Coleman Jonathan: Mental Health Commission Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Coleman Jonathan: Mental Health Commission Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:641;Page:10932] 
Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (National—Northcote) 
: 
 Part 2 of the Mental Health Commission Amendment Bill deals mostly with issues pertaining to the office of members of the commission. 
One of the things we learnt quite clearly in the Health Committee was that there are many differing approaches to mental health issues. Some of those were represented in the select committee hearing and we heard many different philosophies. It is always a very contentious issue as to how mental health treatment is delivered: who delivers it how it is carried out where mental health clients or patients live and how much influence and say they have in their own treatment and management. Of course things have moved on over the years and we live in a much more informed society now. I think that is reflected in society’s treatment of and approach to people with mental health issues. 
But when we look at the issue of who is on the Mental Health Commission one of the things we need to ensure is that the officers represent a balanced approach to mental health issues. We cannot have the commission philosophically dominated by anyone who is wedded to one particular mode of treatment or philosophical approach. 
In getting back to this issue that Sue Moroney mentioned about a 3-yearly review I know that the idea of a 3-yearly review is probably something the Labour Party members are extremely sensitive about at the moment—because of course those members are facing their 3-yearly reviews and there are several in the House who frankly may as well not turn up because they have failed already. Indeed some of them have faced that situation in the past and have been rejected as members by their electorates but have sort of scooted in on the coat-tails of various retirements or been well camouflaged so far down the party list that they have actually managed to get in there. I can imagine that Ms Moroney is very averse to that concept of the 3-yearly review. 
But when we think about it the Labour Party thinks that 3-yearly reviews are a good idea. The electorate thinks 3-yearly reviews are a good idea. So why would we not want to have a 3-yearly review of another body that spends a lot of public money—the Mental Health Commission? Ms Moroney was quite misleading and wrong when she said that National would cut spending in mental health. That is wrong. The point she does not appreciate is that with this massive increase in spending under this reckless Labour Government the public need to know that the money is being well spent and that the Government is actually delivering the services people need. Even Ms Moroney if she really looks at the facts would be hard-pressed to say this Government has delivered on mental health. She knows that the Government has not done that. Writing a huge stack of reports is not delivering on mental health. Delivering on mental health—the definition of that—is more people getting access to services and Ms Moroney knows that is not the case. The spending has gone up; it has gone up to $1 billion a year. The spending is $1 billion a year on mental health. That is a huge proportion of the Government’s expenditure and for that money people would expect that the Government would actually be delivering something. 
We also have this ridiculous situation where district health boards are not even managing to spend the allocated money in the correct way. So although there is no money for services for young women with eating disorders we still have $18 million across all the district health boards ring-fenced for acute mental health problems that the district health boards are just not managing to spend. 
A National Government would want to free that money up and put it in areas where it is needed. We would make sure that there are services for young people and services for children. We would make sure that people in deprived groups in society would actually be able to access mental health services in the same way that some of the more mainstream groups are doing. 
Really what this idea of a review of the Mental Health Commission comes back to is making sure that it is delivering on what it should be doing. What it should be doing is holding this Government to account because what has been happening is that the spending has gone up and up but the mental health statistics are not improving—in fact they are getting worse. We know that over the course of a year one New Zealander in five will suffer symptoms of a mental illness. That is a fact and we cannot dispute that. We know that is the case and that the situation is not improving in any way. National members say we have to have accountability.