Pallett Sarah; Little AndrewSARAH PALLETT (Labour—Ilam): Thank you so much Mr Chair. What information has the Minister received in regards to the delay in development and publication of the Office of the Director of Mental Health and Addiction Services annual report?Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): Thank you Mr Chairman. I thank the member for her question. The report of the Office of the Director of Mental Health and Addiction Services was a report that originated from a verbal recommendation from the Auditor-General in roughly 2003; the first report was produced in 2005. There is a statutory role in the ministry which the Director of Mental Health and that statutory role that director has responsibilities under a number of pieces of legislation but principally the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act. The Auditor-General of the day considered that it was appropriate for the Director of Mental Health to report on regulatory action taken and statutory powers exercised under the legislation which he or she was then required to exercise powers under. Over time that report grew and it became a very generalised report not only on powers exercised and regulatory actions taken but it became a general report on a number of aspects of our mental health services and the report was often quite late after the reporting period. When the report came to be prepared for the 2018 year—it typically takes about a year to prepare; it took a little longer than that—it was all but ready to go in 2020 when the pandemic struck COVID-19 struck all the efforts of relevant ministry personnel were redirected to the COVID-19 effort and so the report was delayed. At the point of which it was ready for reporting it was considered that it would be appropriate to combine the 2019 data so there'd be one report covering 2018 and 2019. That was compiled and released again late early this year. I think members opposite and others had noted that the report once published did not contain the same data and the same breadth of data as had appeared in previous reports. I think the ministry is justifiably open to criticism for changing the content and format of the report without foreshadowing that publicly and indeed I might add without foreshadowing it to the Minister. It is a matter that has been taken up with the ministry. But in any event the report has been produced and much of the content that had appeared in previous reports but did not appear in the 2018/19 report is otherwise available through other sources. Recently for example the ministry released information related to what is called section 132 deaths so deaths of people in the care of our mental health services while under a compulsory order. That should have appeared in the 2018/19 report and it wasn't there. The ministry has since released that and made a public statement that it is publicly available. There is another aspect of the data that didn't appear in the latest report; that is section 95 inquiries. They are inquiries that the Director of Mental Health is empowered to make for a serious incident for somebody under a compulsory order. There hasn't been an inquiry since 2016 so the data would have simply been a big fat zero and it was considered by those compiling the most recent report not to report on a zero result so that didn't occur. But in all other respects the relevant data on the Director of Mental Health's powers and the exercise of those powers and the regulatory actions taken under relevant legislation and that legislation is the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act as I've said but also now the Substance Addiction (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 2017 a more recent piece of legislation. That report covers actions under those pieces of legislation and is by and large correct.