Coleman Jonathan: Mental Health Commission Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Coleman Jonathan: Mental Health Commission Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:641;Page:10937] 
Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (National—Northcote) 
: 
 In speaking to the title the Mental Health Commission Amendment Bill I think we have made it clear that National sees a real role for the Mental Health Commission well into the future. We think there is a real need for the work it does and it performs that work very very well. I have to take issue though with what Ms Soper was saying—that the Government has got it right on mental health. Quite frankly that is not what members will hear if they talk to anyone who has a family member in care in the mental health system. There is a lot that needs to be done and to let Ms Soper know the reality of it I tell her that one cannot address the problems in the mental health system by just pouring more and more money into it and by issuing more and more reports and that is what has happened under this Government. 
What National members are saying with our amendment to extend the life of this commission for a further 3 years before it is reviewed is that we have to have accountable public spending. But of course that has gone very much out of fashion under this Government. I will give members an example of what is happening in mental health. I have asked every district health board to send me a list of the organisations to which they are contracting out mental health services and to tell us how many clients each service is treating. They can give me a list of the providers but none of them can tell me how many clients each provider is actually seeing. These district health boards are paying out millions and millions of dollars of public money to mental health providers yet they do not have a clue what they are getting for that. They do not know. They could be seeing zero people but the district health boards are still paying the bill. That is the problem with what has happened under this Government—there is no accountability. 
Tariana Turia 
: That’s not true. 
Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN 
: Well it is true because I have asked for it under the Official Information Act. They have sent me a list of providers but they cannot tell how many clients they are seeing. The district health boards do not know. I hope that someone at the Ministry of Health knows because that is hopeless. Lesley Soper says that this Government has got it right in relation to mental health but I think it has a heck of a long way to go. The reality is as I said at the start there are many groups in society—Maori Pacific Islanders young people people in need of specialist services like eating disorder clinics and older people—who are not getting access to services. The Ministry of Health itself states that in its annual report—people are not getting access to the services they need. Yet the Government has increased the spending on mental health by 75 percent to $1 billion a year. 
One would expect that for $1 billion a year we would get some sort of improvement in the level of services and we would expect it to be pretty substantial. But Labour has not delivered in this area. When Labour members came into office they thought they could socialise everything. They thought they could pour money into everything. They have ramped up public spending on health but they forgot to measure the outcomes properly. When we ask the really hard questions on this we can see that the outcomes are just not there. Lesley Soper comes in here and says that Labour has it right on mental health but we need only to go out and ask the families and the people in the system what is happening to be told that they feel badly let down by what this Government has done in mental health. But having said that National is very keen to see the Mental Health Commission continue because we reckon that the Government needs a real eye kept on it in mental health. We want the commission to keep on the Minister’s back and to make sure the Minister delivers on some of his promises in mental health—that the Government is providing services and giving good value for the taxpayer spending that is going on. I can tell members that the spending has been profligate. 
So there we have it. National will support this bill. We want to see a review 3 years from the date of the granting of the Royal assent but if the commission is doing its job there is no reason its life will not be extended. But it is the old story—what gets measured gets done. It is far too long a time to extend the life of this commission to 2015 without any public accountability. 
Clause 1 agreed to. 
Clause 2 agreed to. 
Clause 3 agreed to. 
Bill reported with amendment. 
Report adopted.