria we are doing some important work to increase services available for young people, particularly in regional Victoria, including youth prevention and recovery centres. We will be building one of those in each of our regions, which includes five new centres. That is a $141 million investment.

We have also done significant work to ensure that our school system has mental health supports embedded within each of those state schools, including $200 million for a mental health fund and menu, which was designed by taking from all of the great lessons out of the early childhood program and system. They are important services that are available for children and their families through the school system, and the Allan Labor government is very proud to continue to support that.

We have a number of other suicide prevention initiatives. We have recently released our suicide prevention strategy, and all of this goes to complement those other important services such as Kids Helpline, Lifeline and other phone lines that support Victorians.

 Rikkie-Lee TYRRELL (Northern Victoria) (12:17): I thank the minister for her reply. Kids Helpline estimates that around 40 per cent of calls from young people in distress go unanswered due to limited resources. The Western Australia, Queensland and New South Wales governments, as well as the federal government, all provided funding to Kids Helpline, with the New South Wales Labor government announcing in November last year a funding investment of $17.1 million. Can the minister explain why Victoria does not value the important work of the Kids Helpline as much as other states?

 Ingrid STITT (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Mental Health, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (12:18): I do not accept the premise of that supplementary question. In my substantive answer I did acknowledge the really important work that Kids Helpline do, and they are a very respected organisation right across the country. There are many examples of where different states and territories make different contributions to different services, and Victoria is probably, I would argue on the evidence and on the facts, providing more investment and doing more in mental health reform than any other jurisdiction in the country. We will continue of course proudly to work with the Commonwealth, who are also investing in important services for mental health supports for all Australians, and we will work cooperatively across jurisdictions. But to suggest that we do not really value the work of this organisation is misleading.