Doocey MattMATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. And wasn't that interesting? The first sitting day back after the Government's Budget and they've been telling us this is a Budget about health—a health Budget—and the health Minister Andrew Little gets up for a short five-minute call. That's all he could do for a health Budget. And then he spent the whole time just ranting and raving and talking about the last National Government. He didn't even have enough confidence to talk about what he was putting forward. And I think it is about that word confidence" because here this Labour Government is asking the public to trust them with a billion-dollar reform of the health system when you just look at what happened with the spend for mental health—$1.9 billion—that health Minister Andrew Little oversaw and every member of that Labour Government—$1.9 billion—and the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission produced its first report that said there've been no material improvements. So here we are. They blew $1.9 billion on mental health with no material improvements and now they're saying "Oh in this Budget we've got billions to restructure the health system. Trust us." Well I'm not sure. And not only that the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission said what was needed was leadership in mental health and a clear plan to execute change a clear well-managed plan. And that's the concerning thing about this Budget. There's a lot of figures in it but actually no plan as this Government takes a wrecking ball to 20 DHBs in the middle of a pandemic throwing billions of dollars. But when asked by the Opposition to name one health outcome that will be improved in the first year they can't answer it. They don't have anything. There is no plan. This is just about throwing money at an issue. What was really interesting was that a few days before the Budget you'll remember the Government got caught out when they announced their Mana Ake programme. On 17 May 2022 they announced 195000 children were set to benefit from more mental health support and they talked about rolling out Mana Ake which is a good programme in fairness doing a lot of good work in Canterbury. It's going to be rolled out in Northland Counties Manukau Bay of Plenty Lakes and West Coast region. I thought "Hmm actually I think I've heard that before." So I went back through my research as a diligent Opposition spokesperson and found the PR on 15 April 2021—a year ago. It says "Government expands Mana Ake."—hold on—"The expansion of Mana Ake will start in five new DHB areas: Northland Counties Manukau Bay of Plenty Lakes and West Coast." There are two PRs announcing the same thing one year apart but of course this Government's got form in this space because Jan Tinetti—it must have been under associate education—announced counselling support for schools a fund of around $75 million—$31 million for large secondary schools $44 million for primary and secondary—and I thought "I know I've heard that one before too. That was on 8 November 2021. Oh look at this Tracey Martin the former education Minister under the last Government announced the same programme—"a major investment of $75 million for schools." Here they are caught out re-announcing mental health funding. And what's really concerning for people when they believed Labour was going to transform the mental health system is that they're pumping a large amount of this Budget's funding in the mental health restructure and mental health does not have its own strategy. Under the health strategy the Minister has to prepare a health strategy for Health New Zealand. There's a range of strategies he needs to refer to and develop; mental health is not one of them. The Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission the Mental Health Foundation and all the other peak mental health bodies during the select committee stage of Pae Ora called mental health invisible in this bill that this Budget is funding. Now the response by Andrew Little the health Minister was "Oh well there's a range of population groups; we can't include all of them." Well how many population groups did you promise to transform the mental health system to? And that's one: people with mental-health issues. And it even gets worse because out of the entities the health Minister must consult in the development of Health's strategy the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission is not one of those entities. Who would have thought the health Minister would not need to consult the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission especially when it was one of Labour's recommendations from its own mental health inquiry. They spent great time and expense of this Parliament setting up the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission yet in their once-in-a-generation reform of the health system they've left out the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission. And it just makes you wonder: was it because of the criticism of that commission's first report of the Government that they've been left out? And quite rightly they are wanting to be included in this bill. This is really concerning because what we've got is a Government that promised to transform the mental health system they made big announcements of funding nothing changed then they're putting in legislation through this House to change our health system and there's nothing in it for mental health. I'm standing here on behalf of the National Party today to support my leader Christopher Luxon in his motion calling this Budget a "backwards Budget". This is a band-aid Budget and I'll tell you what: the public knows that because you just need to look at the feedback these guys have been getting for the last couple of weeks and also the poll. The poll was interesting. I'll tell you what: look at the attack ads coming out of Labour. Because you know one thing: when Labour starts going down in the polls they get personal. Labour gets nasty. Look at the attack ads they're putting out because they're feeling the pressure. This is a "backwards Budget" that was made up off the hoof—the $350 cost-of-living allowance they were dragged kicking and screaming to. What was interesting the papers that got put on during that debate under urgency—that policy got put together on 4 May. Who would have thought? It was too late to even be put in the costing of the Budget; it sat outside of it because of course they denied the cost-of-living crisis—they denied it. The reason they put up that $350 for New Zealanders was because of the Opposition. If it wasn't for the Opposition they wouldn't have done it. And what you've got to do is scratch your head because the average Kiwi wage is 72K. With that $350 the entitlement stopped at 70K. So a New Zealander on the average wage is not even entitled to that. They get one of those big NZTA red zeros and you've got to wonder at all this policy on the hoof. And that's what the public is realising—these guys are making it up as they go. Probably one of the most concerning things is that it said in the documentation that they were going to have to hire 750 fulltime-equivalents to facilitate that cost-of-living payment. We all know under a Labour Government 750 fulltime-equivalents actually means about a thousand. A thousand new bureaucrats on top of the extra 10000—well 14000 now; the clock's ticking. And what was interesting is the Minister in his first reading for that bill had to get up and admit they don't have over 200000 bank details for people who are entitled to that payment. That's over 10 percent of the amount of people who are entitled. So you couldn't make this up; it's like Dad's Army. And you can see why in the documentation the Treasury was saying "No IRD should be the lead agency" and IRD said "No the Treasury". They knew this was all made up off the hoof and here we have a Government coming kicking and screaming to the cost of living. And now they're saying in the height of a pandemic they're taking a wrecking ball to 20 DHBs and they're saying "Don't worry; trust us. We know how this works. All you do is pump a lot of money into it. It doesn't matter." And that's why the Auditor-General said in his report for all their announcements of funding there are no performance measures. The public doesn't know if they get value for money on outcomes. That's typical Labour.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Before I call the next member of the House can I just say that this is call number 12. There's been a few questions to me because there's been a number of split calls."