RUPERT MURDOCH, PRESENTER: Hello, I’m Rupert Murdoch. Tonight’s Australian Story is about an extraordinary man I first met in 2004, following the passing of my dear sister, Helen Handbury, who was one of his greatest supporters. Jack Heath is a former diplomat and speech writer who once worked as a senior advisor to Prime Minister, Paul Keating. But a series of confronting events led him to abandon his mainstream ambitions and strike out in a whole new direction. Now he’s helping to transform the lives of young people and prevent youth suicide both in Australia and around the world. This is his story.

JACK HEATH: So here I am in America, virtually starting again from the bottom up. I really believe that we can be successful in the United States, applying the same principles that we did in Australia. It’s a big leap but it doesn’t scare me. Nor do cities like Washington. I mean, I was once very much involved in the political arena so I feel comfortable in a place like Washington.

MICHAEL RENNIE,FRIEND: When I met Jack, I thought, this is a guy who could do absolutely anything. I get to work with CEO’s all over the world and business and political leaders. And I thought to myself at the time, and I still think he is, one of the most exceptional people I have ever met. It’s a big punt, but I’m absolutely sure that Jack can do this. I have no doubt whatsoever that Jack will do this.

JACK HEATH: I’ve always had a vaulting ambition. When I was five I wanted to be the Pope, right?

CATHERINE MILNE, WIFE: He’s not a saint. He is not a good person but he’s a flawed person who is trying to be good. It’s hard leaving everything that I know. And it’s hard for the kids. But I have faith in Jack and I have faith that what he’s doing is a good thing. He is, he is about helping people and he is about saving young people’s lives.

JACK HEATH: We were the first online youth suicide prevention service in the world. When we started, I had no background in mental health. But there was this like visceral thing in my gut that we just had to find ways of helping more young people. If you walk into your average Australian high school classroom, around seven of those young people will have encountered period of extended hopelessness in the previous twelve months. At least one of those will have attempted suicide.

JUSTINE STEPHENS-REICHER, RESEARCHER: Young people get our website and can relate to it because the content has been developed by young people, young people their own age. And you’ve probably noticed that, all the staff here are quite young. Users can put their own stories on the website about what they’ve gone through and how they’ve got through it. They can write a story, they can share it on the forum or they could create a video and upload it.

(Excerpt from ReachOut.com video)
GIRL: Last year in my final year of school, so in Year 12 I actually became homeless. As much as there’s barriers in all of our lives it is actually possible to overcome them. I’ve now moved to a completely different state. I’ve begun Uni and I’m not homeless anymore which is great.
(End of excerpt)

JACK HEATH: Right from the very beginning of when we first launched the service, we were having young people every month or so, sending us a message saying without this I wouldn’t be alive today.

(Excerpt from ReachOut.com video)
BOY1: I’ve thought about asking for help but I don’t want to seem weak or have to let other people into my life. I’m scared of how they’ll react or what will happen next.
(End of excerpt)

JACK HEATH: Last year we estimate that around 200,000 young Australians actually went to the Reach Out service to see if they could get some help and support.

(Excerpt from ReachOut.com video)
BOY2: It’s alright to cry and it’s alright to be happy and it’s alright to be sad as well.
(End of excerpt)

JACK HEATH: I never used to appreciate how precious life was before. When I look back I’ve been through a lot of pretty traumatic times. I’ve faced demons and in the course of that, I’ve stumbled upon what I feel now is my life purpose which is about helping young people face their demons and actually get to a better place. I grew up on a farm just out of Mooroopna in north eastern Victoria, known as fruit salad city. From school I went to Melbourne University and I studied law and honours arts.

CATHERINE MILNE, WIFE: I first met Jack at university. We were doing a play together and um, I hated him at first sight. He was arrogant and wild and I didn’t like him. So it was not an auspicious start to the relationship. But underneath it all there was that steely resolve. He was ambitious. He wanted to succeed.

JACK HEATH: When Catherine and I had been going out for just a few months, we went to Burma, where her father was the ambassador and I met someone called U Myint Thein who was the First Chief Justice of Burma. And when I met him, extraordinary person, I thought if the foreign service was about meeting people like him, then that was something that I was interested in. So at the beginning of 1988, I went off to the Australian Embassy in Thailand and Catherine came with me on our first posting. I think at that stage my ambitions were to become an ambassador in world record time. The second day in Thailand, I went in to see one of the officials there to talk about my accommodation. And he said to me 'oh, they’ve found the body'. I had no idea what he was talking about and I said, 'what do you mean?' And he said, 'oh, you obviously didn’t know that they’ve found Ewa Czajor’s body'.

CATHERINE MILNE, WIFE: Ewa had been travelling in Northern Thailand with a group of her friends. We met Ewa when we were both doing theatre at Melbourne University and she came in as the new theatre director. I think Jack was half in love with Ewa. We all were. So when she died,and died in such horrific, violent murky circumstances, I think Jack just went a bit crazy.

JACK HEATH: So for me, dealing with Ewa’s death was just to go into this almost sheer manic phase.

CATHERINE MILNE, WIFE: It was um, a testing time in the relationship. Um, we came close, um, to, to breaking up at that point. Because of, because of things that were going on then. We were mixing with a wild ex-pat group. Young people, bit too much money, cars, servants, apartments, stuff that we’d never had before. And so everything just ramped up a notch. So whereas I would go home to bed, Jack would keep going. He would dance really hard and he would drink really hard. Now I look back and I can see that it was a reaction to what had happened and it was to affirm life and to grab life and the whole carpe diem thing.

JACK HEATH: I returned to Australia and basically wanted to try and save the country. I mean it’s quite grandiose but that was my intent.

CATHERINE MILNE, WIFE: He wanted to achieve in the public service. He would do what it took to get him noticed and to get him to that next point. At one point he didn’t get a um, career promotion that he thought he was going to get and he was so angry he put a shoe through the door of our rented flat in um, in Canberra. There was no let up, there was no down time. I think the danger was, of course, that if he stopped he would start thinking and he didn’t want to do that.

JACK HEATH: I think it was in August 1992, I got word that my cousin, John, had attempted suicide on, on our farm. And um, the way in which he’d done it had actually left him with the most horrendous injuries and he was flown down to the Royal Melbourne hospital. And then just before Christmas they sent him home to the farm and the idea was he was going to spend a bit of time sort of resting there. And I think he’d been home about two or three days and um, we um, you know, he went and ended his life.

CATHERINE MILNE, WIFE: Someone younger than you, who kind of looks up to you and um, wants you to take care of them, ends their own life in such, is prepared to end their own life in such a painful and brutal way, is, is shocking and sobering. So there was Eva’s death and then there was Johnny’s death. And that shook him in a really serious way. He thought it was another death, another death that he had not been able to prevent or stop. Jack was working as a speech writer for both Gareth Evans and Peter Cook. And it was in effect like he was doing two jobs.

JACK HEATH: I was just exhausted, using acupuncture like, just a fix to get me through. And I decided at the beginning of 1994 that I just needed to stop and take three months off and just rest. And almost the moment that I’d decided to do that, I got offered the job as second speechwriter for Paul Keating. And the carrot was dangled and I just grabbed it.

CATHERINE MILNE, WIFE: Day one, Jack goes into the office and is told that Don Watson, the main speech writer for Keating has had to leave because his wife has been taken sick. So Jack immediately has to become the speech writer for Keating.

JACK HEATH: I thought, this is it, this is my stepping stone to political office and my plan was that I’d write speeches for one or two years and off the back of that I would go and get a seat somewhere. We were looking at doing some major policy around technology and the internet. And so we brought in Michael Rennie, who was very senior at McKinsey, which is one of the top management consultancies in the world.

MICHAEL RENNIE, FRIEND: Working with the Prime Minister was a dream come true for Jack. He was very much a young Turk on the super fast track when I first met him. Two weeks into his work at Keating’s office, Lucy, his first child is born six weeks premature. So you can imagine that, right. He’s got chronic fatigue, he’s working for Keating and at home he’s got this premature baby. And I, you know, it was, uh, I can’t, you know, can’t imagine how he was coping with all that.

CATHERINE MILNE, WIFE: Things were beginning to catch up with him. All the things that he had internalised and repressed were beginning to, to, to need expression. And he couldn’t quite keep it together anymore, as hard as he tried.

MICHAEL RENNIE, FRIEND: Christmas came along and Jack called and said 'hey, I’m going to go up and do this meditation course, uh, Vipassana course' which is like ten days of intense silence. Really it’s sort of like boot camp for meditators. And uh, I remember saying (laughs) 'oh, jeeze, that’s pretty intense'.

JACK HEATH: It’s surreal, you go from flying around in the Prime Minister’s jet to this sort of bush setting where people are sitting there quietly, not doing anything, not writing, not speaking, just complete silence. A few days into the Vipassana course there comes a point in time where you’re instructed to basically sit quietly and not even move a finger for three hours. I get my instructions wrong. I end up doing it for five hours. I wake up the next morning and my knee has blown up and there’s this realisation, I don’t think it’s about this. I need to look after my knee, I need to look after my body, I need to look after myself, I have to stop work.

CATHERINE MILNE, WIFE: I was gobsmacked. I did not see it coming. It was a bolt from the blue. I thought that um, he had everything he wanted there. I thought that was the most important thing to him. And now he’s suddenly giving it all up.

MICHAEL RENNIE, FRIEND: Catherine went back to work because otherwise they weren’t (laughs) going to have any bread on the table. And uh, Jack tried to be the mum and look after Lucy but he was hopeless.

CATHERINE MILNE, WIFE: At this time he was doing quite a lot of Vipassana meditation retreats, going up there for ten, fifteen days at a time. I think that at the time had he gone to see a psychiatrist, they would have said he was clinically depressed. I didn’t realise that at the time, but all I felt was a coldness and a distance and an unwillingness to, to, to be together as a family.

MICHAEL RENNIE, FRIEND: Suddenly he had to face himself, right, and all the issues and stuff. And it felt to me very much like he’d just hurled himself off the cliff.

JACK HEATH: So I’ve stopped work with Keating and effectively I’ve just opened up this space for me to begin to deal with the suicide of my cousin Johnny, the death of my friend, Eva. And for some reason I just started going back sort of in history to the time that I was at school. At boarding school over a period of about six months, um, I was abused by a priest. What happened was, going back it was like you, you suddenly had a, a, sense of the sheer outrage of what had happened. I didn’t talk to anyone about it at the time. It’s sort of like, it’s actually like you’re in this bubble. It’s like a world unto itself. And uh, there was a sense of uh, having been violated, uh, but also of profound powerlessness. For me who was such a devout Catholic, you know, I thought my destiny was to be a priest. And to have had um, (long pause) you know, to have had that sacred trust breached was, um, was very difficult. I felt very drawn to Tibetan Buddhism for quite a while but I guess, having as an adolescent been abused by my spiritual teacher, to come into contact with Tibetan Buddhism where there’s a very strong guru relationship, if you like, it wasn’t something that I came to lightly at all. Then the Dalai Lama came out in ’96 and I went to one of his teachings and after that it was like walking down a hill. I’d sort of found my home.

KHENPO NGAWANG DHAMCHOE: Every beings has the two wishes. First one is the wish to be happy. Other one is the wish not to be unhappy. So everyone’s really searching is happiness. Jack really thought uh, he really had to leave all his family, his job, just be monk and live as monk and go to a cave, do meditate, that brings him to enlightenment. Uh, that’s not that simple. So I recommend very strongly and repeatedly, say you can’t leave your family. Family is very important. If you cannot look after or taking care of the family, then there’s no way you can taking care of your mind.

CATHERINE MILNE, WIFE: Khenpo was amazingly important. He was quite strict with him. He was quite stern. So yes, he was, he was very important and I thank him, thank him for that.

JACK HEATH: I was dealing with the issues around abuse and I was talking to him about what course of action I should take. The choice for me was, do I go down this path of sort of legal retribution, police, courts and all that sort of stuff? Or do I do something else? And I decided not to go down that path because I felt that my energies would be of more benefit to the world going in a, in a different direction. I think at the time that I was wanting to use the internet to do something about youth suicide, it was partly a way to find a sense of meaning or significance from what I’d gone through as an adolescent myself. So there was an element to which that, alongside my cousin’s suicide, it was like a grief project. It was like I had to try and find something good or some meaning and significance out of these traumatic events. And that’s when I started the Inspire Foundation and the Reach Out website. It was a, was a mad, crazy project because you had around five, maybe 10 per cent of people using the internet. Beyond Blue didn’t exist. Uh, the work that Kid’s Helpline was doing was targeting a younger age group and using the telephone. Ours was all about how do we use the internet uh, to connect with young people in that sort of 14 to 25 age group.

MICHAEL RENNIE, FRIEND: And that was the idea. How do you, how do you get to sort of be with them in those darkest moments, when they don’t, when they won’t reach out easily. He got Paul Gilding, who used to be the global head of Greenpeace, and I down on my veranda of my house at Kangaroo Valley. And he presented this whole thing to us and uh, and he basically said, I am going to do this. I want to do this, will you back me? And being Jack, you sort of couldn’t say no. So we both said, yeah, we’re in.

DR JANE BURNS, RESEARCH & POLICY DIRECTOR: The work that Inspire was doing when it first set up was cutting edge. There’s no doubt about it. No one else was working in this space. The Reach Out website has been designed for young people aged 14 to 25. It’s the fundamental age when you’re going through lots of life changes. So what we’re saying is, online you can access support and advice, but you may want to source this information in a confidential manner. What we’ve got now is an organisation that has a 12 year history of understanding how to work with young people and how to work with technology.

JACK HEATH: We’re not providing one on one service to young people, because if we’re going to reach millions, it would cost us billions of dollars. It’s all about using the internet to direct them to the resources and the help they need. Some people ask 'does Reach Out save lives?' Uh, what Reach Out does is to give young people the support to save their own lives.

INGRID SORENSON: When you’re struggling with being a teenager, it is hard to find someone that you can go to and be completely open and honest with. When I was in year 12 I made a lame attempt at a suicide. I did see a psychiatrist but he just described it as ‘acting up’. I went to uni after finishing high school, but things were getting worse so I wasn’t able to focus, so I had to leave uni. I Googled youth suicide and tripped over the Reach Out website. It was a huge relief to see that other people had experienced these feelings and emotions that I was experiencing. I can directly link Reach Out to changing my life. It’s made me want to help other young people struggling in their lives and really make a difference for them.

JACK HEATH: When I see the journey that Ingrid’s made, uh, for me there’s a sense of, of uh, of a fire inside me, a sense of light and a sense of warmth. And uh, that sustains me. It’s not easy getting support for what we do. Some of the issues that we’re working with are ones that people might want to turn away from.

RUPERT MURDOCH: I met Jack Heath through my late sister Helen, my oldest and closest friend. And she told me a lot about him, what he was doing. That’s really how it started. Jack involved me in a way that I had no option. He was so persuasive. So um, it wasn’t any wonderful outpouring from me.

JACK HEATH: One of the things that was really important for me was looking to build an organisation that went overseas, was to ask him how he went about doing that. And one of his pieces of advice was to make sure you get lots of Australian’s in there.

RUPERT MURDOCH: About all I do is give Jack time. A bit of money from time to time but mainly it’s giving him time and giving him advice and helping him, you know, expand around the world really. He’s a very ambitious man.

JACK HEATH: Rupert was quite surprised that there wasn’t a service like ours operating in the United States. But I think at the same time, he was quite taken by the fact that here was a small organisation in Australia that had the front to show up in the United States and say, actually we think that we can do something here on a very large scale. So we’ve recently launched Inspire in Ireland, and we’re shortly going to be launching Inspire in the United States. Spending as much time as possible with my family is a big priority, and the reason that we’re looking to move to the United States is so that I’m not spending all my time sitting on a plane. In some ways I think the most important thing is to make sure that, as we take on this work at an international level, that it doesn’t come at the cost of my own children.

CATHERINE MILNE, WIFE: It’s not what I want, to go to the States. I don’t want to leave my job and my house and um, everything that gives me comfort. But Jack is really the only person who can do what he can do over there in the States.

JACK HEATH: Some men, some wild crazy men get lucky and they find a woman who turns them into something a bit special and um, you know, I’m just so fortunate to have met Catherine.

CATHERINE MILNE, WIFE: Jack was always a reckless candidate for a husband. He was um, yes, but that’s one of the things that I love about him, is that he takes me to places that I had never expected. I’m sticking with him for the next 25 years and we’ll see what happens. But I can only imagine they will be um, it’ll be a wild ride.

END CAPTIONS:
Jack Heath, Catherine Milne and their children are now happily settled in San Francisco.

Inspire Foundation is working with the USA's Johns Hopkins University to establish an international research institute on youth mental health and technology.