Budget 2022: Mental health training and recruitment must be priority, Greens say

Green co-leaders Marama Davidson and James Shaw. Photo / Mark Mitchell

A big boost for mental health is needed in next week’s Budget and so is more funding for Pharmac, the Green Party says.

Greens co-leader Marama Davidson was asked today what investments she wanted to see in health.

“We’ve been quite clear about the need for mental health support … making sure we’ve got our training and recruitment capacity in place to actually get us the workforce that we sorely need right now.”

Her co-leader James Shaw was asked about Pharmac and cancer drug funding.

A debate over unfunded drugs emerged after the Cancer Control Agency said many people were missing out on potentially life-saving treatments.

The agency identified 20 different gaps across nine different cancer types where medicines were publicly funded in Australia, but not in New Zealand.

Malcolm Mulholland said an April report greatly underestimated the number of cancer drugs not publicly-funded in New Zealand compared to Australia. Photo / Mike Scott

Other groups have identified dozens more funding gaps in cancer drug funding.

Shaw said New Zealand had a different drug-funding model from Australia.

“We have talked for quite some time about the need to ensure that there is actually adequate funding in the Pharmac system to be able to expand the range of drugs that are available.”

Shaw said a regular and unhelpful political debate involved people saying a particular drug had to be funded.

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“That bypasses the Pharmac model and undermines it,” he said today.

“So we’re very supportive of the Pharmac model in general but we do think there needs to be more funding go into it, to expand the range of drugs that are available.”

He added: “We get a pretty good price for the drugs that we buy in through Pharmac and that of course is the whole point of the model.”

Health Minister Andrew Little told the Herald’s Great Minds series the Government had already started addressing workforce development issues.

The minister said that included some long-term challenges.

Little said New Zealand needed many clinical psychologists and psychiatrists, and that would mean training more people locally but also hiring from overseas.