Luxton JoJO LUXTON (Labour): I'm absolutely thrilled to stand here and take a call in the House this evening to talk about this Wellbeing Budget—the first wellbeing Budget that we are seeing in New Zealand and the first wellbeing Budget that we are seeing throughout the world. We had a member opposite mention before about the fact that this wasn't the first wellbeing Budget because the previous Government thought about people when they developed—Kieran McAnulty: They thought about it a lot—did nothing.JO LUXTON: Apparently they did. They talk up about how good the economy was under them—under the previous Government it was going great guns. But at whose expense? At whose expense was this so-called economy going at great guns? We had growing numbers of homelessness. We had children living in cars. We had children living in poverty. We had hospitals falling into disrepair around our ears. Our schools were falling into disrepair. We didn't have teachers coming into the profession. We certainly didn't have mental health workers coming into the profession and what we saw was the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Well if that is their definition of a wellbeing Budget that apparently the previous Government has delivered well they should be ashamed of themselves—ashamed of themselves.This Wellbeing Budget it puts people at the centre. We had a previous speaker the Hon Amy Adams call this a botched Budget that does nothing for the wellbeing of New Zealanders. Well I challenge that member and say taking mental health seriously improving child wellbeing supporting Māori and Pasifika aspirations building a productive nation and transforming the economy—how does that not do anything for the wellbeing of New Zealanders I ask that member? This Budget looks long term and intergenerational to make change for generations to come. It thinks beyond the three-year parliamentary cycle unlike what we have seen in the past.I debated what to talk about in my contribution today and there's so much to talk about so many good initiatives in this Budget. But the one thing that transcends everything in my view is the amount of money that is going to be put into mental health: $1.9 billion. Outstanding—the most we've seen spent in the mental health space in many many years. Mental health has the biggest impact on everybody. It affects our day-to-day happiness it affects our productivity in the workplace it affects our personal relationships it affects our social relationships it affects and impacts on everything people do every day. It affects in fact our quality of life.We've heard the word transformational" talked about a lot and this Government will be a transformational Government. We hear members opposite saying "Oh you know it's not going to be transformative." but actually our people that need and use the services in mental health—the services that are going to be new services new initiatives—this will be transformational for them and their families and their children. This will help to transform their lives.In the area where I live in Ashburton in particular the amount of money that is going to be put into mental health towards new initiatives is going to go a long way. We've seen mental health suffer with the M. bovis issues that have been predominant in the Ashburton electorate. We have horrendous youth mental health issues and one of the things that this Budget is going to work towards is increasing the number of staff working in the mental health space so when someone goes to the GP there will be a mental health worker on site because that is something that has been missing for such a long time. People that go to their GP and get given a referral to have an appointment with a mental health worker—they may be ashamed they may be embarrassed and they don't end up going because they feel alone. Well with this initiative they will visit the GP and their GP will physically walk them down to the mental health worker and that will be transformational."