Coleman Jonathan: Mental Health Commission Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Coleman Jonathan: Mental Health Commission Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:641;Page:11011] 
Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (National—Northcote) 
: 
 Is that not disappointing? That was Labour’s last speaker on the third reading of the Mental Health Commission Amendment Bill and all that speaker could do was talk about the National Party. She talked about the National Party for 7 minutes of a 10-minute speech. That was a great opportunity for Labour members to lay out what they are going to do in mental health and I can say that that speech was enough to make a member want to read the Bills Digest for the second time in this session. It was very very disappointing material. The first 7 minutes of that speech were about us and the last 3 minutes were a recitation of what is in the bill which we have heard again and again in this Chamber through the three readings and the Committee stage. There was no vision. There was a lot of talk about us but what that member does not actually realise is that her own Minister of Finance will be cutting taxes well before the next election and if she has not caught up with that yet she really is well back on the backbenches. 
We are supporting this bill. We have made that quite clear. There is some unanimity on this issue and I think the select committee worked pretty well. But some real differences were exposed on the philosophy and the approach to mental health services. What we heard from Maryan Street before was an excuse for Labour’s poor performance in mental health over the past 8 years. It was a recitation of strategic plan after hui after workshop after plan and she said it was the answer in mental health. Well we all know that this Government has spent a billion dollars a year on mental health. That is a 75 percent increase on what was being spent when it came into power. Has mental health got any better in that time? The answer as Labour members actually admit is no; it has not. 
We now know that one New Zealander in five will experience symptoms of mental illness over the course of their lifetime. We know according to the Ministry of Health that people cannot get access to the services they need. We know that Maori cannot get access to the services they need. Young people children and older people are not getting access to those basic services. Were Labour members saying anything about this? No. All they had to say was that more and more money is going in and they are very happy with the Mental Health Commission. 
As I said yesterday we know why that member did not agree with the idea of a 3-year review—because her own 3-year review within the Labour Party is coming up and basically Labour members would be very happy to have their terms extended with no review period. But that is not the reality of what we can do when we are spending public money. The Government is spending $1 billion a year and the public needs to have some accountability. 
We believe that the Mental Health Commission has a very real role to play—we have been quite upfront about that—but when we are spending massive amounts of public money we have to be able to review at regular periods how that money is being spent and whether the taxpayer is getting value for money. We are quite sure that if the Mental Health Commission continues to perform well it will have nothing to fear under a National Government and that term will be extended. But it just seems natural and right that the Act should be reviewed at a date 3 years from the date on which this bill receives the Royal assent. So that is what we were in favour of. Unfortunately we were not supported in that—be that as it may—and the term of the commission will be extended to 2015. 
We want to see the commission hold this profligate spending Government to account. As in all other areas of the health sector spending has gone up and up and the results have not improved at all. In fact the whole health sector is in crisis. We have a Minister of Health who is on the ropes. He has no answers and we are not hearing any answers at all from the Labour team. I hope the Associate Minister will take a call at the end of my speech and tell us what his team will do should heaven forbid they ever get another crack at power. 
Hon Mita Ririnui 
: I’ll tell you something. 
Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN 
: I can tell Mr Ririnui what we are going to do. We are going to make sure that the money is spent in a way that delivers the services. We will actually deal with many more of these mental health problems within primary care. We will resource general practitioners properly and we will give them access to specialists. The Commonwealth Fund health report which Minister Hodgson constantly quotes at us—although of course he quotes selectively and only the good bits—said that New Zealand general practices do not feel equipped to deal with mental health problems. Fifty percent of them did not feel confident. We reckon that if we can give general practitioners the resources they need to do the job a lot of these problems can be dealt with at the primary-care level. 
Judy Turner from United Future made a very good point about the views of families and that point came up again and again at the select committee. There was a great deal of concern amongst submitters that when they have a seriously ill family member they are not part of the decision-making process. When we look at it we see that 0.3 percent of the population suffer from a serious mental illness like schizophrenia and sad as it is those illnesses have a very very low recovery rate. What happens in our system now is that the burden falls back on the family but the family is cut out of the loop. We heard stories about families who were never consulted about their family member’s treatment. They had no information. They felt positively excluded from the whole process and we say that that is not good enough. We want to see the Mental Health Commission involving those families and making sure they are part of that decision-making process—that is what we want to see the commission do. 
We heard from a number of submitters who wanted the commission disbanded because they did not feel it was serving the needs of families. The National Party says there is a role for that commission but we want it to monitor the Government more closely and we want it to take the views of families into account. That will be absolutely vital. 
So there are a number of areas in which the commission maybe could raise its game over the next few years and that will be vital if we want to make some inroads into mental illness in New Zealand. The commission has done a very good job in helping destigmatise mental illness as has been talked about before. The John Kirwan advertisements have gone a long way to bringing mental illness into the mainstream media and making people aware of a lot of those issues. 
Hon Mita Ririnui 
: Good Government initiatives. 
Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN 
: But one thing I wish the Labour members had taken the opportunity to speak on—and I am sure Mita Ririnui is absolutely bursting to get out of his seat to address this—is the issue of the Lake Alice Hospital patients and the 87 second-round claimants who secretly had $35000 lopped off their compensation payment by a secret Cabinet decision. We caught Michael Cullen out on this in this House. He admitted that Cabinet had actually docked that money. We think that this Government which is led by a party that professes to be the party of social justice and the party of the disadvantaged should pay up. The Government has admitted that it owes $3 million. It has decided that it would not appeal the High Court judgment. It is time to pay up I say to Mr Ririnui. I know that he is a man with a conscience and he is an honourable member. He has to tell the Attorney-General to get out the cheque book and sign that cheque. 
We heard Labour members saying earlier that they were doing heaps for Maori mental health. I would like Mita Ririnui to get up and tell members what exactly this Labour Government has done for Maori mental health because I can say that it is pretty much zero. The statistics are absolutely appalling. The Ministry of Health will tell us that Maori just cannot get access to the services they need. This Labour Government which is under severe threat from the Maori Party needs to raise its game for Maori because nothing ever got better for Maori under a Labour Government. I know that the Maori Party will agree with that. I think that Te Ururoa Flavell made some very good points about Maori mental health earlier. It is an issue that needs attention. 
Sue Kedgley’s contribution was interesting. She said that we need to look at issues of poverty and that the National Party especially needs to consider them. Well I tell Ms Kedgley she might note that Labour has been in power for 8 years and it is Labour’s economic mismanagement that has got us into the situation we are in now. So one can safely assume that as long as Labour holds those Treasury benches nothing will improve. 
In summary National supports this bill. We feel we need to have accountability for spending. The amendment to review the legislation 3 years from the date of the Royal assent would have gone quite some way towards doing that but as it is the commission will continue. We will support its work but we want it to keep on the back of Mita Ririnui and his Minister of Health. These guys are not doing the job for the mental health sector and I can tell members that they are not doing the job for Maori in the mental health sector either. The member needs to go back speak to his Minister and address some of these very real issues. 
Bill read a third time.