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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-02-23 Daily Xml
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SUICIDE PREVENTION

The Hon. J.S.L. DAWKINS (16:10): I move:

That this council notes:

1. The Senate's Community Affairs References Committee Report titled 'The Hidden Toll: Suicide in Australia';

2. That this committee recommended a suicide prevention and awareness campaign for high risk groups, such as people in rural and remote areas;

3. That this committee also recommended that additional 'gatekeeper' suicide awareness and risk assessment training be directed to people living in regional, rural and remote areas;

4. That both the World Health Organisation and the International Association for Suicide Prevention have advocated a multi-faceted approach to suicide prevention, including recognising the important role that community based organisations can play in preventing suicide;

and

5. Congratulates the Eyre Peninsula Local Government Association and the Eyre Peninsula Division of General Practice for seizing the initiative and providing funding to establish its own Community Response to Eliminating Suicide program on the Eyre Peninsula; and

6. Urges the Rann government to place greater emphasis on community based organisations such as the Community Response to Eliminating Suicide program and acknowledges their importance, particularly in preventing suicide in regional South Australia.

In 2006, I became aware of the Community Response to Eliminating Suicide (CORES) initiative, which featured late that year on ABC's Landline. In early 2007, I visited Sheffield in Tasmania to see the CORES scheme operating and was very impressed with my observations. CORES was established in the Tasmanian municipality of Kentish in 2003-04 in response to a situation where a local government area of 5,500 people over three or four localities—two larger ones and a number of smaller ones—had experienced six suicides in one year. Funding was provided from the Tasmanian Community Fund, which was established in 1999 with the sale of the Trust Bank.

From humble beginnings, CORES has quickly spread throughout Tasmania and, currently, 12 separate CORES groups operate in regional areas of that state. In addition, CORES has programs running in regional Victoria and North Queensland. I was privileged last year to visit two of the programs running—in Ayr and Ingham, in sugarcane country—and also to see the moves being made to establish a CORES program in the city of Townsville. Recent events in that part of the country would have, I think, exacerbated some of the pressures on the community that saw these programs initiated in the first place.

South Australia has one CORES program running on Eyre Peninsula and that, of course, has only happened because the Eyre Peninsula Local Government Association saw the need for it. They saw that other programs did not fill that need and they put money into it. It is worth saying that the Liberal party outlined the policy before the last election, providing $350,000 in seed funding for 10 of these programs across South Australia. This is still our policy and it is a policy designed around giving seed funding to small community groups that can get on and get the work done and identify the people in their communities who can be the gatekeepers, as such.

As I said, in the absence of funding from the Rann government for the CORES program, the Eyre Peninsula Local Government Association announced in 2009 that it would fund the program independently for one year as a trial. After the success of that first year, the EPLGA extended its funding support along with the Eyre Peninsula Division of General Practice. I was very pleased that the doctors in Eyre Peninsula saw what a good opportunity this was for them to have some assistance in dealing with mental health issues in such a large region which is sparsely populated and where a lot of people do not have ready access to a medical practitioner.

It is also worth commenting, I think, that in all of these areas that I have been to and seen the CORES program operating and in a number of other areas that I think would be very keen to get more community-based suicide prevention schemes running, while money is welcome to get these things up and running, if you do not have the local people prepared to commit their time to drive the program, then it is not going to work.

It is not going to have the impact that we would like it to, and I pay tribute to those people, particularly Ms Karen Burrows on the Eyre Peninsula from the District Council of Elliston (formerly a councillor with that council) and a number of other people including Ms Diana Laube, the Executive Officer of the EPLGA, who have driven the program on Eyre Peninsula. A number of other people have given their time voluntarily to make it work.

Late last year I wrote an article, which was published in several agricultural and regional papers, advocating greater action to prevent suicide, including the need to provide greater support to groups such as CORES whose trained volunteers are as recognisable in their local communities as CFS volunteers or members of Lions or Rotary or the local football club. These people are the gatekeepers that the Senate committee report talked about.

I was inspired to write the article because of a feeling I was getting from many people I spoke to in regional communities, particularly from grain farmers who were left extremely disappointed in that year's harvest, primarily because of such high expectations early in the season which were dashed when Mother Nature struck and wiped out an estimated $300 million from crop values across the state.

At that point I should say that there are many people who have been involved in primary production, particularly in dryland farming, and where there is a dry year probably it is fairly early in the piece that you get a fair idea that your income is going to be pretty tight that year and you can cut your cloth to fit that. However, in a year where expectations were so high, a lot of people who had been in difficulty for a while and could anticipate being able to pay off debt, to perhaps purchase some machinery or a motor car or something that they had not been able to do for some time, suddenly had their hopes dashed.

I think that is far worse than when you know for several months that the year is going to be pretty tight. For that reason there are significant concerns about the mental health of a lot of people on the land, and not only on the land. I think in many communities it goes into other related businesses where the pressures have been pretty tight.

I continue to be a passionate advocate for greater community involvement in a multifaceted approach to suicide prevention. To this end I strongly believe that more needs to be done if we are to decrease the number of completed suicides. Government has a role in this, not only by supporting front-line health services but also indirectly by funding community or not-for-profit organisations to act as gatekeepers.

A stronger community presence has been advocated by the World Health Organisation, the International Association for Suicide Prevention and, recently, by the community affairs Senate committee. I was having another look at this report earlier, and it is a significant document that does, as I state in my motion, describe the hidden toll of suicide in Australia. I commend the Senate committee for the work it did there.

On 21 July last year the South Australian Coroner, Mr Mark Johns, penned an opinion article for The Advertiser, titled 'We need to talk about suicide'. In it Mr Johns states:

The road toll is subject of enormous scrutiny in the media, and so it should be. But the suicide rate in this state is probably double the road toll, and yet as a subject it is not given anything like the same attention…If the suicide toll in this state were reported in the same way as the road toll (and this may not be possible for a number of reasons), people might be inclined to consider their friends and loved ones and work colleagues in a different way: Has something changed in their behaviour lately that might indicate that they are so deeply unhappy that they might be thinking of self harm?

Whilst any road fatality is a tragedy, when you compare the amount of money spent on public awareness campaigns to reduce the road toll versus the level of resources dedicated to preventing suicide the disparity is quite alarming, especially as the suicide toll in South Australia is about double the road toll.

In the time that I have been advocating the CORES program, I have taken it to three ministers for mental health; the first one was not very complimentary about my efforts, but the subsequent two have promised to look at it.

The Hon. R.I. Lucas interjecting:

The Hon. J.S.L. DAWKINS: Well, the minister in this place called me a disgrace. However, the subsequent ministers both promised to look at it, but looking at it has not done anything. Nothing has happened.

It is a very simple thing. For a very small amount of money, I think a number of areas in this state would have local groups that would very quickly accept the challenge of establishing a CORES program in their region. They would go out and seek the 'gatekeepers', as I describe those who are prepared to give their time to act in the community as people who are trusted by those who have mental health issues and who want to talk to someone, but who will not talk to their loved ones or a medical professional. They certainly will not talk to their bank manager, but if there is someone else in the community who they see as being an advocate for suicide prevention and mental health in general, they will talk to those people and will allow them to point them in the right direction.

I am enthused about the fact that in the next couple of weeks I am going to Mount Gambier, and the director of CORES will speak at a meeting there. There is a significant amount of concern about suicide, and particularly youth suicide, in that part of South Australia, and I am hoping that we can get something happening there. It is all very well to ask local communities to do this, but I think for a very small amount of money, and considerably less than what is supposedly being directed into mental health, to be put into community groups playing the role at the local level would be a great thing for this state.

I appreciate the time that I have been given to move this motion, and I commend it to the house. I seek the support of members in presenting this to the government and urging the government to do more in the community in relation to suicide prevention.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. J.M. Gazzola.

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