E&OE.
Julian, thank you very much.
Warren, thank you very much for your Welcome to Country and I acknowledge the Prime Minister and his fine words earlier.
To Minister McBride, thank you very much for your heartfelt words.
To Hollie Hughes.
Importantly this morning to the Speaker who is hosting us, and is always very generous in offering support to many groups who meet here and gather here. A lot of good comes from that. So Milton, thank you very much for having us here today.
Thank you, importantly today, to Susan and to Julian, for being brave enough to share their circumstances, their story. Like Emily, and like Graham as well – talking about the loss of William, to be here today and to hear those stories is incredibly impactful.
There are very few Australians, sadly, who don’t have – well, there are very few Australians who haven’t been touched. Let’s be very honest.
When you look at the daily rate, and you look at the difficulty within services as they try to continue to attract staff and the burnout rate, as you look at the insidious impact of social media, we all want to be positive about what the future holds, but there is a lot of despair and a lot of reason for the angst that we hear, particularly from those service providers in our own electorates and from people who are trying to access services as young people. Let’s be honest about that today as well.
I thank the Prime Minister for his words and for the actions the Government’s undertaking. We’re keen to support all of those programmes, in whatever form they take.
Hollie Hughes has been doing an enormous amount of work speaking with stakeholders and ways in which we can connect and deliver services more efficiently and provide more support to those services.
The Prime Minister rightly acknowledged the Royal Commission findings and the people who have been affected, the family members, some of whom were in the gallery yesterday, tell their stories about their loved ones, their sons, their daughters, who were lost to suicide wearing our uniform. We owe so much more to the men and women of the Australian Defence Force who we have failed over a long period of time.
We owe it to the parents, like Graham and others across the country, to make sure that we can have an adequate response to the scourge of social media.
Social media provides a connectivity, and it provides a way in which people, particularly in isolation, can stay connected with friends around the world, but it’s also a sewer in which our children wade into each day.
We need to accept that the social media companies don’t share the same values and morals that we do as a society, or indeed as a democracy.
I want to really recognise the leadership of Peter Malinauskas from South Australia, the Premier who has already announced that the Government will proceed with the social media ban for children under the age of 14. I think that is incredibly powerful.
We would support the Government bringing in legislation today to deal with this issue, because every day lost is a day in which children are being groomed, a day in which children are being exposed to the worst elements, the lawless elements of our society, and this is an incredibly important task for us to approach in a bipartisan way.
Now, I’ve left one of the most important people here to last this morning – Nieves, I just want to say to you, thank you very much for your leadership.
The organisation, Suicide Prevention Australia has had a big impact in this building for a long period of time.
You represent many people who are here, and many people who can’t be here today, but the leadership that you provide, the way in which you’re able to reach across the aisle is something that we greatly respect.
All strength to your arm and we hope that your visit here today can do justice to the report and to the messages, particularly around workforce, particularly around continuity of funding and support of those services, in what is a very competitive market for people with the skills that you want to attract.
Through you today, finally, I want to say to all of those who are involved on the front line, people who are answering phones as we speak here, people who are attending homes or people who are attending hospitals or whatever setting it might be, to have a conversation, a further conversation, to know that the work that you are doing is saving lives.
It’s despairing when a life is lost and we’ve all acknowledged that today, but the lives that you influence and the lives that you save, I hope, provides the impetus and the support that you require to continue in the work that you do. That is a wonderful thing.
We celebrate the hard work, the dedication, the sacrifice of all of those involved in suicide prevention today.
Thank you very much.
[ends]