E&OE transcript
HOST, PRUE BENTLEY: Now if I asked you to tell me what positive masculinity looks like in 2026, what would you say? Well, the answer really depends on who you talk to, doesn't it? And there are plenty of influencers online telling boys and young men that the answer lies in everything from how square your jaw is to how much control you have in your relationships.
Rates of mental health, ill‑health and suicide among men are staggeringly high and it's prompted the Government to try to tackle it head on.
With me now is Ged Kearney, the Assistant Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence. Ged Kearney, good afternoon.
GED KEARNEY, ASSISTANT MINISTER: Good afternoon, thanks for having me on.
PRUE BENTLEY: Before we get into this issue, the Government has flagged some changes to the Capital Gains Tax discount, negative gearing and trusts ahead of the budget next week. These were not taken to the last election as policy. If this is part of the budget would this amount to a broken promise from the Government?
GED KEARNEY: Well, you know, I can't really speculate on what's going to be in the budget. We will find out on May 12. So, there's really no point in getting into pre‑budget speculation. But I think the Treasurer has made it clear that he is interested in looking at intergenerational inequity when it comes to housing, and we know that young people have been locked out of housing or purchasing a home.
So, he has made it quite clear that the budget will address that, and we'll wait and see exactly how.
PRUE BENTLEY: Ged Kearney is with us, the Assistant Minister for Prevention of Family Violence. Let's get on to the tour that you are launching. You've now got a Special Envoy for Men's Health in Dan Repacholi.
GED KEARNEY: We do.
PRUE BENTLEY: What are you announcing today?
GED KEARNEY: Well Dan and I are going to be starting a national conversation we hope about what it means to be a healthy male, and that's healthy mind and body. Dan of course is very concerned about the statistics that you mentioned early on, 75 per cent of people who commit suicide are men. You know, we're very worried about negative influencers. As you said, you know, right to the point of ‑ I think it's called looks maxing. It's a new language that's coming out, and you quite rightly point to that.
There's lots of societal pressures on young men that are having really adverse impacts. The pressures can affect, you know, relationships, self‑esteem, it leads to isolation. In some cases we know, and in something that I'm very interested in, it leads to them being perpetrators of violence, either against women generally, against their intimate partners, or indeed against other men.
So we are really very interested in combatting this, and particularly those negative influencers that you mentioned. We're going to travel around the country, we're going to be talking to experts, to communities, to young people going to school, sporting clubs, and we're really going to be trying to get to the really nitty‑gritty of what it is that we need to do and what the root causes of this are.
PRUE BENTLEY: Now I know that we have, and rightly so, been focussing a lot of attention on prevention of family and gendered‑based violence, particularly against women and children. But when it comes to the mental health of men and their, you know, the manosphere and the influencers that are having an influence on their mental health in this way, have we dropped the ball? Have authorities dropped the ball on this?
GED KEARNEY: Well, we have quite rightly, when it comes to family violence and domestic violence, we have quite ‑ you know, invested around $4 billion to combat that scourge, and quite rightly we've focused on crisis, and we have invested quite a lot in prevention. But I think you're right, I think the time has come for us to really shift the focus a lot more on to how we can, you know, intervene early, particularly with young men and boys when it comes to those drivers that, you know, force them to commit violence or, indeed, to take their own lives.
There's some interesting statistics that we have, you know, there's ‑ only 37 per cent of men and young boys, for example, will seek help when it comes to their mental health. Whereas, you know, 50 per cent of women will. So they are half as likely to actually seek help.
So help seeking behaviour is something that we are very interested in. We want to promote factors that support the health and connection. A lot of young boys, because of societal pressures of how they have to act and how they need to look, and they feel inadequate, that they, you know, they feel isolated and lack connection. So how can we improve that? And of course as you mentioned in your introduction, we really have to counter those harmful, awful ideologies of what it means to be a man and really promote positive role models to counter that narrative. I think that's awful.
PRUE BENTLEY: So who are you going to be talking to?
GED KEARNEY: That's a good question. We are talking about academics. Today I met with the Australian Institute of Family Studies. There's some wonderful academics doing some amazing work in this space, and that was really insightful and helpful for Dan and I.
We met with Movember and the wonderful people who are doing our Healthy Mate programs, where we're going into schools, into sport clubs, into community organisations and really talking about manhood and what it means to be, you know, what positive masculinity and healthy masculinity means. And they're having amazing outcomes, really fantastic outcomes.
So we'll also be talking to sporting groups, schools, all sorts, Men's Sheds, all sorts of places where men and young boys gather and just trying to hear from the ground up what good work is being done, what is working and what isn't working. And hopefully that will all lead into us making good policy.
PRUE BENTLEY: So you're calling this a listening tour. What happens at the end of it?
GED KEARNEY: At the end of it Dan and I will be definitely drawing up a report, and we'll be making sure that we have a really good idea of where we should focus our policy direction and taking that back to the government.
So we hope to see some really positive outcomes from the tour.
PRUE BENTLEY: Okay. And will we see you in regional Victoria?
GED KEARNEY: Most definitely, I can't wait.
PRUE BENTLEY: Okay. We don't have any dates yet but do let us know when you are going to be heading out our way.
GED KEARNEY: I would love that, will do. Thank you.