Clark DavidDr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): I want to begin by acknowledging the people who presented a petition to Parliament today on a topic that was covered frequently in the annual reviews and that is the ActionStation petition on mental health which was led by Kyle MacDonald and Mike King. That was presented to Parliament today along with thousands of signatures from New Zealanders calling on the Government to act in the area of mental health. I guess we saw today what was typified across the annual reviews—a kind of arrogance that says: We do not need to fund this. There is no problem. There is nothing to see here." That was the response that we got across the annual reviews when we looked at mental health which we did across all of the district health boards (DHBs) in New Zealand. That was personified today in the health Minister's dismissal of the 500 New Zealanders who had shared their personal stories of their experiences with the mental health system. In one fell swoop the Minister trod on those people calling them a bunch of left-wingers and anti-Government activists.That has typified what we have seen through this annual review process from this Government. It has dismissed at every turn the need for funding mental health services adequately. That is the kind of arrogance and the out-of-touch nature of this Government and it is personified in that Minister who sits in the chair over there Mr Jonathan Coleman. We see him doing that time and time again. And Bill English of course will not stand on him because Bill English fears his influence in the caucus. Yes Jonathan Coleman has ambitions for that leadership. He is waiting for Bill English to get out of the way and Bill English is happy to let him hang out to dry with a trickle of funding and a worsening crisis in the health sector. That is why Bill English will not discipline him. That is why Bill English's failure of leadership is being shown over and over again. [Interruption] I come back to the matter that we saw directly in the annual reviews—Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I believe this is a review of the 2015-16 year.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I think both members will sit down. Now you can stand up Dr Clark. The member Dr Coleman is absolutely aware that I have just called the member Dr Clark back to the—Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: You haven't said anything.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I think the member saw me indicate to the member and the member did—Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: I've seen nothing I'm sorry.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Well I am sorry the member was not focusing.Dr DAVID CLARK: Thank you Mr Chair. I want to focus specifically on a couple of examples in the annual review that illustrate this point because there has been a 60 percent increase in the demand over the last decade for mental health services in New Zealand. That is the increase in the number of users across New Zealand of mental health services. A recent example is the Kaikōura earthquake. We examined that in the review of the Canterbury District Health Board which was presented in March and we learnt at that stage that the chief executive of the Canterbury District Health Board had already spent $2 million of the $840000 the Government had allocated for the year.In March he had already spent twice as much as the Government had allocated to that particular earthquake in Kaikōura and the effects on mental health. The Government has put a little bit more money towards it since but already the expenditure is running ahead of that. The Minister has failed to acknowledge the need that is present particularly in Canterbury. I mean the unbelievable thing is that the Canterbury District Health Board is funded below the national average for mental health and addiction services—below the national average. It spends as a requirement of the Government to a certain level above which it is funded and then beyond that it spends more because the need is so great. Yet this Minister has the arrogance—the arrogance—to stand up and dismiss the experience of those people and I bet plenty of those who submitted to that report were from the Canterbury DHB; the arrogance and the out-of-touch nature to just dismiss those 500 people and their experience of the mental health system in one fell swoop.We are seeing it across all the DHBs though. The $1.7 billion that this Government has stripped out of the health sector over the last 6 years is also apparent in my own DHB down in the south the Southern District Health Board. It has—and we covered this as well—issued a 5 percent funding cut across all NGO providers. It has said that regardless of performance regardless of how the NGOs are performing over the course of the year as contracts are renewed they will all be cut by 5 percent. That is not even a failure to fund at the same level that is not even a failure to fund wage increases; that is a cut—a cut. Services are being cut and all of those NGOs are feeling the pinch.The Minister knows it but he thinks he is above it all. He thinks he is above it all. He thinks it has nothing to do with him. He can cut services in the health sector because he does not care about them. That is what it looks like to ordinary middle New Zealand. Middle New Zealand though is crying out for a properly funded health service. New Zealanders demand rightly so—and the Labour Party will support them in this—affordable access to quality health services."