Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. I'm pleased to stand in support of this bill and echo the comments of my colleague and friend our mental health spokesperson Matt Doocey one who has a considerable degree of experience in this area.I think there is a mood of cross-party support for this. I say this with a caveat because the Minister still can't bring himself to acknowledge any contribution by the National Party to any part of health policy. That's certainly the case with mental health. That's slightly disappointing given the leadership that Mr Doocey has shown around the establishment of the cross-party support and the willingness of the National Party to contribute positively to making sure the effect of this bill is as positive as it can be. We want to make sure that the strategies and initiatives that are recommended and implemented by the commission and the sector as a whole are enduring and the changes that need to be made are generational—they will transcend Governments and members of Parliament. I think it behoves the Government—well the Minister at least—because I know the members of the Health Committee from the other side acknowledge the contribution that Mr Doocey and the National Party have made. At least the Minister could at some point acknowledge that as well.While we will support this bill I have to signal to the House that we will oppose the motion to report back to this House on 30 March 2020. That is just four months and 11 days away. With the intermission of the Christmas break which could see no work by the select committee—in fact no work by National members of the select committee at least for the period between 18 December and the end of January—my concern about this report-back date is that it will be hastened it will be rushed that it will be necessary therefore for submitters to have a shortened period of time. The Health Committee will consider that and the chair will make her considerations on that but it could be as little as two to three weeks. I think given how we acknowledged that it is important that we understand what the terms of reference are that we are setting down in primary legislation it does behove us to take a more considered view of the submissions by the people who know the sector best and therefore we will oppose a shortened report-back date.I also want to highlight another perceived—at least perceived by me—inconsistency in the manner in which the Government has gone about the establishment of the organisations that it will use to support it. I compare and contrast the establishment of the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission as an independent Crown entity with the refusal of the Government to do that with the cancer agency that it scrambled to announce after the National Party did just that in July. Our announcement was of a wholly independent cancer agency independent of the line of command from the front line to the Minister so that it can step aside and make a clear articulation of what good cancer care looks like and hold the sector to account for delivering that. I find it a bit ironic that in the Mental Health Commission and in the reading of the regulatory impact statement and the bill itself that's exactly what it seems as though the Government wants the Mental Health Commission to do. It is very inconsistent in the sense that it is not going to do that for things like cancer care. The Minister said something like Well if they're not in the line they can't be controlled." Well that's exactly how they should be and it's exactly how it appears as though the Government wants to establish the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission. So I would actually encourage the Minister to take some of his own advice from mental health and apply it to cancer care.I'm also interested in the purpose as articulated in the bill. It says "The Commission will contribute to better mental health and wellbeing outcomes for people in New Zealand." But it can only do that through service delivery. I have been very disappointed two years into this Government's tenure that they have done a lot of talking and a lot of listening but very little doing. Lots of hui no doey. In fact the mental health and addiction report is now back out on the road. I do acknowledge that Budget 2019 had a significant sum of money for increasing mental health services but my question is: is it actually being spent? I think we'll find near the end of this financial year that the answer to that question is no. There have been some buildings announced in Porirua Palmerston North and somewhere further north but actually—in terms of new services new initiatives extra resources actually being committed on the front line—we are seeing not only nothing but the opposite of that because of the Government's refusal to support the previous Government's 17 initiatives valued at $100 million as part of a $223 million mental health package announced in Budget 2017. It seemed as though because it wasn't their idea it wasn't a good idea. That's the antithesis of the sort of cross-party collaboration that we have all acknowledged in this House is necessary in order to deliver improved mental health for New Zealanders.Yes there was a criticism that the previous Government came a bit late to the party on this but these were very very well-considered cross-portfolio initiatives that were very much consistent with the social investment model that we continue to promote. It had aspects of education of police of law and order of social policy—a number of other areas outside the core health service delivery. As Mr Doocey mentioned it certainly looked at what were quite well evidence-based and modern: e-therapies talk therapies mild to moderate focused community-based focused on the young; all of the things that we know are necessary to be able to deliver good mental health. They were dispensed with. I hope and trust that the Mental Health Commission when it is established has firstly the resources and then the right teeth I suppose to be able to very clearly articulate what that means without fear or favour of what has gone before.And if it in its wisdom believes that any or all of those 17 initiatives were the right thing to do are the right thing to do then they should be able to recommend that and the Government should have the good grace to accept that advice. The role of the commission as stated in the general policy statement of contributing to better mental health can only be the case if the Government accepts the recommendations and the advice of the commission and so that's where that independence is going to be so important.I will finish just on the issue of suicide. It's been a particularly concerning issue to monitor over the years. I recently read a report that surprised me when one distinguishes and stratifies between urban and rural suicidality and this is where I think the commission will be able to make some very good inroads into understanding where the need is. While in fact suicide rates in urban areas had dropped by about 7 percent suicide in rural New Zealand had gone up by 17 percent. I see my regional MP colleagues to my right nodding because they know how much stress is being brought to bear on our rural communities for a number of reasons and how important it is to make sure that our services are committed into the areas of most need. That's where the commission I think is going to play a very important part not only in articulating what "good" looks like but where it is—where the need is the greatest. I'm confident that they will be able to see that the need is not perhaps traditionally where the providers of mental health services are. It's going to need to be very confident and clear in its expectations that if they believe in services closer to the client then that's likely to mean a move away from the base hospital-type approach the institutional approach and to reinforce what we know—and that is: it's the communities in our regional and rural sectors that are most poorly served at the moment by our mental health services and that's where the need is greatest.But with that caveat and our opposition to the shortened report back I'm pleased to confirm our support for it."