NSW budget: Jodi McKay’s teary mental health plea during budget reply

Emotional NSW Labor leader recounts suicide of friend’s daughter, calls for royal commission into mental health.

NSW Labor Leader Jodi McKay. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Gaye Gerard

NSW Labor leader Jodi McKay has broken down in tears while delivering her budget reply address to NSW parliament, calling for a royal commission to be launched into mental health and suicide while criticising the government for failing the community on the issue.

Ms McKay took aim at multiple aspects of the pandemic budget, which was handed down by Treasurer Dominic Perrottet on Tuesday, terming it a “short term” budget that was predicated upon broken promises, privatisation, and the reduction of wages across the public sector.

“These are the men and women who protected us through the pandemic and the bushfires,” Ms McKay told parliament. “Our message is you’ve had our back, and we will always have yours.”

Announced earlier this month, the government intends to save up to $4 billion by limiting pay increases for public servants for three years, starting from June 2021. It has also flagged selling off state assets, including its remaining stake in the Westconnex motorway and the tax revenue accrued by NSW Lotteries.

Ms McKay said these actions were being taken after Premier Gladys Berejiklian promised the community prior to the election that there would be no further moves to privatise state assets.

“This pandemic has changed a lot, but it has not changed this government’s addiction to privatisation,” Ms McKay said.

The government has argued that in doing so it stands to help raise money that will pay off a $104 billion borrowing debt it is expecting to accrue by June 2024 in order to finance the state’s economic recovery.

But Ms McKay became emotional while recalling the suicide of a friend’s daughter, telling parliament the young woman took her own life a year after finishing high school, having been unable to access mental health services for people her age.

“Mental health and suicide have been in the too hard basket for too long. When we speak of community resilience and lessons learned from this year, let mental health be at the top of the list,” she said.

“This is why we need a royal commission into mental health and suicide.”

The government’s budget announced additional measures to support the mental wellbeing of young people, including a $46.8 million funding commitment that will see 100 nurses deployed to support school students.

“For Labor this budget has two tests – the test of today and the test of tomorrow and it has failed both. It’s bogged down in the failed ideas of yesterday by those who can’t see the future because they are stuck in the past.”

Pointing to over-budget infrastructure projects, rising tolls paid by commuters, and recent appearances by Premier Gladys Berejiklian at a corruption inquiry, Ms McKay said the government lacked integrity and therefore could not be trusted with “the all-important task of recovery”.