Coleman Jonathan: Crown Entities Reform Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Coleman Jonathan: Crown Entities Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 23 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2350. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of State Services) 
: 
 There was only one fact that came out of that speech on Part 2 of the Crown Entities Reform Bill by the heir to the Labour Party leadership. That is the fact that Grant Robertson is going to be running around the mental health sector wringing his hands and telling people how bad it is going to be. That is the one bit of truth in that speech. All the rest was complete fiction. That was a speech designed to scare people out there. I want to put the record straight. Grant Robertson is in the Chamber talking about funding. Well the fact is that this Government has put more funding into mental health than any Government in New Zealand’s history—$40 million over 4 years in the last Budget. Grant Robertson gets up here and talks about mental health cuts. That is completely untrue. He knows that his local district health board has had more funding under National than it ever got under Labour and that that money has gone up every single year. He is not even going to get up and take a call I reckon to refute that fact. But that is the fact.  
Look this Government has not focused on bureaucracy and strategies like the last Government did. We focused on access to services. What was happening under that last Government in mental health under the Labour Government? It is a fact: Pacific Islanders were not getting access to mental health services Maori access was way less than it should have been— 
Grant Robertson 
: You’re making it up. 
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN 
: —I am not; I tell you what this is the absolute truth—and access for older people and the very young was not what it should have been. I can tell you if Labour thought that mental health was such a priority why did it never allocate it as a ministerial portfolio? It never did. 
Grant Robertson 
: What about a target for mental health? 
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN 
: See? Here he goes. His answer to everything is a target and more money. Yet when debating Part 1 of this bill Labour members were saying Tony Ryall should not be focusing on targets so they cannot be right both ways. They are absolutely confused. Grant Robertson went on about the independence of the deputy commissioner within the Office of the Health and Disability Commissioner who will now take over those functions of advocacy and monitoring. He is essentially questioning the independence of the Health and Disability Commissioner. Grant Robertson knows that he is being completely mischievous because he knows that the Health and Disability Commissioner reports regularly to Parliament. If there is one body in health I can tell you that is monitoring what is going on in the health system it is the Office of the Health and Disability Commissioner.  
 He is also trying to make out that somehow the blueprint work will not be done. Well Blueprint II is going to be completed by the Mental Health Commissioner. But the point will be that the implementation will then be carried on through this new position within the Office of the Health and Disability Commissioner and most crucially we have a whole Ministry of Health—you know hundreds and hundreds of very good public servants many of whom are working in mental health—who will be responsible through the district health boards for implementing this blueprint. So for the Labour Party to say that there is less spending in mental health is a complete fiction.  
I want to tell you that this Government has put a premium on mental health. We have focused on the services. Kevin Hague was talking about people not getting services in the community. Well we have put a major emphasis in the Primary Health Care Strategy of making mental health services more available. I do not believe that it is actually true that there are people in our mental health system who are in hospital beds when they should be being cared for in the community. There has been an emphasis for many years—the Labour Government actually did that as well—on getting people cared for in the community.  
Grant Robertson 
: I didn’t think we did anything. 
Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN 
: Grant is right—Labour did not do much in mental health. He is owning up to that. He said: “I didn’t think we did anything.” and he is correct in that in some sense. But I want to give them some credit; they got the philosophy right. We have continued on with that philosophy. The best place for people with chronic illness to be cared for is in the community. I just want to assure people that the advocacy functions of the Mental Health Commission are going to continue. Mental health has a very high profile now in New Zealand society and I want to acknowledge the work of mental heath services consumers people who have suffered with chronic illness for the profile they have brought to this. I want to acknowledge the work of people like John Kirwan who have gone outside their comfort zone to break down stereotypes around mental health. That has been very positive. It is now a very acceptable thing to people to say to their mates: “Look I’m having a few issues.” and people by and large are very supportive in a way that they would not have been a decade or two ago.  
But I want to get back to the central point. This is a sensible change that will preserve the functions of the Mental Health Commission and mental health is a very high priority for this Government.