Wall LouisaLOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Tonight we are going to be launching a cross-party mental health and addictions wellbeing group. It's a group that is part of the 40 recommendations that the inquiry into mental health and addictions proposed to the Government and the Government accepted in principle that recommendation. So I want to acknowledge colleagues Chlöe Swarbrick Matt Doocey David Seymour and Jenny Marcroft; the nearly 40 MPs who will attend an event in our Grand Hall tonight; and the over 40 MPs who have sent apologies because they are doing service based on their portfolios—can I say many many Ministers.The focus for us on mental health and addictions wellbeing is one of those long-term issues. It's an issue that we've had to confront recently because 685 New Zealanders suicided. That means they weren't receiving the help and support they got when they were in their darkest days. So one of the priorities for us was to initiate that specific inquiry and we did that because we realised we had a problem. I want to acknowledge the process that we went through and the leadership particularly of Professor Ron Paterson who chaired that inquiry team. They went around the country and spoke to over 2000 New Zealanders. They had over 400 meetings in 26 locations and the whole intention was whakarongo mai—it was to listen and to hear the voices of tangata whaiora of whānau of the public of the Ministry of Health and other providers of iwi of community organisations and of academics.I want to acknowledge Marion Blake who's the CEO of Platform. The reason I've chosen to acknowledge her specifically is because their organisation along with others made the recommendation that we as parliamentarians need to come together across this very important issue of mental health and addictions wellbeing. We can't continue to have New Zealanders' needs unmet.I do want to focus as the chair of the Health Committee on some of the changes that we've made to ensure that people who have addictions actually get the support they want which is the whole philosophical change we have led with the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill. We're really clear: there's over a thousand New Zealanders in our prisons because they have drug and alcohol issues and our first response should never have been to send them to prison. Our first response should always have been to address those addiction issues and there begs the question: why are people so addicted to substances that do them so much harm? So the investment that we've made in this area the $1.384 billion over four years will see the initiatives identified in He Ara Oranga rolled out.One of the issues I want to highlight in terms of our commitment has been the Mana Ake - Stronger for Tomorrow programme. It was an initiative that we prioritised because it was about addressing the legacy of the earthquakes in Christchurch and in Kaikōura. Our young people went through trauma individually and collectively. So we prioritised a response a systemic response involving the education system our health system the police and community organisations because we knew that our children and young people had experienced trauma. So we've wrapped around them and created I guess spaces for them to be able to talk about what it was like going through those earthquakes.The whole intention of that programme was to build resilience. It's to build resilience in our young people our children who we know were traumatised so that they later in life hopefully don't use drugs and alcohol to self-moderate because they're traumatised or they have anxiety issues. I see that initiative actually as having currency not just when we have traumatic events like the earthquakes and I think that the learnings we're going to get from Mana Ake mean that we should be rolling this out throughout the country. Because fundamentally our role is to provide services and opportunities for our young people always to stand strong to know who they are to be able to communicate when they're in trouble and for us to listen and give them the support they need because one suicide as our Prime Minister has said is too many. Kia ora.