King Annette: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee 
King Annette: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee 
[Volume:654;Page:3779] 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
: 
 I begin by congratulating the Mental Health Commission which over many years has done a fantastic job for people with mental illness in New Zealand. I commend the work that it does. As a Government Labour extended the life of the commission not once not twice but three times because we believed that it needed to be in place until we had the best possible mental health services in this country. 
Today New Zealanders have just listened to a political rant from a man who claims to be a doctor. If that is the case he should know something about mental health. I am absolutely ashamed of the speech he has just made. If he knew a single thing about mental health he would know that one of the things that needed to happen in New Zealand was a major change to the way we provided mental health services. The reason why we needed to make a change was that when Labour became Government in 1999 there had been 75 inquiries in the 1990s into failures of the mental health system in New Zealand. The most significant inquiry was the Mason report which set out for us a very clear way forward. 
From my time in Government I know what happened—I was the Minister of Health for 6 years I say to the Minister. I know exactly what priority we put on mental health. First of all we said that mental health was not the Cinderella of the health system and that mental health needed to be right up there as a major issue. We said that it should not be sidelined—it is not something a Government does when it has done everything else—and that it was a major issue for New Zealand. Labour needed to take it seriously. We needed to implement the blueprint on mental health services in New Zealand and we needed a strategic direction as to what we were going to do in the years ahead. We set out to implement that blueprint and to put those services in place. I am particularly proud of what we did in the area of mental health with the support of the Mental Health Commission and with the support of the mental health workforce of New Zealand. 
Let me give the members an example of what we did not have in this country. Today people glibly talk about the need to have mental health services for adolescents and young people. Could we have provided that before we became Government? No we could not have done so. There was no training of mental health workers in child and adolescent mental health. That did not start until we invested in the John Werry centre in Auckland and started training people in the area of adolescent and child mental health. The work to produce such a workforce started under the Labour Government. Anyone who had read what had gone wrong in mental health in New Zealand would know that our problem was a lack of money a lack of a trained workforce and a lack of priority for mental health services. This is such a sad day because that is no longer a priority. I fear that if it is not a priority for the district health boards—because that is the message they will get from the Minister’s statement—the emphasis on improving mental health services for New Zealanders will no longer be there. 
The reason why I ring-fenced the mental health money into district health boards was to ensure they spent it on mental health services. Over many decades when money went into area health boards into Crown health enterprises into hospital and health services and finally into district health boards the easiest money to rob was mental health money. It was taken for whatever else was needed. Acute care always got priority and mental health money was taken. So we ring-fenced that money and we saw the improvement in mental health services over the time that we were in Government. It was a huge improvement—over 27000 New Zealanders every day of the week were receiving mental health services in the community. We improved access to acute mental health services. We built new mental health units around New Zealand. We made it a priority—it must be a priority. Any humane country would make it a priority. 
I went to the World Health Assembly conference in 2001. The theme of the conference was mental health. I happened to chair the plenary session and I listened to Ministers from 40 countries provide their descriptions of the mental health services in their country. I listened to what they were doing. I listened to the Minister from Nigeria—and I heard him today in the form of the Associate Minister of Health. The health Minister in Nigeria said: “We have no mental health problems in Nigeria so we don’t have a mental health system. It’s not a priority.” And that is what we heard today. I heard the French health Minister say: “In France we have a huge mental health problem. The problem is we have too many psychiatrists.” What I heard from countries all around the world was that most of them know there is a problem but some deny it as a problem. We heard today a denial of the problem from the Associate Minister of Health who was trying to say that the previous Government did nothing and to complain about the legacy we have. It was total hogwash. I have never heard more distortion and untruths put together in one speech in my time in Parliament. 
The priority on mental health has to remain. It must remain. It is no good for the new Government to say that it thinks 13 priorities are too many. Well why have any? If everything has the same priority why have any priorities? The Government could just make everything the same. How ridiculous! One has to set priorities and mental health must be one of them. 
A second priority the Government has removed is that of oral health. Good heavens above! There would not be a member opposite who did not write to me when I was the Minister of Health and ask what I was doing about oral health. Members asked what the Government was doing about the provision of child oral health and adult oral health so we set about bringing back the training of dental therapists. Can members believe it? The previous National Government had got rid of all training of dental therapists so how were we going to be able to provide such a service? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: The debate is about mental health. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: I am talking about the priorities that have been put forward by this Government Mr Chairperson. That was the second priority that a National Government got rid of. I noticed that the Minister had quite a good whack at Trevor Mallard; I did not notice that that was in the financial review. 
The big announcement the Government has made in mental health is that it is putting money into eating disorders. New Zealanders should know that the work on the eating disorder approach to be used in New Zealand was actually done by Steve Chadwick when she was Associate Minister of Health. That work was done under a Labour Government and if Labour was still in Government it would have funded this in the Budget. That is the only announcement the Government could make in mental health. I say “Thank God for the Mental Health Commission” because it will not matter what priority the National Government puts on mental health—and it is none—the commission will keep it honest. The Mental Health Commission will keep this Government honest. Its members are fearless; they say what they believe. They have conviction and commitment. The Mental Health Commission will show this Government up for the callous one it is. National does not give a damn about mental health—it never did. 
To hear from the Associate Minister of Health Jonathan Coleman that the former Labour Government put no priority on mental health and that we did not improve it is to hear nothing but hogwash. He will go nowhere as a Minister if he cannot front up with the truth to New Zealand and if he cannot take off his political glasses and see what improvements were made under Labour. I could provide him today with many testimonies from mental health patients and providers who know that huge improvements were made in the 9 years Labour was in Government. 
Report noted.