Govt sets up mental health panel

Mental health campaigner Patrick McGorry is to head a special advisory panel established by the federal government to guide reform within the sector.

Mental Health Minister Mark Butler said the 12-member group will provide key input as the government moves to dramatically overhaul mental health services.

The government has made mental health a priority in its second term, conceding earlier this year that significant reform was needed.

"The government is very aware of the need," Mr Butler said in a statement on Thursday.

"It is important that this process is influenced and informed by experts, service providers and people in the community affected by mental illness."

The Brain and Mind Research Institute's Ian Hickie, psychologist Andrew Fuller, as well as medical experts and mental health group representatives, are on the panel.

Mr Butler said the group's aim will be to provide targeted advice on how to achieve "the most coordinated, cost-effective and lasting reforms for our investment in mental health care".

Australian of the Year Professor McGorry has been a vocal critic of the government's efforts in mental health, having instead backed the opposition's $1.5 billion policy.

The government offered under $300 million.

Mr Butler said he was keen to get to work.

Since he was established as Australia's first mental health minister earlier this year, he has attended 14 forums around the country talking to stakeholders.

"It has been a very useful experience for me," Mr Butler said.

Meeting patients and carers was a critical part of developing improved services and their feedback will work in addition to the panel's advice, he said.

The panel will be time limited, although the timeframe was not specified.

Mr Butler later said the panel will operate during the first few months of 2011, meeting for the first time in early January and "pretty regularly" after that.

He defended the establishment of a new panel, given the government already has a mental health standing committee, which he said was to provide more "strategic advice".

The expert panel would deliver concrete and specific policy ideas, he said.

"We really need a horses for courses basis," Mr Butler told AAP.

"When you have got a particular task you want done, you might need a different group of people."

He expected the panel to call for a bigger injection of funds, as well as strong representations on what to do with the money the government had already allocated.

"It will do both," said Mr Butler, who will be chairing the panel.

"When people get around a table to talk about improving services, people are understandably going to ask for more investment - absolutely," he said.

Prof McGorry, who once described Australia's mental health approach as a "national obscenity" stressed that funding will need to be significantly increased.

"It's probably funded at roughly half the scale of what it needs to achieve," he told ABC Television.

"We need to create and invest in innovative, new models, 21st century models of care, not the same-old, same-old system that hasn't worked."

Prof McGorry said he was heartened by the decision to establish the panel, saying it recognised the seriousness, urgency and scale of the problem ahead.

But it will need a 110 per cent commitment from government to make genuine reform a reality, he said.

He labelled mental health as one of the country's top three issues, along with climate change and the economy, warning the government the country will judge it by its actions.