Anthony Albanese becomes emotional as he announces $1bn mental health boost

An emotional Prime Minister has recalled a near-death mental health experience of someone in his life, as he announced Labor’s $1bn pledge to boost access to treatment across the country.

At a Headspace centre in his own electorate, Anthony Albanese said it was “quite clear that young men, and young women, have issues that we need to talk about more”.

“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,” he said.

He spoke about being shocked as a young man when a friend’s niece had wound up in hospital with an eating disorder that almost killed her.

“That was really confronting,” he said.

“I was still pretty young at the time. I haven’t seen anything like that. She almost died.

“She is now well, and has children of her own, but that was really confronting.”

As he pledged $500m for 20 new youth specialist centres, $225m for 31 new and upgraded Medicare mental health centres and $200m for building or expanding 58 Headspace centres, and $90m to bolster the workforce, Mr Albanese thanked reporters for engaging seriously with the issue.

But soon after, Mr Albanese was labelled a “hypocrite” by a Rising Tide protester who stormed his press conference at a headspace centre in his electorate

Alexa Stuart, who has links to the Greens and was previously awarded “Young Environmentalist of the Year”, called out the Labor government for approving 33 new coal and gas projects in the last three years.

“You are condemning young people like me to a lifetime of climate disasters - of course we have mental health issues,” she told the PM.

“When will you listen to young people? When will your government stop approving new coal and gas projects?”

As she was removed, the Prime Minister chastised the press pack who were filming her, saying “it just encourages them”.

Speaking to reporters outside, Ms Stuart said she had wanted to “draw attention to the hypocrisy of our Government”.

“Who on one hand, says that they care about young people, and yet, on the other, are continuing to fuel the climate crisis by approving new coal and gas projects,” she said.

Meanwhile, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton accused Labor of “playing catch-up” on mental health.

Mr Dutton didn’t say if he would match Labor’s $90 million investment for 1200 new mental health workers, but claimed Labor was using the Coalition’s work and branding it as their own.

“There’s a rebranding, just to point out what is a fact here in relation to Labor’s announcement - the Coalition had set up 40 centres and the Government has taken those and is rebranding them as part of this package,” he said.

“I’d scratch a little bit further beneath the surface to have a look at what they’ve got on offer today.”