5. Social Bonds—Mental Health ServicesHon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) to the Minister of FinanceSocial Bonds—Mental Health Services5. Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by his statement that the chances of getting the mental health social bond off the ground was oh very high"?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Acting Minister of Finance): The Minister stands by his full statement in which he also said: "… the fundamental motivation here is that those who look at the kind of issues where we want to apply social bonds are highly motivated about getting better results. So this is a small part of an overall programme where the government is focused less on just spending more money because that's often an indication of failure indicates the previous service didn't have much impact and more on getting results for real people."Hon Annette King: Was he not warned a year ago in reports from The New Zealand Initiative from Government departments and in examples from overseas that the major risk of this experiment is the costly burden of administration and setting it up and it can end up being a waste of money?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I am not aware of the exact quotes but actually social bonds have been successful around the world—Hon Member: Rubbish!Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well people as diverse as the Conservative Party in the UK President Obama and the Labor Government in New South Wales have participated in social bonds. It is the sort of innovation that is well worth doing to tackle some of the more challenging social issues.Hon Annette King: If lessons have been learnt as he claimed yesterday why is he continuing with a failed experiment that has wasted $1.62 million of taxpayers' money so far on administration and consultants achieving nothing while mental health patients see their services cut?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The member exaggerates and is not telling the story in the way that it would be if she was being factual.Hon Annette King: Well tell the story then; tell it.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I will. I know also that the member is a fan of the old way of doing things. But actually this particular programme is about tackling the very issues that she for example when she was Minister could not deal with for many many years.Hon Annette King: Will he rule out the Government giving cash sweeteners to investors like ANZ Bank to get them to stump up with the money to get the social bond experiment off the ground—something he promised he would not do last year?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I am sure the Minister has not changed his position in regard to what he said last year. But in terms of achieving these results actually doing innovative financing programmes to encourage people to change behaviour and operate in a different way is very well worthwhile. It is called innovation and it can deal with some of the intractable long-term issues that frankly even that member who has been in the House a little while knows that Governments have struggled with over decades.Hon Annette King: Why is he wasting more taxpayers' money by proceeding with his experiment when the national network of mental health and addiction providers said that the whole approach that has been taken appears to them as "… tedious bureaucratic slow processes that kill things before they're even born."?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: He will continue because this Government is always interested in doing new things in new ways to achieve better results in some of our more challenging social services. The member always wants to go back to the old ways—she always wants to look back into the past. Actually there are innovative new ways of doing things and these social bonds are one of them."