Lees-Galloway Iain: Crown Entities Reform Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Lees-Galloway Iain: Crown Entities Reform Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 04 October 2011. Volume:676;Page:21679. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North) 
: 
 It is interesting to follow on from that contribution from Sandra Goudie on the Crown Entities Reform Bill because in her short contribution the bulk of the content of the speech was about improving the efficiency reducing the waste and reducing the cost of the State sector. 
Sandra Goudie 
: Labour increased it by 50 percent. 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY 
: It is true that Labour took a public sector that had been cut back to its absolute bone and actually put a little bit of meat and muscle on it again. I do not think there is much fat that can be trimmed from the public sector. But a public sector that is trimmed back to its bone is not capable of running efficiently and I think Labour had an excellent track record of restoring and rebuilding the public sector. It was not nearly the size it was when National first took the knife to it in 1990. All Labour did was restore it to a reasonable size and make it effective and efficient once again. 
In fact the sector is regarded as being so effective and efficient internationally that rating agency Standard and Poor’s said it does not regard the New Zealand State sector as being either bloated or inefficient. One of its analysts said: “Generally we look at the Government in New Zealand as being relatively small and compared to its peers it’s quite efficient.” So one has to wonder exactly what the problem is that the Government is trying to solve. [ 
Interruption 
] I know it is a minor detail like evidence as my colleague Charles Chauvel points out. But I would have thought that the Government at the moment would be trying its damndest to get into Standard and Poor’s good books. But again the Government has just completely overlooked what Standard and Poor’s had to say; it knows best and it has its ideology that it has to follow. That really at the end of the day is what this bill all about. 
I think most of the arguments about where this bill is lacking have been reasonably well traversed by my colleagues in Labour and I appreciate the excellent contribution from Kevin Hague from the Green Party as well. We do understand that Governments do not have a bottomless pot of gold and decisions have to be made about where a Government’s priorities lie. That ultimately is actually what this bill is all about—it is about priorities. 
We know that the Government does not prioritise mental health and it does not prioritise addiction treatment. We know that not just from this bill although what it does is disestablish the Mental Health Commission prematurely and also disestablish the Alcohol Advisory Council (ALAC) of New Zealand. But we already knew that because where once the Government had targets for mental health and addiction treatment it no longer does. It no longer has those targets because neither of those things is on the Government’s health priorities. 
So we know full well from the Government’s own lexicon if you will that mental health and addiction treatment are not a priority for this Government. The result of the removal of both of those from the Government’s list of health priorities is that district health boards have in many cases—not universally across the country but in many cases—cut funding to services both mental health services and addiction treatment services. That is because the district health boards have to follow the priorities that are set by the Government. They will make their decisions based on what the Government will mark them on. Unfortunately mental health treatment and addiction services do not list on the Government’s league tables the outcomes and the effectiveness of those treatment services are not published in our daily newspapers quarterly as are some other things and therefore the district health boards quite understandably have retracted their funding back to the ring-fenced funding that is available—and Kevin Hague even indicated that in some cases beyond that—and that they have found ways to divert the ring-fenced funding into other areas. That is where the Government’s priorities lie and some district health board chief executives and chairs probably feel as though their job is on the line depending on how they measure up according to those things that are the Government’s priorities. 
So I suppose it comes as no great surprise that this legislation finds its way into the House and that the Government is actually legislating out of existence both ALAC and the Mental Health Commission. Both of those are considered to be I suppose by many people the poor cousins of the health system. Mental health is the poor cousin of the health system addiction treatment is often the poor cousin of the poor cousin and this legislation reinforces that view. 
We see plans by the Government to bury the country’s alcohol watchdog within the new Health Promotion Agency as being contrary to the advice we have heard from the clinicians who are working at the coalface. They see the usurping of ALAC’s role into a broader health promotion agency as positive as that concept is as undermining the focus we need in New Zealand both on the health promotion aspects of alcohol addiction and alcohol misuse and also on the treatment side. It seems bizarre frankly when we have put so much attention on alcohol abuse and when we have an alcohol reform bill making slow passage through the parliamentary process that at the same time we should be removing the agency that is specifically mandated to involve itself in health promotion activities and in education activities around the sensible use of alcohol and reducing the harms associated with alcohol. It just seems counter-intuitive given how important that issue is seen to be by the public in New Zealand. 
That is one aspect: ALAC is gone. The Mental Health Commission on the other hand is also going. It was supposed to be around until 2015. Mental health is I suppose unfinished business in the health system. The blueprint was an excellent step forward. It brought mental health up to the level of acknowledgment in the health system that it needed. But the job certainly is not done. We have done a lot over the last 15 years or so to focus on the 3 percent of New Zealanders whose mental health needs are most acute but we need to look beyond that into the 20 percent of New Zealanders who at some point in any given year have need for mental health services. This sends completely the wrong signal— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Honourable members there is too much background noise. It is discourteous to the speaker. If people want to have private conversations then they are welcome to do so but it is usually reserved for outside in the lobbies. 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY 
: Closing the Mental Health Commission 3 years earlier than it was supposed to be closed sends completely the wrong signal to the health system about where mental health services should actually lie in the list of priorities for district health boards. I suppose that again is reflective of how seriously the Government takes mental health and addiction treatment services. 
With that I reiterate what my colleagues have said. Labour is opposed to this bill. We will work constructively in the Government Administration Committee to try to improve the bill but frankly I would be very surprised if we could improve it to the point where Labour would find itself in a position to support it.