Moroney Sue: Mental Health Commission Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Moroney Sue: Mental Health Commission Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:641;Page:10928] 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 In speaking to the Committee stage of the Mental Health Commission Amendment Bill I note in terms of some of the issues raised by the previous speaker that National members are very keen to talk about too much money being spent on our health service. Jonathan Coleman again raised this issue of not being happy about the amount of money being spent on mental health services. One of the roles or functions of the Mental Health Commission under the bill that we are speaking to today is to act as an advocate for the interests of people with mental illness and of their families generally. That includes ensuring that there is a good funding level for the services to be adequate for people in this area. 
Dr Coleman also referred to the National Party’s position of wanting to bring the commission to an end earlier than the Health Committee report recommended. 
Dr Jonathan Coleman 
: No you know that’s not right Sue. You know that’s not what I said. 
SUE MORONEY 
: Well it was the National Party’s position. It is recorded in the commentary from the select committee that “New Zealand National’s view is that the principal Act should expire on a date that is three years after the date on which this bill receives the Royal assent.” The rest of the select committee did not uphold that point of view. 
 At this stage I just point out that the Health Committee has representation on it from many of the parties in Parliament. It has on it members from the Green Party New Zealand First the Maori Party Labour and National so it is very representative in its views. It was only the National Party—not even any of the submitters—that wanted the commission to be reviewed earlier than 2015. 
I have done some thinking about why that might be and I know that the National Party has decided in its own mind—it is not in the mind of voters—that it will be the Government come 2008. Well that is up to the voters to decide of course but I think that is the reason National does not really want a watchdog body in place until 2015. If National were to become the Government it would want to get rid of the commission pretty damn quickly because this is a party that is standing on a platform of reducing taxes. We all know what that means for areas such as mental health. Reducing taxes equals reducing public spending and reducing public spending always means cutting the health budget because that is the largest area of public spending. So when it comes to the Mental Health Commission and its role—its very important advocacy and watchdog role—why would the National Party want to have that body cemented in place through to 2015 if it fully planned to cut funding to mental health services in that period of time? 
I say in conclusion that I am fully in support of this part of the bill because it extends the life of the commission in concrete through to the year 2015. All of the other parties on the select committee apart from National agreed with that view. The submissions we heard also agreed with the extension to 2015. Thank you.