Comment: The irony of Anne Tolley's reaction to a speech on youth mental health

Deputy Speaker Anne Tolley has apologised to Youth MP Lily Dorrance and Speaker Trevor Mallard for the way she chaired a general debate yesterday. Photo / Mark Mitchell

COMMENT:

We keep telling New Zealanders, in particular young New Zealanders, that they need to talk about mental health, that we need to have open dialogue, no matter what, no matter how, to break the stigma and tackle the alarming suicide rates in New Zealand.

Yesterday, during a general debate in the House, Youth MP Lily Dorrance tried to do that.

Anne Tolley's reaction? A sort of "no, not like that".

On social media this morning, some people came to Tolley's defence, saying she was just trying to get Dorrance to comply with the rules of the general debate in Parliament, which state MPs should speak from notes but not read their whole speech.

The fact that some people think Dorrance's compliance to that silly rule outweighs the desperate need to have an uninterrupted conversation about mental health shows just how far we have to go, despite all our "I am Hope" Facebook avatars, when it comes to actually listening to people trying to break the stigma.

Lily Dorrance, 17, was reading her speech about mental health and describing her loss in Parliament's debating chamber yesterday when Tolley, presiding as chair, rebuked her for reading from notes.

Dorrance said that, afterwards, she burst into tears and felt "humiliated" by Tolley. Wouldn't you be too if, at 17, an older person had told you off for no good reason in front of your peers?

You're lying to yourself if you think you'd be cool about it.

Dorrance is a teenager, a minor, and most definitely not an experienced MP. She made some notes and read from them because she wanted her message to come out loud and clear. Because her message was that important.

Tolley has since apologised but her actions speak volumes about older people's general attitudes towards younger people's views, which are particularly damaging when it comes to tackling things such as the country's abhorrent youth suicide rate.

New Zealand's suicide rates are currently the worst since we began to record them and we have one of the worst rates of youth suicide in the developed world.

This is not just a problem, it's not merely an issue. It's a scary epidemic.

When faced with these facts, and while hearing a young person talk about mental health, should your answer really be to interrupt them because of whatever archaic rule about how they should be speaking in actual Parliament (which, by the way, Youth Parliament is not)?

We need to stop caring about the form and start paying attention to the substance. I don't care if Dorrance wasn't meant to be reading her speech, I care about the message she was trying to convey before she was rudely interrupted by an older person in a position of power.

Tolley chose to interrupt Dorrance's speech, not knowing whether her interruption meant the Youth MP wouldn't be able to convey her message after all. That shows a blatant disregard for the message itself.

One of Dorrance's last sentences before getting cut off was, ironically enough, "what young people really need is open communication".

Almost immediately after that, Tolley interrupted her.

And we wonder why things aren't getting any better?

For as long as people keep bullying others into speaking a certain way, we're all going to continue missing the point.

It doesn't matter how we're talking about mental health. It matters that we talk about it. It matters that young people's voices are heard and respected - not interrupted.

Also, for what is worth, despite Tolley's derailment, Lily Dorrance nailed it. She is hope.