“The fact that 400 people met in Auckland last night to discuss the failings of the mental health system, is yet another example of Labour’s policies of the 1990s having gone so terribly wrong,” said New Zealand First Leader Rt Hon Winston Peters.

“It was Helen Clark as Minister of Health who said that deinstitutionalising patients and placing them into the community was worth the risk. That risk has proven to be extremely high and one which the community now considers to be unacceptable.

“The wasted years of social experimentation have led to the loss of hundreds of lives and it is time to stop and take stock of the terror that these practices have visited upon innocent victims and the community at large.

“Community care is totally dependent upon the support and back-up services being strong, robust, and reliable, but these patients are, in the main, simply dumped into the community without even checks on their medication.

“National is equally at fault. It continued these fatal policies simply to reduce the costs of mental health care.”

New Zealand First will redress the inadequate treatment and professional support provided to mentally ill patients and their families, ensure institutional care is available as we did by keeping Templeton open in 1997, and give the Mental Health Commission greater independence to provide national leadership in the mental health sector.

ENDS

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>