Policy positions and submissions

We are pleased MBIE is looking at this important issue; and that the issues paper considers the impacts of bullying on populations that are more likely to experience overlapping and interdependent discrimination. 

The Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand advocates for the new mental health law and accompanying system, service and practice changes to absolutely minimise compulsory treatment in our mental health system over the course of ten years, with immediate action to minimise its use significantly.

A move to a less coercive system must be facilitated by service and practice changes across the mental health and addiction system to ensure tāngata whaiora, whānau and health workers are appropriately supported and kept safe.

These changes should be led and informed by those with lived and living experience of the Mental Health Act, including tāngata whaiora Māori.

The MHF’s submission to the Law Commission’s Review on Adult Decision-Making Capacity Law focusses on decision-making in the mental health system – specifically, the experiences of those whose right to make decisions about their personal care and treatment is, or has been, overridden under the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act (the Mental Health Act).

 The MHF recommends Aotearoa New Zealand’s laws embed supported decision-making within our mental health system by ensuring all services and supports (including whānau support) enable tāngata whaiora to make their own decisions about their mental health care, treatment and recovery. This means all types of support, including the most intensive, works to reach decisions which are based on the will and preferences of the persons concerned. These supports should allow for and promote collective decision-making approaches informed by tikanga Māori and te ao Māori. 

 The submission expands on this position and also responds to other questions asked by the Law Commission including how advance directives should work in practice, how tikanga Māori should be considered in our decision-making laws, and how decision-making supporters should be utilised. 

The MHF’s submission to the Law Commission’s Review on Adult Decision-Making Capacity Law focusses on decision-making in the mental health system – specifically, the experiences of those whose right to make decisions about their personal care and treatment is, or has been, overridden under the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act (the Mental Health Act).

 The MHF recommends Aotearoa New Zealand’s laws embed supported decision-making within our mental health system by ensuring all services and supports (including whānau support) enable tāngata whaiora to make their own decisions about their mental health care, treatment and recovery. This means all types of support, including the most intensive, works to reach decisions which are based on the will and preferences of the persons concerned. These supports should allow for and promote collective decision-making approaches informed by tikanga Māori and te ao Māori. 

The submission expands on this position and also responds to other questions asked by the Law Commission including how advance directives should work in practice, how tikanga Māori should be considered in our decision-making laws, and how decision-making supporters should be utilised. 

The Mental Health Foundation welcomes the draft Disability Strategy's focus on improving outcomes for disabled people, and its role in giving effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

We recommend the Strategy be strengthened by:

• Showing clearer support for people with long-term mental health challenges, neurodivergence and other cognitive impairments
• Detailing explicit actions to improve the mental health and wellbeing of all disabled people
• Adopting the Enabling Good Lives principles
• Strengthening its commitments to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and
• Providing clarity on how its proposed actions will be assigned, resourced and measured. 

The MHF supports the intentions of this Bill to extend ACC cover to a specified list of maternal birth injuries. Birth injuries can cause anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, and perinatal mental distress has far reaching and life-long consequences for pregnant people and parents, their tamariki and whānau.

The MHF recommend the Bill provide for ACC cover to mental injuries suffered as a result of physical birth injuries. We also acknowledge that all pregnant people and birth givers have the right to access to safe, timely and effective mental health services and support, regardless of whether they meet the criteria for ACC cover.

The MHF supports this Bill as an interim measure to strengthen community input into local alcohol licensing decisions. We also strongly support further reform to thoroughly review the Act in line with the recommendations of He Ara Oranga and other evidence. 

Limiting access to lethal methods (or ‘means restriction’) is one of the most effective strategies for suicide prevention. This MHF submission endorses evidence-based multi-pronged approaches to effectively reducing suicide deaths by firearms, such as shorter licence periods, effective gun storage and inspection, and face-to-face in person vetting processes when applying for or renewing licences, including speaking to family members. Our submission maintains that primary legislation should not use mental illness as a proxy measure for risk, but instead be precise about the risk factors of concern (for example, currently or recently exhibiting behaviour and/or cognitive and/or physical functioning that might adversely affect a person’s ability to safely possess firearms). This approach would avoid discrimination on the basis of mental illness and make it clear that it is the behaviour and functioning, rather than the diagnosis, that is important to consider in permitting access to firearms.

The Ministry of Health sought feedback on the second Action Plan for 2025-2029, as the first (2019-2024) is soon to expire. We encouraged the Ministry to revisit the draft with a view to adopting a more strengths-based, equity-focused, cross-government approach that meaningfully addresses suicide prevention and postvention in Aotearoa New Zealand, incorporating the vital insights of those with lived experience.

The Bill aims to stop conversion practices in Aotearoa which seek to change or suppress a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. It creates two new criminal offences to deter conversion practices and utilises the Human Rights Commission’s existing functions to provide a civil redress scheme for conversion practices.