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Chlöe Swarbrick takes on Green Party's mental health portfolio [1]
['Henry Cooke']
Date: 2018-09-26 04:42:53.293000+00:00
Experts, workers and iwi discuss the issues they plan to put before the government's mental health inquiry panel.
Green Party backbench MP Chlöe Swarbrick has taken on the party's mental health portfolio, allowing it to more robustly criticise the Government on the issue.
Green Party MP and associate health minister Julie Anne Genter previously held responsibility for mental health as part of the wider health portfolio.
As Genter is a minister with responsibility for health, she was obliged not to criticise the Government on its health policy - something Swarbrick is not tied to.
It's understood the portfolio move is part of a wider shift to differentiate the Green Party from the Government more on mental health.
The party won a promise of free counselling for under-25-year-olds in its confidence and supply agreement with Labour - a policy that is currently being piloted.
"I am stoked, with Julie Anne's blessing, to have been assigned the mental health portfolio by the Green Caucus," Swarbrick said.
"It has become clear in recent months that we need someone outside the executive to advocate for better services and ensure that mental health funding, structural sustainability and cultural change is strongly advocated for both within Government and out in the community.
"This is the confidence and supply agreement in action, in that we are able to collaborate with the Government but able to constructively critique them too."
DAVID UNWIN/FAIRFAX NZ Green Party MP Chlöe Swarbrick has taken on the mental health portfolio - allowing the party to take the Government to task on the issue.
Swarbrick has called for a moratorium on all closures of mental health services until the Government's mental health and addictions inquiry reports back later this year.
She campaigned along with several other MPs against a planned closure of the of a youth mental health service in Nelson - a decision was reviewed, but is still happening - and said she was working to secure extensions of funding for Te Whare Mahana in Golden Bay and Te Kuwatawata on the east coast.
Swarbrick spoke about her own experience with anxiety and depression in her maiden speech to Parliament and said she has received a lot of correspondence from other young people following that.
"If you fall over, break your leg and call an ambulance, an ambulance will come pretty fast. But if you call up and say you have a mental health issue you will wait six to nine weeks. We absolutely have a disparity."
National have pushed for the Government to act more quickly in the area, even while the inquiry goes on. The party has been particularly critical of the Government killing off several pilot programs planned by National while in Government.
National's mental health spokesman Matt Doocey congratulated Swarbrick - and said he hoped she might be able to help him set up a cross-party mental health group he's been looking to establish..
"I wrote to the Green Party and the Labour Party to initiate a cross-party mental health group in July," Doocey said.
"It's disappointing I haven't received a reply in two months...They talk the talk but now's the time to walk the walk."
Doocey has criticised the Government for not doing more on mental health while the inquiry takes place.
Swarbrick said she supports the inquiry as a necessary step but the problem needs to be tackled "from all sides".
"Something must be done immediately but also in the long term," Swarbrick said.
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[1] Url:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/107395282/chle-swarbrick-takes-on-green-partys-mental-health-portfolio
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