Anthony Albanese became visibly emotional while recalling the mental health struggle of a family friend who nearly died, as he launched Labor’s $1bn pledge to boost access to treatment and counselling.
The prime minister recalled being shocked as a young man by the difficulties faced by his friend’s niece and said many Australians have “issues that we need to talk about more”.
“[She] ended up in Royal Prince Alfred [hospital] with an eating disorder,” Albanese told a Tuesday morning press conference in Sydney. “I was still pretty young at the time. I hadn’t seen anything like that.
“She almost died. She is now well and has children of her own. But that was really confronting.”
Albanese also recalled speaking to the parents of a young woman called Charlotte, who took her own life, and praised their bravery. He said her experience was one of the reasons his government sought to introduce age restrictions on social media platforms.
“In general, it is quite clear that young men and young women have issues that we need to talk about more,” Albanese said. “When I was my son’s age, no one talked about these issues. I went to school with people and you knew there was an issue, but it wasn’t defined and wasn’t acceptable.”
Labor has pledged $500m for 20 youth specialist care centres, as well as $225m for 31 new and upgraded Medicare mental health centres, and $200m for expanding or starting 58 Headspace centres.
The youth centres will be focused on addressing “the missing middle”: complex needs that can be addressed outside hospitals, such as personality disorders, eating disorders and early psychosis.
The health minister, Mark Butler, said the Coalition’s previously announced competing policy of doubling the number of Medicare-backed mental health sessions would “create a bottleneck that means tens of thousands of Australians get no help at all” by “piling more demand on private psychologists”.
The shadow minister for health, Anne Ruston, welcomed the additional funding for Headspace centres but dismissed Butler’s criticism as “disappointing”.
“You would not ration a medical service in any other situation in the health sector,” Ruston said. “So I don’t know why this government thinks that you should ration mental health services.”
“We have seen through the Productivity Commission that … the number of new people that are coming on, getting access to these sessions, has actually gone backwards to the lowest level in a decade.”
The announcement was welcomed by mental health experts including Mental Health Australia, Headspace and Orygen’s Patrick McGorry, who called it a “breakthrough”. McGorry joined Peter Dutton in Melbourne last week when the Liberal leader announced new funding for a Headspace centre in Melton.
Asked on Tuesday if he thought the Coalition might take money out of the mental health budget, McGorry said: “No, I don’t think they will.”
“I think the prime minister already mentioned that this is, generally speaking, a bipartisan achievement of our country,” McGorry said.
“I’m very proud of our country, that we built this system to the extent that we have already … This announcement is very strong from the government. Young people aren’t interested in politics, they just want to get services.”