Patchy underfunded Gillard urges businesses to step up on mental health

Former prime minister Julia Gillard will urge corporate leaders to be “part of the solution” in fixing the nation’s mental health crisis ahead of a bold national plan to overhaul the prevention, treatment and care for Australians suffering depression, anxiety and suicidal tendencies.

Ms Gillard, now chair of the nation’s most well-known and visited mental health support service, Beyond Blue, says businesses of all sizes have the most to gain by getting the national mental health reform settings right, with the cost of inaction already up to $39 billion a year in lost participation and productivity.

Former prime minister Julia Gillard says business leaders need to step up to help tackle Australia’s mental health problems.Credit:James Brickwood

She will tell a Committee for Economic Development of Australia mental health forum on Thursday that despite the efforts of many people who work tirelessly in them, Australia’s mental health and suicide prevention systems are “not systems at all”.

“They are patchy, piecemeal and crisis-driven,” Ms Gillard will say according to draft notes circulated ahead of her address.

“It’s confusing to navigate, fragmented, unbalanced, chronically underfunded and does not work for the people it’s there to support. We know this because we’ve been told by those who live it.”

Ms Gillard, who will deliver her speech via a video link from Britain, says COVID-19 had merely served to amplify pre-existing problems in the nation’s mental health system and it has revealed that too many Australians are told they’re “either too sick, or not sick enough”.

State and territory governments are aiming to strike a new national mental health agreement by November, with most of the pilot work being undertaken by the Morrison government in a joint effort with Victoria.

The federal government’s $2.3 billion budget commitment on mental health in the May budget followed the last year’s Productivity Commission report, Mental Health Commission chief executive Christine Morgan’s suicide prevention report, and the final report from the Victorian mental health royal commission that was released earlier this year.

The Productivity Commission estimated that mental illness costs the broader Australian economy at least $200 billion a year â€" in healthcare costs, lost productivity, economic participation, carer costs, disability, and premature death.

Ms Gillard said landmark reports and budget commitments had offered both the political momentum and the money to get started, but leaders needed to act with urgency.

“Improving population mental health is good for Australians, your business, our communities, and the national economy,” she will say.

“But governments can’t do it alone. To business leaders, I urge you to reflect on your role in being part of the solution.”

In the federal budget the Commonwealth unveiled a funding package that included money for 57 child, youth and adult mental health treatment centres, spending on the mental health workforce and $100 million that will measure and evaluate all the changes to the sector.

That included $158.6 million to expand aftercare services for people who have attempted suicide, the creation of a national phone service to help connect people to the right mental health treatment, and work on a single diagnostic system.

Ms Gillard said everyone had a stake in improving mental health treatment and would stand to benefit from reform.

She said business leaders should emphasise the need for “ambitious, wholesale change” with a long-term outlook when discussing the matter with government.

“Our nation needs your enterprise, your influence, your compassion â€" we need your help,” she said.

“Because this has been, and will continue to be, one of the most psychologically bruising periods we have ever faced. The generations in front of us will need more support than ever before.”

Rob Harris is the national affairs editor for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based at Parliament House in CanberraConnect via email.

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