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Doctors are calling for urgent investment in mental health services in this year’s Queensland budget, saying emergency departments have turned into “default mental health crisis centres” after a sharp rise in presentations in recent years.
Associate Professor Erica Gannon, an emergency doctor and president of the Australian Medical Association Queensland, is leading the call for an extra $600 million in funding, after an audit of the state’s mental health levy found it was raising millions more than initially projected.
“All emergency clinicians across the country, whether they’re in public or private, have seen an increase in mental health presentations,” said Gannon, who was elected as AMAQ president last month.
But investment in the sector had not kept up with demand, she added, leaving services understaffed and under pressure.
“Without a fast and focused boost to our capacity, staffing and infrastructure, we cannot meet the rising demand for mental health care at all levels,” Gannon said.
“Mental health prevention must be embedded in Queensland’s long-term health planning.”
Gannon said an extra $600 million in the state budget would pay for an extra 2000 community mental health workers, 350 new psychiatric beds and 250 refurbished beds.
She said such a boost was feasible, given the Queensland Audit Office had found the state’s mental health levy raised $1.2 billion between January 2023 and June 2025, and was projected to raise half-a-billion dollars more than originally estimated in its first five years.
“Queensland has the money that we need, not only for those acute inpatient site beds but also staff in our public hospitals,” Gannon said.
“The upcoming budget would be the best opportunity for the government to show us how they’re going to return that money to Queenslanders and show better outcomes for mental health care and all of our mental health patients.”
Gannon was elected to replace outgoing AMAQ president Dr Nick Yim in May.
Her first address as president called on the Crisafulli government to release its workforce plan and explain how it plans to recruit and train the doctors needed across Queensland by 2032.
It followed the release of Queensland Health’s workforce gap analysis in November, which showed the state will be short nearly 6000 doctors by 2032.
Health Minister Tim Nicholls has pledged 46,000 additional healthcare workers including doctors, nurses and paramedics in the next six years, but has not yet explained how such figures would be achieved.
“Our aim, put simply, is to build the hospitals and to fill them with the clinicians they need. Build and fill,” Nicholls said in February.
AMAQ’s pre-budget submissions have also called on the government to boost the Patient Travel Subsidy Scheme, increase the Indigenous health workforce across the state, restore collaborative maternity services, reverse its stance on harm-prevention measures such as pill testing and reinstate publicly funded gender care services for children under 18.
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