Swarbrick Chlöe; Salesa JennyCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central): E te Māngai tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I want to start my contribution to this debate by acknowledging my former colleague Jenny Marcroft who was one of the contributors on this cross-party group then representing New Zealand First. I just asked her what she would like to say during this debate were she sitting in one of these seats and she made the point that I think is worthy of highlighting—that this stuff is preventable; that is the core point of this Zero Suicide report.The parts of work that got us to this point as has been outlined by the Minister really kicked off with He Ara Oranga the mental health and addiction inquiry which was published in December 2018. It made a raft of recommendations to the Government the majority of which were accepted particularly accepted in principle. But I think it's really important to zero in on one of the major findings of that report which is: what causes mental ill health and at the pointy end suicidal ideation in Aotearoa New Zealand? What it effectively did was canvass the swathes of contemporary research and the experience of those domestically in Aotearoa to surmise that we all are born into the world with different genetics from our parents and our grandparents and the experiences that are hard coded into that. But it is our environments fundamentally that can turn those up or turn those down—that is aggravating or mitigating factors environmental factors like a sense of security a sense of identity a sense of place a sense of who you are what you belong to and where you are going. So in beginning my contribution today I actually want to reflect on one of the most poignant things that I have ever heard about suicide prevention from Fili—who was a teenager until recently I believe—founder of a South Auckland climate action movement called 4TK or 4 Tha Kulture. She made waves by making our honourable Leader of the Opposition a bit of a meme during the election by prompting her to respond during an election debate with My husband is Samoan so 'Talofa'." Fili said and I paraphrase that suicide prevention is a stable income; suicide prevention is meaningful income; suicide prevention is a stable household; suicide prevention is a sense of community; suicide prevention is a sense of whakapapa where you belong where you are going. This cross-party group is something that we fought long and hard for actually I think from inside many of our different parties and against some of the political tumult of the day. My experience is that it originated in a cross-party group on drug harm reduction which morphed with Matt Doocey coming to the table and seeking to mould something else out of it Louisa Wall of course Jenny Marcroft and at the time David Seymour. Our first report here this Zero Suicide Aotearoa report was released in the middle of 2020 ahead of the election. What we see here alongside the case studies as mentioned by Matt Doocey is actually the experience of Scotland who adopted a similar approach several years ago now. And what they effectively showcased is that sustained effort—sustained effort—a plan that surpasses and exceeds the politics of the day to improve lives and to strengthen communities ensures that we can shrink those suicide numbers. Scotland introduced a Minister for mental health. I think that is something we should really seriously be considering in this place particularly as I know it's coming up to that point in time in a Government or parliamentary term where there are some shake-ups. I would really encourage members around the Cabinet table to be contemplating and considering a Minister for Mental Health. They also applied in Scotland a public health approach that is to not narrow this in so far as to only look at the ambulances at the bottom of the cliff to say somebody is experiencing a problem so we're going to pick them up. It's to say: what are the environmental causative factors that lead people to getting to that position in the first place identifying those things that Fili put out there so eloquently—the likes of housing the likes of stable income the likes of a sense of connection to your community. They also importantly and this comes up throughout our report tackled problem drinking. There are a number of specifics recommended in this report about how we can actually take a zero-suicide approach particularly through the methodology of this cross-party group. And importantly in this report it notes the importance of that cross-party stewardship. I do think it's important to echo how disappointing it is that right now our Parliament is not behaving at its best when we have monolithic blocs: one political party inside of a select committee blocking access to information that the majority of other parties want access to. That is how in this instance that mental health funding is being distributed—or unfortunately not distributed—to the front lines across Aotearoa. It also notes that it is so important for us to monitor progress. Again this is why that scrutiny and oversight is so important. It also states particularly with regard to the case study on rangatahi—because we know and we can see here that young Māori men in particular are the most at risk—that there are a number of different ways that we can directly tackle the drivers of this problem. I note here it states that we can embed and enact Te Tiriti into all policy and practice to support mana motuhake accelerating this process for rangatahi within the education and health sectors. Secondly we can urgently address the impact of socio-economic determinants of health on whānau including poverty alcohol racism housing and unemployment. Thirdly we can invest in what works for Māori iwi hapū and whānau—to invest in and fund and build communities to lead initiatives that support communities in suicide prevention and postvention. And fourthly we can work collectively nationally and locally to leverage Government investment in what works for Māori.Again I think that this is perhaps something that the Government can look into should it want to—to distribute that Budget 2019 funding that $1.9 billion for mental health and addiction. Just hand the money out to those who are already doing the work on the front line. So many of them are crying out for it. We also have in here the specific case study of rural mental health and there's three key factors. The first is community—strengthening community. The second is targeting alcohol particularly harmful alcohol consumption in this country. And the third is a campaign to normalise dialogue and discussion about mental ill health and to normalise how we talk about talking somebody down from suicidal ideation. I also think it's really important to note just within the political context here—because it's really great that we all agree that there's a problem but we don't quite agree on what the solution is. We have some high-level agreement about the kaupapa and about the direction but not about the amount of money that we are going to be dedicating to these things not about the types of policy that we're going to be implementing. So here particularly on that point around alcohol I think it's really important that we recognise the political context we're operating in. There is currently one member's bill that I believe is number one on the Order Paper in the name of Louisa Wall which would reduce harmful access to alcohol by ensuring that communities have greater say over the renewal of licences. But currently in the members' biscuit tin there are five members' bills that would amend the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act. Four of them effectively increase access to alcohol in this country; one in the bill does not and that is the Green Party member's bill. I also want to give a shout-out to Corinda Taylor and the Life Matters Suicide Prevention Trust who has been doing an immense amount of mahi for families bereaved by suicide. It's unfortunate that we don't have the level of detail in this report to make mention of the support needed for those families bereaved. I also want to acknowledge Phillipa Gaines the author and researcher who as my colleague Matt Doocey noted very much did put up with quite rambunctious debates throughout this process. I also just want to state in this process of making this as depoliticised as possible—you know it's admirable to a certain extent. We have agreement that there's a problem but we again only have agreement over the high-level kaupapa of how we begin to address it. And I think just to really highlight how long we've been talking about this and how long I personally have been talking about it—and I don't really want to be talking about it all too much more; I'd really hope that we get on with it—I want to refer to my maiden speech in November 2017 where I said and I quote "Anybody paying attention to this election campaign saw that it was rather rough and a week before election day in my final debate I broke down in tears. We were asked to speak on New Zealand's shameful suicide rate particularly with regard to our youth. Another candidate took this as academic speaking in numbers and fiscals—they were abstracting the lives and loss of my friends." ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! The member's time is up. The next call is a split call."