Focused on improving public services

Dana KirkpatrickMP for East Coast

Opinion

It has been another busy month in Government and I am looking forward to spending some time in the electorate over the month of April — we don’t sit in the House in the school holidays, so it allows us time to get out and about.

We had a brilliant recent announcement from Transport Minister Simeon Brown on the next steps in reversing the previous Government’s blanket speed reductions on state highways.

We will be introducing a new Land Transport Rule to be signed by the end of 2024. Our move will ensure that when speed limits are set, the economic impacts — including travel times — and the views of road users and local communities are taken into account, alongside safety.

The ridiculous blanket speed limits have plagued commuters. That is why, where it’s safe to do so, we will require blanket speed limit reductions to be reversed by the end of 2025.

It is important that Kiwis are able to get to where they want to go, quickly and safely. Another initiative in the draft Government Policy Statement on Transport is to ring-fence maintenance budgets for both local and rural roads and state highways, and to monitor the percentage of the roading dollar spent on traffic management. We want roading money spent on fixing roads, not excessive use of cones and pilot vehicles.

Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey made a fantastic announcement on a new mental health and addiction peer support service in hospital emergency departments. These specialists in EDs will provide mental health support, connect people to community services and provide comfort to patients. We know we need to address mental health workforce shortages in order to improve mental health outcomes and transform the mental health and addiction sector.

We know that between at least 13,000 and 14,000 people present annually to EDs with mental health issues and they need support. This initiative will free up clinical staff to deal with clinical work. In the initiative’s first year it will be rolled out to four large hospitals, with a further four in the second year. These hospitals are yet to be announced. If the trial is a success, we aim to expand the model.

Recently I have been receiving a lot of correspondence from concerned constituents regarding Whaikaha — Ministry of Disabled People, about changes to the purchasing rules relating to flexible funding.

As your local MP, I want to reassure those who may be feeling anxious that there has been no reduction in funding for disabled people and no disabled person will lose access to funding for essential services, equipment, or support.

We will be engaging with the community on the best approach to ensure access to flexible funding that is fair and reasonable. In the meantime, we can reassure the community that purchases and costs related to effective support of the disabled person, including psychological services, speech language services, services that work with young people who have both intellectual disability and mental illness, and the purchase of items that support disabled children to self-regulate, will still be covered by the flexible budget.

The needs of disabled people will continue to be a high priority for this coalition Government.

The Government is working tirelessly to get our economy back on track and we’ve made significant progress through our 100-day plan, by cutting wasteful spending and getting rid of red tape. Stay tuned for our Budget in May, in which Finance Minister Nicola Willis will deliver tax relief for hard-working Kiwis.

As we rebuild our economy, we’re focused on improving our public services across the board, like in health and education.