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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
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COMMUNITY AFFAIRS REFERENCE COMMITTEE REPORT

Adjourned debate on motion of Hon. J.S.L. Dawkins:

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—

(Continued from 23 February 2011.)

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (20:21): The Greens rise to support this motion this evening, put before us by the Hon. John Dawkins. We are particularly attracted to it as it highlights both the scourge of suicide in our regions and also the role that community and non-government organisations have to play in addressing this very serious issue. Members would be aware that suicide is, in fact, the leading cause of death for men and women under the age of 34 years.

There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that non-heterosexual people (same-sex attracted people) particularly experience greater levels of anxiety and depression than their heterosexual peers and they are, indeed, at greater risk of suicide and self-harm. The Greens highlight that, particularly in rural areas, homosexual people suffer the stigma and discrimination that can lead to such high statistics, which should be of concern to us all and which show that, in fact, gay youth face extreme physical and verbal abuse, rejection and isolation from family and peers.

They often feel totally alone and socially withdrawn out of fear of adverse consequences. As a result of these pressures that they are more vulnerable than other youth to psychosocial problems including substance abuse, chronic depression, school failure, early relationship conflicts, being forced to leave their families and, of course, their towns, and having to survive on their own prematurely. Each of these problems, in fact, presents a risk factor for suicidal feelings and, indeed, suicide, particularly among gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual youth.

I would like to highlight that part of the jigsaw puzzle that we should be very mindful of when looking at issues of suicide in our regions. I would hope that this committee will pay some heed to that. Having worked for a mental health organisation that represented non-government organisations, I am a firm advocate that mental health is an issue for all of us. We all have mental health and some of us will experience mental illness.

It is estimated that approximately one in five of us every year will have some sort of mental illness or an episode. Almost half of us in our lifetime will have some experience of it. There is no doubt, I think, that all of us will know of somebody (if not ourselves we will know somebody who is family, a friend or a loved one) who has had some sort of mental illness issues. It has been long held to be the Cinderella of health issues. Mental health has not been out in the open for a very long time.

We are only coming to terms with, in fact, the language and descriptions for mental illness and the understanding of mental illness, and getting rid of some of the stigma is a vital piece of the puzzle. As I say, the Greens will be supporting this committee. We commend the Hon. John Dawkins for putting it before us, and we look forward to the debate and, I understand, a proposed amendment from the government which we are happy to address when it comes up.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: I move:

Paragraph 6—Leave out this paragraph and insert new paragraph 6 as follows:

6. That the government notes that effective suicide prevention awareness is best delivered through collaborative partnerships, including through local communities, non-government organisations, public health services and primary care health practitioners.

At the outset, I apologise to honourable members for the lateness of the delivery of the amendment. There is no explanation for it being late. I cannot offer up any excuse, and I apologise on behalf of government members.

The reason for the amendment is that evidence suggests that effective suicide prevention is dependent on more than one program and must be delivered as a collaboration between local communities, non-government organisations, public mental health services and primary care health practitioners.

The South Australian suicide prevention strategy currently in development will evaluate existing suicide programs and services across Australia and make recommendations for their inclusion to the South Australian model. The amendment is a minor one. It replaces 'urge' with 'notes' and instead of focusing on just community solutions, it talks about the collaboration of community, public organisations, NGOs, etc. It is not a major amendment; we will not die in a ditch over it, as the Hon. Mr Dawkins knows, but we think it makes the motion a little more accurate.

The Senate Community References Committee Report, The Hidden Toll: Suicide in Australia, highlights the significant personal, social and economic costs of suicide in our community. The report also specifically highlights the importance of suicide prevention initiatives, particularly those targeted at high risk groups, and emphasises the need for increased coordination and funding of suicide prevention programs in Australia.

People in rural and remote communities are at an increased risk of suicide. The rate of suicide in rural areas is 20 to 30 per cent higher than in the metropolitan area. The reasons for this appear to be complex, but there is understood to be a significant relationship between the higher rate of suicide and factors such as: geographic isolation, current economic challenges, the pressures associated with drought and other environmental conditions, difficulties in accessing mental health care, a traditional reluctance to talk about mental health problems or to seek help, and increased access to means of suicide, such as pesticides and firearms, amongst other factors.

There is also the issue of homophobia, which in rural and regional areas of the state creates significant social isolation and discrimination for gay and lesbian youth. The effects of suicide in all communities are profound and far-reaching, and we recognise the importance of encouraging suicide prevention initiatives in our country communities.

The government of South Australia notes that effective suicide prevention and postvention awareness, training and services are delivered through collaborative partnerships between local communities, public mental health services, non-government organisations, primary health care services and private practitioners.

Community-based initiatives play an important role in suicide prevention, raising awareness and providing the knowledge, skills and training needed to support people at risk of suicide. We are particularly pleased to note that the honourable member has included a reference to the Eyre Peninsula Local Government Association and the Eyre Peninsula Division of General Practice. They are to be commended for their efforts in supporting suicide prevention in their local communities.

SA Health currently supports a range of suicide prevention programs across South Australia. These include SQUARE (Suicide QUestions, Answers and REsources), Mental Health First Aid, ASCEND (Centacare's suicide prevention program for young people), beyondblue and partnerships with the commonwealth and non-government organisations for statewide postvention services, health promotion for Aboriginal men and suicide awareness of the elderly.

The SQUARE program incorporates all of the elements of the CORES (Community Responses to Eliminating Suicide) program with several additional ones. CORES focuses on education to local communities, while SQUARE is a broader educational and practice resource for primary care, specialist and community settings, with specific resources for settings including: community, forensic, in-patient, emergency department, community mental health, mental health in-patient, and primary care and general practice.

SA Health will be reviewing the effectiveness of all current prevention strategies, including those in country South Australia, as part of the development of the South Australian prevention framework this year. We commend the Hon. Mr Dawkins for introducing this motion.

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE (20:29): On behalf of Family First, I rise to support this important motion by the Hon. John Dawkins and put on the public record our congratulations on his being bold enough to put this motion forward. I should also acknowledge at this point Ian Henschke and his team at the ABC. John and I—and I am sure others—have been on the ABC in recent weeks talking about the issues around suicide. That is groundbreaking, because this is a tough area to talk on. In the 15 or 16 years I have been here, traditionally MPs and media do not talk about it and it is just kept quiet, but clearly, with what we are experiencing now, this is a time not to be quiet but a time to be proactive in the interests of the prevention of suicide.

The Senate's Community Affairs References Committee report made a number of important recommendations. Rural and regional communities have been hard hit by drought. Old and young, some of them just through absolute desperation, have had their character and strength of character tested to the limit. Sadly, we see not only in the city but, I believe on the information we have, a very large and strong increase in suicide in rural and regional communities.

As part of the work we were doing on this, I did an FOI to the health department. Since then in my own area on the Fleurieu Peninsula there have been reports of multiple tragic suicides, particularly by young people. I do not want to go into the details for obvious reasons, but one in particular in recent weeks was very close to two of my own children. It is gut-wrenching when this occurs, but unfortunately—and it worries me—there is no tracking, mapping or intergovernmental relationships between departments to try to get a better handle on what is happening.

Not in my own area in which I live, but in another rural area a constituent said to me that they were concerned about what they were hearing anecdotally and what they knew as absolute in their own area, and they asked whether I could find out what the health department was doing regarding tracking of the issues around suicide. I have real concern that when I did the FOI to the health department it came back saying, 'No documentation available.' That was not because it was in cabinet or anything like that but, as I understand it, because—believe it or not—the largest portfolio area in the state, the health department, did not map and track incidents of suicide across the state.

I acknowledge that the report from the Senate committee in chapter 3 says, on reporting on statistics, that it is difficult to collect such statistics. I am not blaming the government for this, but I am seeking an update on what the government—and state and territory governments generally—are doing in relation to recommendations 2 to 7 of the report that is subject to this motion of the Hon. John Dawkins.

In one of the few references in the Senate report to activity in South Australia, Coroner Mark Johns is quoted. The Coroner, Mark Johns, actually came onto Ian Henschke's program and was very passionate, straightforward and honest about his concerns with respect to issues around suicide in this state. He was asked to estimate what may be occurring with respect to annual suicides in this state, and he related it to a comparison with fatalities on the roads, that is how big it is—it is enormous.

He went on to say that there has been a concerted effort and benefit to the state with what we have done with our road toll, but he was trying to imply that he believed, as Coroner, that much more effort should be going into focussing on suicide. Coroner Johns said, 'No way in South Australia we are accurately recording all the suicides that occur.' I know we are all concerned about the copycat argument, and I have said that we should keep confidential the hardcore statistics, but surely SAPOL, health, mental health and those agencies should know what is going on and should talk and work with each other to prevent these enormous tragedies.

I ask the government to advise what it is going to do about working on data collection—in fact, its response to the whole report and not just select parts—so that those things that may not on the face of it affect rural and regional communities can be drilled into with much more detail. I call upon the government today to adopt a six-monthly, self-reporting process on state aspects of this Senate report. It has done it with the Mullighan report, and I think it would be very helpful to the parliament and the community if we were to see a six-monthly reporting process. Even though there have been some problems with the Mullighan progress reporting, at least it does give us a chance as a parliament to raise issues around the Mullighan report.

I have said it already, but I do acknowledge that the South Australian government, the State Coroner Mark Johns and the South Australia Police made submissions to the inquiry and, furthermore, the South Australian government did appear at the May 2010 hearings in Adelaide through the former health chief executive officer Dr Tony Sherbon and Dr Margaret Honeyman, Director, Mental Health Policy and the Chief Advisor in Psychiatry, Mental Health Unit. I give credit that the South Australian government and the National Suicide Prevention program (a program implemented by Relationships SA and the SA Division of General Practice) have jointly funded a toolkit for doctors and other primary care clinicians to identify suicidal situations, and to have a Q&A and resource program. This is something I found out through the Senate report and not through the government's own statements about the program. In fact, that was the only South Australian matter the Senate committee deemed noteworthy, other than Coroner Mark Johns' statement, to include in the report overall.

I want to be brief. I do not want to politicise this. I want to see this as multi-partisanship—and I am sure that it is—but when some of us asked questions of the minister representing the Minister for Health in this chamber—and the minister is not in this chamber at the moment—I was quite sad about a point the minister made, and I just want to put this in context. It was petty point made by the minister representing the Minister for Health during question time, when I gave credit to the Hon. John Dawkins for his advocacy on suicide issues.

There is nothing wrong with giving credit to individual members of parliament who have a genuine commitment and passion for anything. I mean, it is a healthy thing to do, but unfortunately—and I was not being political at all—the minister claimed that I was not giving credit to the government for its efforts. The first thing I did to recall what the government is doing was to think back on what it has said in this place. I cannot to be expected to trawl through the government's websites and media releases, or to monitor Twitter, but my staff and I did look through Hansard since the start of 2010. We are now in April 2011, so that is 16 months. I did not go back any further, but I can reveal to the chamber that, since 2010, not one person representing the government has said anything on suicide either in this place or in the other place.

There have been ministerial statements on a host of matters that some of us might consider of lesser importance than the issue of suicide and I would have thought that, if the government had a major concern about suicide, then it would be informing this place and the other place in a multipartisan, non-political way by advising us what it is doing about it. There are concerns raised by almost everyone from the crossbenches and some from the opposition. I stand to be corrected if the government can show me where it has spoken about suicide in the last 15 months, and I will apologise.

A search of government media releases reveals nothing has been issued in the form of statements about suicide since former minister Lomax-Smith in October 2009 marked the honouring of a lady for her sensitive pieces in a particular media release and she was given the Margaret Tobin award for work in her local community. Nothing has been said since. I acknowledge that reporting and working on suicide in the public area and media is difficult, as I said earlier, but in the best interest of our community we need to support the Hon. John Dawkins, the government and anybody and everybody who is prepared to show some leadership on what I have discovered is of great concern to the public.

Once this started to come out in the media, I had responses from people saying, 'Thank goodness that someone is now starting to raise these issues publicly'—not me, but Ian Henschke, John Dawkins and others—'because there is a silent cry for help from a lot of people in the community.' I welcome a change of approach. As I said in my question, it would be good to see regular updates from the government and the health department to MPs on suicide prevention and postvention, which is another area of concern to me Members of parliament, I believe, have an important role as advocates for people who are sometimes desperate. As representatives of local communities, the maximum resources and information to communities ought to be distributed in a nonpartisan way.

I ask that the government, at some time in the future, calls a briefing for members of parliament to talk about what strategies it has already implemented and what it is considering implementing. I will finish with this point, because I know there is an amendment in relation to it. The Hon. John Dawkins, in his motion, talks about CORES (Community Response to Eliminating Suicide). I did not even know this until we started to debate it. So, this shows that I have not been responsible enough in my own office in talking about this in detail, but my adviser has actually done the CORES program, and he told me that it was extremely beneficial to him, because he deals with a lot of the community.

I have to confess that I am concerned and worried about how I can try identify where there may be tell-tale signs, if there are any at all, although I know that it is not always easy. From what I have heard, read and been briefed on, I think that CORES is a program we should be looking at here. Just because a department did not come up with it does not mean that it is not good.

I said to someone earlier today that, when I was a government member, I had enormous frustration because there was a program called Keep Safe, Stay Cool, and that program is now finally in schools. Keep Safe, Stay Cool was a mentor program where particularly young men but also young women went into schools and worked through bullying and harassment issues. I watched one of the programs and I was briefed on it.

I knew some of the people who volunteered their time but, guess what? The department did not like the program. The only reason I could see why the department did not like it was that it was not its program. I give credit to the former premier, Dean Brown, because when I explained it all to him, he drove the project and overrode the department, and I understand that program is still going today.

So, let's look at good ideas from wherever they come from. With those words, I conclude my remarks by saying that this is a very important issue. Yes, it is sensitive and it is sad and tragic. All of us have touched by it one way or another, I would suggest, and I am pretty confident in saying that. Let's make a concerted effort to ensure that we improve this tragic situation in the future. I commend very strongly the Hon. John Dawkins for his motion.

The Hon. K.L. VINCENT (20:43): I wish to speak in support of the Hon. Mr Dawkins' motion also. I am someone who is acutely aware of the lack of adequate campaigning around mental illness and suicide, both for personal and, obviously, professional reasons. As it is the job of this parliament to work toward addressing important issues which are core to the fabric and functioning of this society, it makes perfect sense to me to inquire into the best way to keep our people safe from suicide.

There are, of course, numerous factors which can lead a person to develop suicidal tendencies, whether they are lifestyle factors or physiological. Either way, I am greatly astounded and confused as to why mental illness, particularly as it is now largely recognised as a disability, is still such a taboo subject. As the Hon. Ms Franks pointed out, one in five Australians will experience some kind of mental illness or depression in their lifetime, yet we still continue to treat this as something foreign or untoward.

As the Hon. Mr Brokenshire said, in an ideal world, we would not have to deal with a motion such as this, but we do not live in an ideal world, so we need to address the issue. As a friend of mine once said to me, 'If you have a heart condition, you take your medication. You seek treatment from a doctor, and there is no shame in that. So, why is seeking treatment for mental illness so different?'—and why should it be?

As the old saying goes, 'The first step toward addressing a problem is admitting that we have one,' and, clearly, if we are losing six Australians per day to suicide, we have a problem. Just like we cannot treat a tumour by ignoring it, we cannot address mental illness by keeping it locked up and hidden away. Therefore, I support the Hon. Mr Dawkins' push for increased campaigning to increase acknowledgement and acceptance of the prevalence of mental illness and suicide in our community.

Of course, this is not going to happen quickly nor easily, particularly because it seems to me that mental illness is currently under fire, so to speak, from two sides: those who experience mental illness and are ashamed or fearful of it, and those have not experienced it yet and are judgemental and dismissive of it. Unless we address the issue from both these sides, campaigning is likely to be limited in effectiveness.

I think that there can be little denying that at least part of the shame which people may feel about their own mental illness might be related to the social environment in which a person lives. For this reason, I commend the Hon. Mr Dawkins for placing particular focus for this motion on the issue of suicide in regional areas. After watching several episodes of the ABC program Landline, which talked about the small regional community of Sheffield which lost at least 10 of its residents to suicide in only three years, I was reminded that mental illness really is more prevalent and more widespread than we perhaps like to believe. As one person interviewed in the program stated: 'It wasn't just young people, it was old people—people from all walks of life.'

Unfortunately, we may never know what caused these people to make the tragic decision they did in ending their lives. One can speculate and say that it could have been boredom arising out of living in regional areas with limited access to entertainment and leisure activities, limited access to employment opportunities, drought, etc. However, what really became clear to me while watching the Landline series was that, despite the close-knit nature of relationships residents of small towns like Sheffield experience, people in regional areas, particularly men, generally speaking do seem to be less likely than average to acknowledge and discuss their depression or suicidal thoughts.

As I said, mental illness is now largely regarded under the disability umbrella, so to speak, as being a part of that, and it is, of course, for that reason a big part of my work in this parliament. I see a high incidence of what we in the community and perhaps elsewhere refer to as 'dual disability', that is, a person perhaps with a physical or intellectual disability, for instance, who also experiences mental illness.

The isolation felt by people in regional areas is also no stranger to me in my work. My office often hears—too often, in fact—from parents and carers of children with disabilities for instance, particularly autism spectrum disorders, living in regional areas. More often than not, the special services which their child requires to live a happy life and to reach their full potential are simply not available in their area, leading to frustration and added pressure on the family, which can be greatly exacerbated when the family is forced to uproot their entire life and move to a city like Adelaide in search of support for their child, only to find that even the services available here are limited. This is a frustration and a pain that I imagine cannot be truly understood by people who are not living it themselves, which may lead the struggling person or family to become even further introverted and shut themselves out from the world around them.

This is why I, like the Hon. Mr Dawkins, acknowledge and commend the work of organisations like CORES, which aim to address mental illness and suicide by arming participants with the tools to talk about mental illness openly, free from judgement or fear of reprimand. By arming more people with this knowledge and by addressing the environmental and/or social contributors to suicide, such as a lack of support services, we can and must bring mental illness out of the dark ages. This is, after all, a long overdue debt which we as a society owe to those living with mental illness and to ourselves, as it is vital to our development as an open, humanitarian and equal society. With these few words, Mr President, I strongly commend the Hon. Mr Dawkins' motion to the house.

The Hon. A. BRESSINGTON (20:49): I will just speak briefly on this. I realise I was not on the paper to speak and I really have not prepared anything, but I want to commend the Hon. John Dawkins for being persistent with his promotion of the program CORES and what that has to offer in educating people about the signs and symptoms and how to deal with people who have suicidal tendencies. We have heard from every member in here about the prevalence of suicide and the different groups that are more likely to fall into the heap of depression and suicidal tendencies. It seems that it is spread across our society, and it knows no bounds.

I want to make the point that it is not just the person who dies who is affected by this; families simply do not recover from a suicide in the family. As a psychologist once told me, suicide is seen by family members as the ultimate rejection by the person who has killed themselves, in that that person did not have enough faith and trust in their family members to share the emotional state they were in and the thoughts they were having. This disables close members of the family, as well, for years and years afterwards, and families are simply never the same again.

I do believe, as the Hon. Robert Brokenshire said, that governments have to accept that there are programs out there that have been used, have been tried and proven and have got results that have not been the brainstorm of a government department. I bring up my own experience with DrugBeat. We have proven for 12 years now that we have a good program with a 98 per cent success rate, yet this government refuses to acknowledge the successes in the reports that we continually put in. I imagine that CORES is pushing the same wagon uphill as well.

As the Hon. Robert Brokenshire said, it was the Hon. Dean Brown who pushed the Keep Safe Stay Cool program. It was also the Hon. Dean Brown who pushed the DrugBeat program and got funding for that; he came out and personally took an interest in that, and spoke to clients. I do not want to politicise this, but it seems that under this Labor government there is a mental or social block to community-based programs and organisations being adequately funded and supported to deliver the vital services they do.

I cannot, for the life of me, understand that. If you have programs that work, why not support them? In the long term the costs have to be minimal compared to ignoring these problems and letting them escalate they way they do. I would also like to say that I thank the Hon. John Dawkins for his persistence on this particular issue. Since I have been in here I think I can recall probably five or six times that this has been raised, either as questions or motions or whatever, and it is time that every member of parliament took an interest in this.

Just to reiterate how bad this is, not only do we have a lack of awareness of the signs and symptoms of people who are contemplating suicide, but out in the community there is almost a desensitisation to people's emotional pain and suffering. This was brought to my attention this week by a very sad case of a 41-year-old man posting his cry for help on Facebook, self-mutilating and screaming out for help, saying, 'No job, no girl, no home, no hope'. He was crying out to people on Facebook to help him, because he did not know where to go to get the sort of help he needed.

The final picture was him with a noose around his neck, and one of the comments on that Facebook page was, 'A new fashion accessory.' So, do we need education about this? Absolutely. Do we need to resensitise the community about the pain and suffering that people are experiencing out there? Absolutely we do. Do we need to make sure that people in this situation know that they can reach out and be treated with the respect and the knowledge that they deserve to pull them out of that black hole and help them through? People can be pulled out of it, they can be helped, and they can move on with their life.

The high statistics regarding men are also a pretty good indication that the old saying, 'Go to Bunnings, buy some wood, build a bridge and get over it,' is an outdated statement that we use in our society so flippantly when we tell somebody that we have no idea. 'Build a bridge and get over it' means be resilient and stand up strong, but perhaps that social attitude also needs to change. Men need to know that it is not weakness, that it is okay to seek the help that they need and that nobody will think any the less of them. I congratulate the Hon. John Dawkins again on bringing this motion to the attention of the chamber. I support it wholeheartedly.

As for the amendment, I will say now that I will not be supporting it. I am not going to shoot the messenger because I know (or suspect) that the Hon. Ian Hunter was put in a very difficult position in having to move the amendment. Perhaps out of this particular situation we can hope that staff members will learn that if they come and speak to members in this chamber about amendments that are going to be moved and why, and try to reason with us, they might get a little bit more cooperation from us in the future. With that, I commend this motion to the house.

The Hon. J.S.L. DAWKINS (20:56): I commence by sincerely thanking the Hon. Tammy Franks, the Hon. Ian Hunter, the Hon. Robert Brokenshire, the Hon. Kelly Vincent and the Hon. Ann Bressington for their heartfelt and sincere contributions. I would also like to thank the other members of this house and, might I say, of the other house who have indicated their support not only for this motion but also for the work I have been doing in the suicide prevention area for a number of years.

When I first started raising these issues more than four years ago in my party room and in the parliament there were some who were uncomfortable with the subject. I think the Hon. Mr Brokenshire referred to the sort of community feeling that we have had for a long time—that it is better not to talk about suicide. I feel that resistance dropping away, and it drops away more and more when people actually have a personal experience or they know someone in that situation. I appreciate the support that I have had, and I hope that the government takes note of this motion if it is accepted tonight.

I will not be accepting the amendment, and in doing so I make no criticism of the Hon. Mr Hunter. The Hon. Mr Hunter is someone who I know has a very good knowledge of the issues around suicide and many other social matters in this state, so I do accept the sincerity of his contribution tonight. I only received the amendment from the minister's office at 10.30 this morning. That was 48 hours after I was advised by the government that there would be an amendment and three weeks after I called for a vote on this day. The fact that the government could only provide me with the wording today at 10.30 I think is pretty ordinary. I do not think that the amendment was provided to any other members of this house, other than myself.

I will make a few comments in relation to the government's response to my motion and its amendment. I think in the speech on behalf of the government the Hon. Mr Hunter referred to my focusing on the CORES program, and he came up with a number of other programs that are operating. I must say that there are many very good programs that deal with mental health and suicide prevention. Recently, I was in Mount Gambier with some people who are proponents of the ReachOut program, which is a very good program on the net for young people aged 14 to 25 with mental health issues. That is a very good program for those people.

I think both the Hon. Ms Vincent and the Hon. Ms Franks—and even the Hon. Ann Bressington, I must say—have raised particular sectors of our community that are very prone to suicide, and I really thank them for that. Having said that, the Hon. Mr Brokenshire obviously comes from a rural background and knows the pressures in the farming sector. So, I think all of the speakers tonight have actually brought a very valuable aspect to the debate.

My motion does not only talk about CORES: it talks about a greater emphasis on community-based organisations, such as CORES. So, I am certainly not specific, and I hope that the government realises that I was not totally specific about CORES. The amendment talks about a collaborative approach. When I read that I thought that if they actually look at the first five clauses of the motion, surely that indicates a collaborative approach. I then noted that in the speech on behalf of the government, the Hon. Mr Hunter actually highlighted the collaborative approach between the Eyre Peninsula Local Government Association and the Eyre Peninsula Division of General Practice in delivering the CORES program to Eyre Peninsula.

Last year, when I was in North Queensland, in sugarcane country, where the CORES program is working very well, they were actually astounded that a division of general practice, being the doctors of the region, would actually work with a group of people like CORES from all walks of life. I think it is a tribute to Eyre Peninsula that they have done that, but it is also a wonderful example of what is a collaborative approach.

The other thing I will always remember in the work I have done on this issue and in dealing with three ministers for mental health—and I might say two of them have promised a review, although I have not seen any results of those reviews at this point; we have had another review promised tonight—is that, in a meeting in a minister's office, a very senior health professional told me, 'You amateurs should keep out of it.' Now, I am an amateur. I am not a professional in mental health. I have not been to university and I have not studied in the area, but I have lived life and I have lived in communities where we see these issues all the time and we see people in need of support. We need to arm people in the community to be able to provide that support and to then point people in the direction of the professionals.

The CORES scheme started in the town of Sheffield, in Tasmania, as mentioned by the Hon. Kelly Vincent. When I went there about four years ago to look at the program, there were only two CORES programs running in the whole country, and both of them were in northern Tasmania. I am very pleased to say that there are now, I think, more than 10 in Tasmania. There are about 20 across the country, and that is a terrific achievement in a very short period of time, with very little government money and largely philanthropic and commercial sector money. One thing I am very pleased to report to this chamber is that in Tasmania now all medical students going through the University of Tasmania are required to do the CORES training, and that is a wonderful thing. It just brings the doctors a bit closer to the community and to those who are dealing with these issues in their locality.

I conclude by saying that only this week I have had two people come to me with varying experiences about severe mental illness and also about suicide. In fact, a staff member within this building came to me with the issue the Hon. Ann Bressington has put on the record tonight. To say it is unpleasant is a great understatement. To see the images I saw and to see on Facebook some of the very flippant reactions to a person's final moments really shocked me. I think my staff realised that I was a bit shocked by that because we were due to have a staff meeting and I was a bit lost for words after that. It does bring home very closely the need for more to be done in this area and more to be done without relying just on professionals.

The focus of this motion has been on rural and regional areas. However, the incident the Hon. Ann Bressington talked about was a suburban one. There are so many people in suburban Adelaide and other large urban areas who have the same issues. Some might say that they do not suffer from isolation. I do a lot of work in the northern suburbs and in my home town of Gawler and other places close to Adelaide, but these people still feel isolated. You can be isolated anywhere if you do not have people in touch with you. So, we should look at suburban areas as well.

The comments by Coroner Mark Johns on ABC radio were mentioned by the Hon. Mr Brokenshire. In my speech in moving this motion on 23 February this year I read out what Mr Johns said, and I would like to do that again as a very good statement in conclusion of this motion, as follows:

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?

Finally, I wish to relate an experience I had in Gawler in the last year or so. I went to speak to a community group and largely I was asked to speak about what I do as a member of parliament, specifically an upper house member of parliament. In doing so, I talked about a couple of the issues and causes that I advanced as a member of parliament, and I started to speak about my work on suicide prevention in relation to CORES. About 30 seconds or a minute into my presentation, I saw a lady in the audience—and there were a lot of people in the audience whom I knew—whose husband had taken his life some 25 years earlier.

You know, you can briefly pause, and I thought, 'Should I continue here?' but I did. I continued, and I spoke about the work of CORES and suicide prevention and intervention generally. At the end of my speech, when we were having supper, a couple of good friends of mine in Gawler came up to me and said, 'Look, we were really worried that you spoke about that in front of this lady,' and I said, 'Yes, I thought about that, but I decided that we need to talk, and we need to go on.'

Very soon after that, the lady concerned came up to me and said, 'I wish you were around when my husband took his life. I wish you were around before, and I wish you were around after he took his life.' She was thrilled that I am doing this work and that others support me, because she has been through it. She said that if her husband had had some support outside the close family, outside a doctor or a bank manager or whatever; if he had had someone like that to talk to, he might still be alive today. That keeps me going, and I will keep going on this for as long as it takes to make sure that we get more community input into suicide prevention in this state. I commend the motion to the house.

Amendment negatived; motion carried.

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