Swarbrick ChlöeCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green): E Te Māngai tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. I thought long and hard about the topic of this speech and I thought about not addressing the subject which I'm about to address but I thought that it was important given that so much of this debate tends to operate in the abstract when we talk about numbers. I want to talk about something real because last night I got a call about another young person in Auckland who had attempted to take their life. That's not abstract. That's very very real and what concerns me is that we so often talk about these things in the abstract. We talk about the numbers and we talk about the statistics.I was having conversation with somebody close to me about this and they shook their head and said that the mental health system is failing our young people. Yes the mental health system is absolutely failing our young people but far worse than that is that every single other piece of this system that this Parliament has built up decade after decade is failing our young people. Whether it's the housing system whether it's employment or whether it's the debt that they take on to get an education we are failing our young people.I cannot drive it home anywhere near enough because when people say to me that young people are lacking in resilience nowadays our young people aren't dying from diseases but they are taking their own lives. There is something chronically wrong and chronically ill in the system and we have to be bold enough to address that.I can't get this out clearly enough: if we cannot work together as a Parliament to solve this issue we don't deserve to be here—all 120 of us—we do not deserve to be representing the people of this country. I understand that what typically happens in this Chamber is the back and forth and the political point-scoring and we all understand that that's just the politics of it—that's the theatre. We all go back to our communities and we have to face up to those people who are experiencing immense immense struggle.I have been up and down the country as I'm sure many of us have and I have spoken to those who are dealing with this mental health crisis—this epidemic. It didn't happen overnight. I said in my maiden speech that I feel as though the mental health epidemic is the pointy end of decades and decades of what—for lack of a better term—is a kind of austerity. It's the shredding of safety nets it's the shredding of care and it's the shredding of community.We know there is surmounting evidence—contemporary evidence—on the mental health crisis that showcases that three of the major driving factors for mental illness are trauma isolation and poverty and we have set up this system to perpetuate those things. So we need to be prepared to be bold because in going around the country and talking to people about these issues I have not once heard people ask for tax cuts. Instead I have heard people ask for support I've heard people ask for adequate housing and I have heard people ask for opportunity and that is what we have a responsibility to provide.None of this is normal and it should not be inevitable. We need to come together as a Parliament and invest in our future and I believe that we are all ultimately—if our words are to be believed and if our rhetoric is to be believed—committed to a paradigm shift and that paradigm shift looks like being bold enough to look at the problems bald-faced and see them as they really are.I am proud that we have started on the first step with the investment in the pilot programme in Porirua that will impact the lives of 10000 New Zealanders. But we need to see this rolled out throughout the country and we need to see all of Parliament coming together to see that happen. Kia ora.