Fox MaramaMARAMA FOX (Co-Leader—Māori Party): I rise to take a call in the appropriations debate in regard to health. Yesterday I joined the debate with New Zealand First with the Labour Party and with the Green Party but sadly there was no one there from National to represent the voice of the teachers union in debate yesterday afternoon.Pita Paraone: That's your partner. They're your partners.MARAMA FOX: That might be so. Thank you to the member. I want to make these points. One of the things that is sadly underfunded—and I think the Minister in the chair Jonathan Coleman will agree with this—is the area of mental health.On New Year's Eve this year I literally had four women messaging me on Facebook from around the country who could not get services. They have been barred from the emergency department (ED) of hospitals in this country despite the fact that they could not trust themselves to get through the night and not take their lives. With one of them I managed to get somebody to go and see them because they lived in Hawke's Bay and we knew some people working in suicide prevention. The other lived just down the road from me and with the two others I managed to get somebody to talk to them on Facebook.Minister we need to ensure that there is a complete review of the mental health services that are provided. Why does somebody take a mental health patient to the ED when it is determined that they are fine and that they can go home because every night they go home they are actually proving to themselves that they can get through the night? But they have taken the opportunity to go to the ED services and they are being turned away. I literally spent 10 hours with a woman. I took her to the ED and worked with the Crisis Assessment & Treatment Team which turned her away. I then tucked her into bed that night making sure before I left that she was going to be OK thinking I'm the last person who may get to see this person."If that is the state of our healthcare for women and people who are suffering from mental health issues who may be suicidal—if I am the one who has to go in there and fix it then it is not working. It is not working. When we have the highest rates of youth suicide in this world for Māori it is not working and we need to do something about it.In the very first Budget in 2015 we managed to get a little bit of putea—$2 million—to try to affect changes for rangatahi Māori who are at the top of the world in the statistics of young people who take their lives. That is wrong; that is not right and we need to do something about it.We are attempting to do something about it. We are attempting to ensure that there is funding out there to work with the grassroots programmes that are out there working in our communities with the specific issue of LTGBQI—did I get that right?Paul Foster-Bell: LGBT.MARAMA FOX: L—oh my gosh plus. All right. So the letters are confusing me—far too many acronyms. But with this specific issue—because they felt their needs were not being tended to in the entire conversation about suicide prevention. So rangatahi Māori kaupapa Māori models of practice—we managed to get a tiny bit of putea but it is not enough. We are leading the statistics and it is not good enough. A complete review of the mental health situation in this country is needed.Those women who sat on Facebook that night telling me that they were going to take their lives were over the issues that made them depressed in the first place. They were now dealing with the issues of their medication with not being able to get help with going to the local GP and being turned away and with being told that they are drug seeking. But when you take someone's medication—you cut it off right there and then and you do not support them to address their underlying issues about why they are there in the first place that is not helping. And when a 9-year-old—a 9-year-old—chooses to take their life instead of living their reality then we as a country are failing them.This health system needs to take note and we need to get it right. We are willing to work with this Government and we are willing to work with whichever Government might be in place following 23 September to ensure that our young people have faith in themselves and a resilience that they understand emotional intelligence that they understand emotional literacy and that they become emotionally resilient. We need to do something about the mental health legislation and we need to do something through Vote Health."