Kirwan urges end to ‘political football’ on mental health
All Blacks legend Sir John Kirwan has challenged MPs to stop playing political football with mental health as suicide figures head the wrong way.
MPs from every party in Parliament yesterday got together for the launch of a joint group to work on long-term mental health and addiction policies by taking some of the politics out of the debate.
Kirwan, the mental health campaigner and former Blues coach, hosted the event, describing mental health as the nation’s new Mt Everest.
“New Zealanders can do anything . . . We’re back-to-back World Cup winners, we can do anything, but we dropped the ball on this one,” he said. “This is an Everest and one step at a time we will knock the bugger off.”
New Zealand has the highest youth suicide rate in the OECD. People with severe mental health challenges live about 25 years shorter on average.
Provisional statistics issued this week by the Chief Coroner put the national suicide rate at the highest since records began, affecting Ma¯ori, Pasifika and youth in particular.
Kirwan said he was incredibly disappointed with the figures.
He was also frustrated with seeing mental health used as a “political football” and hoped the crossparliamentary group would help.
“It’s so important for our country that [mental health] gets taken out of the political arena and discussed in cross-party discussions.”
He said he would personally be holding politicians to account at the first whiff of political game-playing.
“We can smell that straight away and I’ll be the first one making a phone call,” he told the MPs.
The parliamentary group is made up of Labour’s Louisa Wall, National’s Matt Doocey, Act leader David Seymour, Green MP Chloe Swarbrick and NZ First’s Jenny Marcroft. It is assisted by the Platform Trust — an umbrella organisation for dozens of mental health and addiction services.
Doocey, who worked in the mental health sector before entering politics, said New Zealand’s three-year political cycle produced a lack of commitment to some solutions.
The group wants advice from experts and politicians so it comes up with long-term suggestions that will outlast individual governments.
“There’s a huge demand growing. And we need a longer-term policy setting to start addressing that,” Doocey said.
Swarbrick said the group was an attempt to depoliticise what were often charged issues, and was the result of a two-year effort.
“The best possible thing we can promote with this group is a space for mature and respectful discussion about very vexed, very emotional issues,” she said. “You’ll have pretty much all politicians agreeing about what the problems are here, but not necessarily on the solutions.”
Swarbrick, who has spoken about being on medication for depression, said as an MP she had been shocked to hear heckling politicians using language that stigmatised mental health issues. “I think that we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard and that’s what this cross-party group . . . offer[s] the opportunity to do.”