SpeechKEVIN HAGUE (Green): Ki Te Tiamana o Te Whare tēnā koe ki a koutou huri noa i Te Whare tēnā koutou katoa ngā mihi o Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori anō ki a tātou katoa.[I thank you Mr Chairman and to you collectively throughout the Committee acknowledgments of Māori Language Week once again to us all.]I thought it was somewhat ironic that Simon O'Connor in his contribution just now spoke about the Budget in parallel to the presentation he has just been at which said that it is not about the money; it is about something else. And indeed that has been the approach of the Government to the health budget: it has been about something else; not about enough money. Dr Coleman's predecessor Tony Ryall in my view was the most political of Ministers. He got up in the morning and approached every single issue through the lens of Does this win me votes or lose me votes?" and that led to an awful lot of problems in the health sector. But at least on one occasion he actually got to the point of conceding that the amount of money that was going into health in his budget had not been enough to keep pace with demographic change and with the cost pressures in the health sector. What he said was: "Well stupid old Greens. Don't they realise there's been a global financial crisis and everyone has to tighten their belts?". It is a point that I disagreed with. I pointed to the $20 billion being spent on roads of significance to National for example so it was a question of priorities. But unfortunately despite what was I thought an early promising start of perhaps approaching the portfolio in a different way Dr Coleman has now reverted to form. So the truth is Labour is quite right: over time National has underfunded the health sector by a lot of money—approaching $2 billion. Dr Coleman denies it and Simon O'Connor just denied it but in the same way every time it is just a denial. There is never ever any kind of attempt to dig into the analysis by independent economists and to say what in that analysis is wrong. The simple fact is that the system has been underfunded and what I want to talk about are the areas that have particularly suffered.In the district health board (DHB) sector the areas that have particularly suffered are those that do not have targets. When I ask Dr Coleman a question about health he will respond—whatever the question is—by talking about the number of hip operations the health sector has done and certainly it is true that in the area of targets the Government has genuinely put more money in. Its performance has improved. But if you put more effort and resource and focus into the areas you have targets for it is inevitable that the Government must be putting less into everything else and that "everything else" includes public health—the services that are intended to keep people well in the first place. It includes mental health and I am going to come to that in a second. It includes all of those organisations that are not part of the DHB sector because DHBs which are under extraordinary financial pressure know that if they fund their own service they get to keep the money in their overall bottom line and if they fund someone else they lose the money from the bottom line and the Minister says deficits are not permitted. So the non-governmental organisations which play such a precious role in our health sector are the very ones that have borne the brunt of the underfunding from this Government. I want to talk about mental health in the minute I have remaining. In the review of the Waikato DHB that Dr John Crawshaw led he identified low staff morale he identified a funder arm that was paying less than the nationally agreed price for mental health services he identified patient to staff ratios that were much worse than they should have been and he identified positions being held vacant so that the DHB could try to balance its budget. All of those things have contributed to the utter disaster that is befalling mental health services and Waikato is just one of those areas. Capital and Coast DHB is a disaster area. Northland DHB Southern DHB—the disasters multiply and multiply across the country. And that is why I am saying that this Minister this Government must initiate an urgent nationwide inquiry into mental health services. Thank you."