Doocey MattHon MATT DOOCEY (Minister for Mental Health): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. Well I have a question: why is that former health Minister—Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall—asking the new Government for answers when she had six long years to address these issues? Remember that last Labour Government came in and promised to transform the mental health system? I won't be lectured to by someone who wants to talk about taking a bipartisan approach when she as the last health Minister—like the former health Minister Andrew Little—refused to meet the cross-party mental health group as the health Minister. One of their own recommendations from their own inquiry was the establishment of the mental health cross-party group and their health Ministers refused to meet it. Ingrid Leary—and I respect Ingrid a lot but after hearing her question Where are the voices of lived experience?" those voices of lived experience were the submitters who turned up in the select committee process for the Pae Ora health reforms and said time after time after time that mental health was invisible and those members did not listen then. But now we have a backflip a U-turn and a flip-flop. They've been dragged kicking and screaming to accept that actually legislating to put a mental health strategy into the Pae Ora health reforms is the right approach.The question was asked in the last call about "Why not have a strategy on X or Y or Z?" Yeah I agree but it comes down to priorities and under this Government mental health will be a priority—that's why we're legislating it as one of the strategies under the Pae Ora health reforms. Clearly under the last Labour Government it wasn't a priority and that's why they did not legislate for it. Yes we have a long-term 10-year strategy—Kia Manawanui—but the issue is that that is not about the Pae Ora entities that we are talking about today. So the question was posed: what will the strategy be about? Well it will be about the implementation of all the ideas in mental health that those members talked about but that they delivered very little on and if that former health Minister wants to talk about the $1.9 billion and sheet it back to us in Opposition how about the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission which they established? Its first report said that despite the $1.9 billion in funding there was no material improvement. So she should look at their own entities which were saying that to them. Actually what happened was that this former Government—the Labour Government—in mental health got sucked into just thinking it could make big wide announcements. It was $100 million there $100 million there $200 million there and then months later the diligent Opposition spokespeople with their written parliamentary questions would find out that very little would happen. Now we hear from officials that even at the time when big announcements were being made the officials knew that they couldn't deliver on them and what's shameful about that is those members were raising hope for some very vulnerable New Zealanders. Announcements were made that people knew couldn't be delivered on. So yep a valid question: what will the strategy be about? It'll be about ensuring that we have implementation. They kicked off an inquiry. They should answer the question as to what happened to the 48 recommendations. They're sitting on a shelf in their office and no one's ever looked at them again. It will create an implementation plan and you need only look at some of the submitters who talked about mental health being absolutely invisible in the Pae Ora health reforms. That's what this strategy is about today: it will prioritise mental health within Pae Ora within the Ministry of Health within Health New Zealand within the Māori Health Authority and within the other entities. So they will prioritise mental health because they know that the Government wants them to prioritise mental health because when those members deprioritised mental health by not putting it in the strategy they made mental health invisible—and you don't need to listen to us. Go and talk to the Mental Health Foundation. Go and talk to the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission. They all said that and that's what this Government is delivering today. Thank you."