Reports, Campaigns and Projects

Australia’s mental health system remains dominated by clinical models, despite evidence that many consumers prefer peer-led, community-based, and non-pathologising supports. Emerging global research shows that the future of effective mental health care lies in community-led, rights-based approaches, not over-reliance on psychiatry or acute care. The Alliance supports ensuring that peer-run organisations are commissioned directly rather than embedded within clinical teams, which will elevate peer work as a standalone profession.

In 2024, the Federal Government announced their commitment to fund a national mental health and suicide prevention peer workforce association. The Alliance won the tender to establish this association in partnership with the Indigenous Australian Lived Experience Centre and Mental Health Carers Australia.

The Australian Association of Peer Workers was established as Australia’s first national representative and membership body for mental health and suicide prevention peer workers. The goal of the AAPW is to strengthen recognition, standards, rights and working conditions for peer workers, ensuring peer work is supported as a distinct discipline grounded in lived experience. We know that when peer workers are valued and supported, the entire mental health system is stronger.

Making Rights Real is an innovative and consumer-led project delivered in partnership with Community Mental Health Australia. Instead of responding to broken systems and deficient frames, eleven consumer co-designers from across Australia designed what a good life would look like, on their terms, based on what matters most to them.

We embedded co-design as the foundation of the project and developed a Collective Agreement of Safety and Belonging, ensuring trauma-informed, respectful participation. Ongoing feedback loops meant co-designers continually shaped and reviewed every output.

The Alliance joins with the Human Rights Law Centre and supports the development and implementation of a National Human Rights Act. 

All Australians living with mental health challenges should be able to understand, rely on and claim the human rights Australia has already committed to uphold. The immediate priority is a statutory Commonwealth Human Rights Act that preserves parliamentary sovereignty while creating enforceable duties, accessible complaints pathways, court access where appropriate, and effective remedies, including, in serious cases – court-ordered compensation for loss or harm. 

This report presents the findings of the Alliance’s inaugural Human Rights Survey, drawing on the results of the 2024 National Human Rights Survey of people living with mental health challenges. It shows that discrimination, coercion, economic insecurity and harmful public narratives are not occasional failures — they are embedded across healthcare, emergency services, workplaces, housing, and the media. The Report makes 15 recommendations focused on ending discrimination, eliminating coercive practices, and guaranteeing economic security and access to supports, and strengthens the case for a National Human Rights Act.