Mental Health Reform Is Welcome: The Services To Deliver It Are Still Missing – Alliance Party

The Alliance Party has welcomed the passing of the new Mental Health Bill but says the reform will fail the people it is meant to help unless the Government funds the workforce and services required to deliver it.

Alliance Party Health Spokesperson Ethan Gullery says the changes are genuinely good and long overdue.

“Ending seclusion for young people, keeping mothers and babies together, independent advocacy for patients. These are real improvements, and the people with lived experience who fought for them deserve the credit,” says Mr Gullery.

“But a right that no one can access is only a promise.”

Mr Gullery says the part the Government has been quiet about is that the new law does not come into force for two years, and that the delay is needed to give the workforce time to prepare.

“Prepare with what? You do not end seclusion by writing it into law. You end it by having enough trained staff on the ward to sit with a person in distress instead of shutting a door. That takes people, and people take funding.”

He says the funding announced does not match the scale of the new obligations. Budget 2026 provided 20 new inpatient mental health beds nationwide and 150 psychology assistant roles phased in over four years, against unmet mental health needs the Government itself puts at more than a quarter of adults and a third of children.

The Alliance says the same pattern runs through the mental health telehealth package the Government announced this week.

“A $10 million headline sounds significant until you read the breakdown,” says Mr Gullery.

“Lifeline is one of the best known crisis lines in the country. It went more than a decade without dedicated Government funding. It has now been handed enough to keep the lights on for a single year, and then it has to reapply.”

Mr Gullery says a package that lifts call capacity by around 15 percent is welcome, but does not meet the scale of the demand providers are reporting.

“Telehealth is where people turn first when they are in distress. But a helpline can only refer someone on to a service that actually exists. You can answer the phone faster and still have nowhere to send the person once they have asked for help.”

Mr Gullery says the through-line is consistent across every announcement.

“Stated access goes up. Targets go up. The funding for the services that actually meet the need is always the part left short. You cannot legislate a better mental health system and then decline to staff it.”

The Alliance is calling for a well-being-first funding model that resources the full mental health workforce to meet the standards the new law sets, and that measures success by care delivered rather than targets announced.

“The law is a better front door,” says Mr Gullery. “It still opens onto rooms no one has staffed. Build the rooms.”