Swarbrick ChlöeCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai tēnā koutou e Te Whare. It's a pleasure to rise on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand this afternoon in support of the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission Bill. In doing so at this the third reading after which we will be passing through Royal assent the commission will fully and finally be realised moving on from its interim stage at present.I just want to recognise all of the mahi which the chair of the Health Committee Louisa Wall has echoed in recognising those who came before the select committee and had their voices heard as well as those who contributed to He Ara Oranga the Government inquiry into mental health and addiction. But alongside that I want to recognise those who have championed this in the political and the advocacy and the activism spheres for such a long time and I also want to recognise former Green MP Kevin Hague who as health spokesperson for the Greens fought really hard against the original disestablishment of the Mental Health Commission. But what we're talking about today with the establishment of this Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission is the establishment of a commission of an entity that will essentially be a watchdog that will hold our Government—and future Governments—to account for their implementation of policies of funding of law and of the impact that that has on the mental health of New Zealanders particularly those who have been identified in this legislation as particularly of need.I want to just actually stipulate that all of us have mental health. We often talk about mental health as though it's this kind of thing that's out there that we only ever talk about it when it is poor. But in the same way that all of us have physical health we have mental health and I actually think that this is perhaps best recognised in a tikanga Māori model of health the hauora which recognises social wellbeing physical wellbeing spiritual and mental or emotional wellbeing all of those things as being interconnected and all interdependent for wellbeing at large. Actually I think we need to recognise that the mental ill-health crises that we presently have in this country is the logical consequence of what occurs when you start to deprioritise certain elements of that hauora model. This is what happens when we try and disconnect individuals from their communities. This is what happens when people don't have a sense of hope a sense of purpose a sense of belonging and a sense of identity. I think that hopefully in the wake of COVID-19 as we come into this place of recovery as a country we're starting to recognise how deeply interconnected and interdependent we all are as communities across Aotearoa New Zealand.Funnily enough on the point around this interconnection and the importance of our physical our emotional our community that being our social and our spiritual wellbeings that interconnection is actually core Green kaupapa. Oftentimes we're critiqued as a party for not only focusing on the environment but also talking about the social and community issues that people in this country face. I guess in threading that needle to the prominence and importance that this Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission will have moving forward it is to recognise fundamentally that all of this stuff is connected and hopefully that we can continue that conversation with a semblance of the nuance that it is owed as we move forward.Of course this is one of the many recommendations out of the Government inquiry into mental health and addiction that was titled He Ara Oranga. I think that that report was groundbreaking in and of itself because for the first time even though we'd had multiple inquiries over the last few decades into the state of our mental health services this was the first one that was given the mandate to look beyond solely the individual clinical forms of treatment that we may respond with as a society as a health system or as politicians. It was groundbreaking because it looked at individuals as part of society. It was groundbreaking because it looked at the features and the factors and the attributes and the characteristics of one's life that can lead them to experience poor mental health and it therefore recognised that mental ill-health does not occur in a vacuum. In fact it reflected swathes of contemporary research which showcases that people's environments are largely determinative of poor mental health—interestingly in the same way that poor physical environments can be determinative of poor physical health. Again this is the critical point that I need all of us to really reflect on today: that all of this stuff is connected and none of it happens in a vacuum.We're stoked as the Greens that this is passing today. We're stoked because we hope that it is the start of the journey of the recognition in a systemic institutional way that mental ill-health isn't happening in this vacuum over or out there but in fact it is deeply embedded in our lives and in society at large. I want to commend the Minister of Health Dr David Clark for his mahi in working actually across the House from my understanding and in speaking to the members of the newly formed mental health and addiction wellbeing cross-party group. This is important and this will be really important to a lot of people. So I hope that we don't take this as just lip-service having ticked it off the list but in fact that what we're establishing today is an institution that will hold us all to account and make sure that we bloody well are holding ourselves to the promises that we are making. Very happy to commend this bill to the House.Bill read a third time.