Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, it saddens me deeply to rise to speak on this motion about a subject that has touched far too many in our great Australian family. Suicide is a terrible tragedy not just for those left behind but for those who are the victims. How alone, how abandoned and how desperate those people must have been before ending their lives. And indeed how long did they feel like this?

It troubles me greatly that in a country as full of opportunity as ours that these people feel so isolated that they see suicide as the only available path. This troubles me even more when it comes to the brave men and women of the Australian Defence Force. The Gallipoli Barracks are located within my electorate of Ryan, and I have been to services for our returned fallen heroes where they are treated with all the respect and honour they deserve.

Unfortunately, suicide is far too prevalent within our recently returned servicemen. Since 2000, 96 serving ADF personnel and 13 former ADF personnel that we know of have taken their own lives. This is despite Defence instituting a number of programs to address suicide and broader mental illness issues within the Defence Force. While the rate of suicide in the ADF is no greater than the rate in the general populace, it troubles me that people with easy access to quality care and counselling still choose to end their lives rather than seek help.

We must do more to end the stigma surrounding not only suicide but also, more importantly, seeking help for what, in most cases, are treatable illnesses. I also think it is time we stopped saying that a person died from suicide. While that may have been the act that ended their life, that act is a symptom of a problem. As friends of Robin Williams said following his death he did not die from suicide but from depression. Issues around mental illness are extremely complex. For example, a psychiatrist I know once told me that a person with bipolar who jumps off a building is not trying to suicide but are trying to fly. The result however is usually what we call suicide.

We must also address the underlying issues in our national psyche to stop people, mostly young men, taking their lives. I know it sounds cliche but all the best research has found that talking to someone genuinely helps. It is best if that person is a professional but a sympathetic and understanding friend can do as well. There is no shame in asking for help. If you want to move a big item of furniture, you ask for help. If you need assistance cleaning up after a flood or disaster, you ask for help. But when it comes to their health, both mental and physical, many men simply do not ask for help. It takes more strength to ask for help than to not ask. And if a mate comes to you and wants you to listen, be proud that they thought enough of you to confide in you.

As a nation we have a suicide problem. Talking about it here and acknowledging the issue is a good start, but we must do more. As this motion says, more people die from suicide each year than in road accidents. Yet how many millions of dollars do our state governments spend on education programs on driver safety and road signage and improvement? How many millions of dollars do they make through enforcing speed limits to the slimmest of margins? How can they ignore the elephant in the room? I have been told informally by police officers that they consider at least a third of all single vehicle accidents to be suicide. If you removed those numbers from the road toll and added them to the figures for suicide then the road toll, while still worrying, will not be as big an issue as suicide. So I say to the state governments of Australia, 'Take a third of the money you spend on advertising road and driver safety and start educating people about mental illness—or, better still, spend that money on actually treating mental illness.'

This is an issue that concerns and involves all Australians. We must have a national dialogue on how we address the leading cause of death among men under 44 and women under 34. I commend the motion to the House and I thank the member for LaTrobe for drawing attention to this important issue.

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