Chairman of beyondblue, The Hon. Jeff Kennett AC, responds to the $18.7 million funding announcement for the KidsMatter program made by Federal Health Minister, The Hon. Nicola Roxon, at Monmia Primary School, Keilor Downs, on October 5, 2009.

I've got a feeling that today is going to be seen as a terribly important day, not only for children in Australia, but because of the partnerships and the goodwill that are being entered into to, and have been in place now for some time, between a whole range of agencies in this KidsMatter program.

More and more of what we are doing - which is adopting a leadership position through the utilisation of good science with education - is going to be seen internationally as very, very important work.

We at beyondblue are very proud to be part of this program. I can't tell you what satisfaction we get in working with governments of all political persuasions. And for me it's been the most beautiful piece of work I've been involved in for many years, when you know everyone is trying to achieve the same outcomes. That is, better understanding through science, particularly in this program to give our children greater skills to manage the rest of their lives.

KidsMatter is a real attempt to put into place a system for managing change. And this work that we've been testing in primary schools has proven up wonderfully to the point now that the Government are committing a lot more funds - another
$18 million-plus - to make sure we roll this program out through primary schools throughout Australia.

We are the only country in the world that is taking mental health and depression seriously at a national level. When you think what a huge change that is from where we were ten years ago when illness was often treated as something you pushed under the carpet, today we openly talk about it.

It's a wonderful social change built on a lot of hard work, a lot of science, to bring about betterment within our society. And there is no better place to start than among our children. Because if we can arm them with the tools, if we can give them the strength to recognise the things that might be causing them stress, anxiety, depression - tooling up those disciplines at an early age will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

I can't express to you the shock I got at a beyondblue board meeting, advice from our officers who said 'we're now going to start doing some science among children one to five years of age'. I really had trouble with coming to grips with understanding what we were going to find out.

Are we going to test them for depression? Obviously not. But based on the work that we've done at primary levels through KidsMatter, we're going to now work with very young children to see how we can better help them, because so many of them are sadly reporting for primary school with stresses, with anxiety.

This is why I say that this is going to be, I think, internationally groundbreaking work. And I don't say that lightly. There is no other country in the Western world that is looking at this issue of depression and mental illness from a national perspective.

We won't get and see the benefits of this immediately, but over time we certainly will. In the same way that we're now seeing tremendous change with postnatal depression through our perinatal program, which started off in exactly the same way - some research supported by government and other partners, proven up. So from small acorns do very strong trees grow.

KidsMatter is meant to be giving our children the strength to deal with change. To be independent. All the vagaries that we're seeing in our lives that cause anxiety and stress and so much pain. It's an investment for our youth, into our future. It's an investment in our youth today for many years to come.

And Minister I want to thank you and I want to thank the science and I want to thank the school for being available today because it reflects that partnership. On our own none of us can achieve but collectively, with goodwill, and some money, and good science and a lot of understanding, we can make a difference.

This isn't only important for Australia; it's not just us in this classroom here today. From what has been done and what will be done, this will seep out through the community - to primary school children and below - and give them a much better base on which to live their lives.