Cameron Mark; Rurawhe AdrianMARK CAMERON (ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. It has been widely accepted it takes many sectors and groups to save lives. In the year ended 2019 we lost almost double the number of people to suicide compared with deaths from motor vehicle accidents: 685 people took their lives in the year ended 2019. Of the one per 150000 people that contemplated suicide I was one of them. I was medicated for three years because of it. Thankfully as a young man when I was really struggling I had the support of family and friends to cope when so many didn't. I was that guy in my 30s. I was the guy that struggled terribly. The harder I worked the less I achieved and the less in control of my life I felt. I was the normal guy that would do that 110 hours a week just to get something done so I felt significant so that I felt I was still the farmer. The nature of farming is often physically very onerous. I remember a period in my earlier career where in nine years I took no longer than five days off in a row. This wasn't heroics; it's what I wanted to do. It's how I identified with who I was. Because like so many farmers I believed in a dream that I was doing and the journey I desperately wanted to see the success of and achievements in. Many here in this Chamber may think they understand farmers; respectfully many don't. Rural families invest in many cases their entire lives. For many families rural families and country life is all they know. Mental illness is an absolute scourge in rural communities. Farmers bear huge burdens massive hours long periods of isolation. We contend with crop failures floods and routinely and more increasingly poor public policy that's becoming increasingly impractical and unworkable. Rural mental health is often attached to well-intentioned politicians and this hall is full of them but they lack the consequences of their policies and their ideas in real time. This often exacerbates our lack of self-worth. In 32 years I have seen it all. I have seen drug use run amok and depression. I have also buried four of my farming colleagues. Rural folk often and in hushed tones refer to it as the black dog or the hitchhiker or the bloody thief in the night. Farmers and rural folk are often pragmatists and we tend to treat mental illness like broken bones or the flu. But in truth it's very different. Ultimately we know we can't put time frames on these things. Sadly the help we often want or need just simply isn't coming. There are good people these were us they were our people and they are Kiwis. Farmers identify who they are by what they do; ever increasingly this is being taken from them. My Mycoplasma bovis case recently is a prime example. Everyone while well-intentioned in the Rural Support Trust—I received one phone call in a year. We all hear the Minister of Health routinely saying this kind of thing is not simply good enough. Well we say in rural New Zealand What's he doing about it and when will they all start working together?" Where are our doctors our healthcare workers? When will rural clinics get the bloody help they need that all too often they don't have?I am no exception in rural New Zealand. My experiences are commonplace. Rural mental health and support is often fleeting and sporadic. Rural men are more than twice as likely to commit suicide than their urban counterparts. This is an endemic problem across our regions. This absolutely has to change and with a Government that has signalled significant—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired."