The Antipoverty Centre has criticised Labor’s mental health spend by making the point that people’s mental health is made worse by living in poverty – and the government has not done anything to change that.

Budgets are about choices. And the government has made the choice not to lift Australians living on welfare out of poverty. The Antipoverty Centre says that makes any announcements about mental health, hollow.

Antipoverty Centre spokesperson and DSP recipient Kristin O’Connell said:

We know that the welfare system – through appallingly low Centrelink payments, abusive “mutual” obligations and compulsory income control – is causing widespread mental ill health, and fuelling suicide. We know this because of the extraordinary number of people in distress who seek help from the Antipoverty Centre, and because the statistics tell us so.

It is no surprise that mental health services are under increasing strain as the government utterly fails in its response to spiralling living costs.

There is not enough funding on the planet to improve the mental health of people experiencing distress because they are in poverty, homeless, in debt, because Centrelink payments are too low and exclude too many.

There is no denying mental health services are under strain. That is because people whose health issues are caused by factors that are easily fixed are trying to get care.

If people were not in such enormous financial distress, services would have more capacity for those of us who have complex psychosocial conditions – conditions that are also exacerbated by the fact that we are trying to survive without enough money to live.

We need Centrelink payments above the poverty line. We need “mutual” obligations and parasitic (un)employment services providers abolished. And we need the government to support our mental wellbeing by acting instead of forcing us to tell them this over and over and over.