Sydney
A big thank you to John Brogden, the team at Lifeline and Macquarie Bank for organising and supporting this special event today.
And before I begin, I want to pay tribute to Lifeline's CEO, Dawn O'Neill, whose decade of service to this great organisation comes to an end next month.
Dawn has made an extraordinary contribution, fostering a period of major governance and service reform for Lifeline, and her work was fittingly honoured by an award in the Order of Australia last year.
Thank you Dawn and good luck in all that lies ahead.
Friends, just about all of us have been touched in a personal way by the tragedy of suicide.
A friend, a family member, a colleague, a neighbour.
And always we ask ourselves the question: Could I have done more? Could we have done more?
Almost fifty years ago, it was those same thoughts that inspired the formation of Lifeline.
One of Australia's leading churchmen, Sir Alan Walker, had taken a call from a person in distress, who later ended his own life.
Sir Alan wanted to do something that could help others in distress - to save a moment of acute despair from becoming a point of no return.
That's how the 24-hour crisis support service began.
That initiative has done immeasurable good for almost half a century.
Lifeline now answers something like half a million calls a year, including 50 calls a day from people at high risk of suicide.
So today I honour the 1,000 staff and 11,000 volunteers of Lifeline, and all those who have served with Lifeline in years past.
All of you who are part of the Lifeline story are entitled to feel very, very proud.
Lifeline has helped take the issue of mental illness from out of the shadows and into the light.
The community's understanding of mental illness is probably greater now than it has ever been.
Much of the stigma of discussing mental illness that once existed has now gone.
And what remains is being stripped away by advocates like John Brodgen, Jeff Kennett, Geoff Gallop and Morris Iemma, and outstanding leaders in the field like Ian Hickie and Pat McGorry.
I want to pay a special tribute to John Brodgen today - a man whose own challenges were faced in the harsh glare of public scrutiny, and whose courage and dignity are truly an inspiration.
Friends, I too am no stranger to this debate.
My father was a psychiatric nurse and I learnt from him that mental illness is no less debilitating than sickness of the body, nor less worthy of our care and concern.
I was inspired from my first visit to Orygen and Headspace some years ago.
And I'm determined that as a government and as a community we step up our efforts to address the scourge of mental illness - which too often ends in the devastating consequence of suicide.
Our wider health reforms are the critical foundation for taking mental health forward.
Through investments in enhancing frontline services such as after hours support, e-health and GP Super Clinics, we will assist people living with mental illness receive better care in the community.
Through investing in mental health sub-acute beds, such as the 80 beds recently announced in South Australia, we will provide more places for people who require care.
Through a national network of Medicare Locals we will be able to identify and fill gaps in access to mental health services in many parts of Australia.
By taking full funding responsibility for primary care type outpatient services, we will be able to support more mental health services in community settings.
And by becoming the majority funder, we will reduce incentives for cost-shifting out of our hospitals.
I'm also proud to say we are doubling the number of Headspace sites across the country to ensure every capital city has at least one service.
And we are supporting the Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centre or EPPIC model to providing treatment and support for up to 3,500 young people.
But more can be done and more should be done.
This is why during the election I announced major new plans to redouble our efforts for tackling suicide.I think of those 50 people ringing Lifeline every day and imagine the anguish that leads them to see taking their own lives as the only way out.
And I know that in a community as caring as ours, they should not be left to face the darkness alone.
Under our package, the Government will provide $277 million to boost frontline services, prevention and early intervention.
Our new measures will include psychological counselling services for around 12,500 people each year who have attempted or are at risk of suicide and up to 20,000 specialist psychiatry sessions.
We will establish outreach teams for schools affected by suicide to help reduce the chances of 'copycat' suicides.
And we will fund greater online resources for young people because we know they often value services on the Net more readily than in face-to-face settings.
Importantly from today's perspective, we will help Lifeline expand its hotline capacity by making calls from mobiles toll-free and enabling Lifeline to establish dedicated helplines at suicide hotspots.
We will also help improve safety more broadly at suicide hotspots, such as the Gap in Sydney, and I warmly acknowledge Malcolm Turnbull's advocacy on this issue.
In fact, I can announce today that the Minister will be speaking to Woollahra Council next week to look at what remaining work needs to be undertaken at the Gap, and get funding and work under way.
Friends, our package also targets one of the nation's most at risk groups, men, who account for three-quarters of deaths from suicide yet only 28 per cent of men seek help for mental health issues.
A large part of our package is therefore aimed at helping overcome those woeful statistics by:
o expanding beyondblue's National Workplace Program to help use the workplace to identify and support those with depression who are not receiving assistance;
o Increasing the capacity of beyondblue's helpline to provide information and assistance to up to 30,000 more men per year; and
o Providing targeted campaigns to help reduce the stigma associated with mental illness and encourage more men to seek help.
These are the things we promised in the election campaign and these are what we will deliver.
And I can assure you that issues associated with men's health will be very regularly drawn to my attention because my partner, Tim intends to continue his advocacy work on men's health issues.
But if John Brogden and those other mental health leaders have taught us anything, it is that our journey still has a long way to go.
We've come far, especially in the past five years, but there is much, much more still to do.
That is why I said in July that mental health would be a second-term priority for a reelected Gillard government - and I meant it.
We've made an important start by appointing the first ever Minister for Mental Health in an Australian government, Mark Butler, a new minister with a great capacity to make a difference in this field, and who has already made an outstanding contribution to health reform as Parliamentary Secretary.
Mark, Minister Roxon and I are keen to work with frontline service providers and experts to close the gaps in mental health service provision.
We know the sector is also calling for a five and ten year plan, something that fits with the Government's commitment to orderly and constructive policy development.
We also need to ensure that services meet consumer needs because long gone are the days when experts simply imposed solutions from above.
That is why I have specifically tasked Minister Butler with the job of speaking with consumer and carer representatives around the country to hear their stories and experiences first hand, and I know he is already out there doing exactly that.
Most challenging, perhaps, we need to better connect the web of services that those living with mental illness rely on, not just in health but across housing, education and employment as well.
Getting the quality and design of services right will take a great deal of thought and consideration.
We can't just treat people's medical needs, only for them to end up homeless or without skills and employment, because being without a job - being robbed of the dignity of work - so often sets people on a path towards hopelessness and despair.
Designing a better network of services to address the whole picture won't be easy or quick.
Nor do we simply want to graft ad hoc reforms onto an inadequate system so that another government will have to change it all again in a few years' time.
We want to get this right and we will.
As we work towards reform, I take great comfort from the fact that Lifeline and other leading organisations like beyondblue will continue to offer a hand of hope to those who need it most.
The Government respects and supports your great work.
You are indispensable allies not only in the struggle to deliver better services but to combat the stigma that makes mental illness a greater source of suffering than it needs to be.
Today our message to Australians living with mental illness is one of encouragement and inclusion.
We say that much more must be done, and will be done, to ensure you do not walk this path alone.
And we will fight the remaining barriers of stigma and prejudice to ensure that your illness is never the sum of who you are.
In Australia, no-one should be typecast as mentally ill, because the days of defining people by their condition are over.
There are simply people who live with mental illness, loved ones, colleagues and friends who have conditions that are eminently capable of being treated, managed, cured in some cases,but always, always understood.
Nobody knows more about the gift of understanding than Lifeline because that what is you have been doing for 47 selfless years.
I know everyone here today will respond generously to the needs of Lifeline as it so clearly warrants and deserves, sustaining this great organisation to its 50th birthday and well beyond.
It is an honour to share this event and to lend the support of my prime ministership to the cause of mental health.
Confident in the future, let us move forward and achieve great things together.