Awareness about mental illness is being substituted for meaningful political action on the issue, the world-leading psychiatrist Prof Patrick McGorry has told the National Press Club in Canberra, adding that the leaders of the major parties had failed to outline the kinds of policies required to save lives.

“Suicide rates have become a king tide, more than double the road toll, but awareness and rhetoric won’t fix that,” McGorry, a former Australian of the year, said on Thursday.

“Awareness is a glass ceiling and no substitute for action and investment. The soft bigotry of low expectations is a killer and we have few political champions. Awareness has not automatically led to the progress we need. There is no trickle-down effect. In fact, we see the reverse.”

He pointed to limited continuing funding for headspace youth mental health services and funding cuts to the early psychosis youth services program as examples of policy going backwards. The integration of mental healthcare within mainstream healthcare had seen mental health relegated to the bottom of the pecking order, he added, with little transparency around how mental health funding was allocated.

“When there were stand-alone mental hospitals the budget, however inadequate, was at least visible and safe,” he said.

“Within acute hospitals, which are always struggling for cash, mental health is at the bottom of the pecking order and even the limited funds intended by government for mental health care are relentlessly diverted to other squeaky wheels. Physical illness always takes priority for hospital CEOs, just as new cancer drugs, however expensive, take priority over new psychiatric medications.

“People with complex, enduring mental disorders need more comprehensive care. Federal funding to fill the service gaps for these patients would be better focused on more practical needs, such as family support, housing and specialised employment programs – all highly evidence-based but inadequately funded.”

Every year, there were 12,000 deaths due to suicide and medical illnesses related to mental illness, McGorry said. By contrast, he said 3,000 people died each year from breast cancer and 4,000 from bowel cancer. People with mental illness typically died up to 20 years earlier than the general population, he added.

“What other area of healthcare would mistake restructure, with no further investment, as the only plank necessary to ‘reform’ a health area that is so drastically under-resourced and underperforming?” he said.

“Only visible services providing timely expert care across the lifespan will address this. Untreated mental illness is dangerous in other ways too, contributing to family and community violence and many preventable deaths.”

The Labor party is yet to announce any additional funding for mental health. However, in response to McGorry’s speech, a spokesman for the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said Labor was committed to restoring funding to six early psychosis centres around Australia.

The Labor government has also committed to the National Mental Health Commission’s target to reduce suicides by 50% over the next 10 years through the development of the fifth national mental health and suicide prevention plan, the development and implementation of a national suicide prevention framework, and the establishment of 12 suicide prevention initiatives in urban, regional and remote areas.

Labor would also develop an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mental health plan, establish the first national minimum data set on deaths by suicide and suicide attempts, and give funding certainty to headspace centres, the spokesman said.

The Greens leader, Richard Di Natale, who is a former GP, announced the Greens’ mental health policy last month. It includes an additional $1.4bn in funding to the mental health sector, a greater emphasis on health promotion, prevention and early diagnosis, and reforms of end-of-life care including developing a framework to introduce voluntary euthanasia.

The Coalition has not allocated additional mental health funding in the election campaign so far. The health minister, Sussan Ley, said she welcomed McGorry’s speech.

“We promised to make mental health a first-term priority and, from next month, we are delivering the changes some of this nation’s top mental health experts recommended,” she said.

“That wide-ranging review of existing mental health services indicated it was not about more money, it is about allocating what is a substantial amount of funding more effectively, and this is exactly what we are doing.”

In November Ley announced changes to the sector, including the consolidation of more than 30 government-funded phone and online services into a single helpline for people living with mental illness. She announced coordinated packages of care for people with severe and complex needs to be accessed through primary healthcare networks, and the development of a Digital Mental Health Gateway to help people access support online.

The reforms were in response to recommendations made by the National Mental Health Commission, delivered in 2014.

• Crisis support services can be reached 24 hours a day: Lifeline 13 11 14; Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467; Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800; MensLine Australia1300 78 99 78

