Labor promised to fix our mental health crisis. I made the mistake of believing them

I remember sitting in parliament on March 2, 2021, when the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System handed down its final report.

There were many tears on that day. Many had borne their souls to the commission. Many others, including me, worked tirelessly to influence it.

Former premier Daniel Andrews with the now premier, Jacinta Allan.Credit: Scott McNaughton

That day, I heard then-premier Daniel Andrews accept all of the report’s 74 recommendations, and its findings. I heard him acknowledge that people who experience poor mental health “suffer from widespread, systematic discrimination and are consistently denied the rights and services to which they are entitled”, and that “as a community, we cannot afford to continue to turn a blind eye”.

For many, seeing the premier promise change bred hope for transformation across the system. Among the accepted recommendations were new services, new agencies, a desperately needed boost to funding via the Mental Health Levy, and a new way of thinking about, preventing, and responding to the growing mental health crisis. At the centre was lived experience leadership.

Even better, the government’s promises were backed by an accountability mechanism: a new Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission would replace the existing, and underwhelming, Mental Health Complaints Commission.

Initially, reform began at a frenetic pace. New mental health legislation was introduced, businesses began to pay the levy, and local service hubs to provide community support were opened. But even in those early stages, delays, excuses and feet-dragging were present.

Fast forward to today, and how is the government tracking? They have delivered the “bleakest budget” yet for mental health, failed to ensure paramedics rather than police were the first responders to mental health callouts, failed to establish a lived-experience agency, opened just 15 of the promised 50 community-based centres, and indefinitely delayed the rollout of the remaining 35 centres.

Finally, as reported by The Age last week, they have axed plans for the eight permanent regional advisory boards the government promised would be set up by no later than the end of 2023. To add insult to injury, the government has scrubbed mention of them from the Department of Health’s website – referring only to the interim bodies, which are not protected by legislation. It seems keeping promises is easy when you can bury them in the sand or, better yet, erase them.

According to a government spokesperson, this is the result of the mental health landscape changing since the commission’s final report was handed down. But as recently as June, the government was telling the Yoorook Justice Commission it was still committed to implementing “every single one” of the recommendations.

Even in areas where there has been movement – such as marginal increases in access to bed-based services for people in crisis – these so-called successes are countered by ongoing claims of harm when people get there. Nationally, Victoria records among the highest rates of seclusion and restraint, and between 2022 and 2023 the state’s rate of suicide rose by 5 per cent.

For months, the government has highlighted budget constraints as its reasoning for a number of controversial healthcare decisions. Victorians, particularly those paying the levy, are right to ask where funds are going, and if they are building the recommended new system or just propping up the old one that the royal commission’s chair, Penny Armytage, acknowledged had “catastrophically failed to live up to expectations”.

What is perhaps most depressing, though, is the silence from our watchdog. The Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission, which remains home to two of the commissioners from the previous Mental Health Complaints Commission, appears to be a servant of the status quo, rather than an agent for change.

Under its previous name, the MHWC had never issued a compliance notice to services, despite recording over 12,000 human rights complaints over seven years. As of November 2023, it had reached more than 16,700 complaints, and the MHWC was still yet to issue a single compliance notice.

The MHWC was designed to have two primary roles: holding services accountable and holding the government accountable. It risks failing at both.

One of the key royal commission recommendations was to grant the MHWC the power to open public inquiries into governance and systems. Those powers, now in law, enable it to inquire into whether the government is keeping its promises and, if it is not, asking why not. Such an inquiry is already sorely needed.

Times are tough, no doubt. But any change worth making would be. As Daniel Andrews said in 2021, changing the existing system “won’t be easy, and it won’t be quick. But when the cost of not acting is measured in lives, we can’t afford to fail.”

Simon Katterl is a mental health and human rights advocate and consultant.

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