Hopes were high this would result in increased focus on mental health, an area which has been understaffed for years, not always cohesive, and with many of those in the sector also having to work in facilities long past their useful life. Think Wakari Hospital.
Coming into the new role, Matt Doocey considered mental health had always been a poor second cousin to physical health.
He did not want mental health to be further siloed by setting it apart in its own ministry. Rather, he favoured an Australian model where the ministry could look at what was going on in other government departments including education, social development and housing.
He told this newspaper the ongoing staff crisis meant you could make as many funding announcements as you liked but they would mean nothing unless clinicians were available to provide the necessary services.
"Without staff, those services will not open ... we need to ensure that we have an absolute focus on reducing vacancy rates and that will go hand in glove with understanding the levels of service we need across the country."
But while it seems the size of the workforce has grown, so have vacancies, and getting specialist mental health and addiction care is becoming more difficult.
Data released this week by Te Hiranga Mahara-Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission showed in the year to the end of June last year, thousands fewer young people were getting specialist help despite rising demand.
This means people who have been assessed as needing specialist care must be supported by primary care for longer, adding to the pressure those services are already under.
The commission chief executive Karen Orsborn said the decline in people being seen was not due to falling demand. She put it down to workforce shortages, coupled with the increasing complexity of people’s needs.
It was galling to read RNZ reporting this month showing money earmarked for frontline mental health services, including tackling severe workforce shortages, was "reprioritised" to pay for a controversial $10 million mental health innovation fund.
The Cabinet-sanctioned transfer of funds from the mental health and addiction budget was hasty, and apparently a surprise to HNZ staff who then had to get the fund established quickly.
Their concerns about the pitfalls of rushing the project given there was not enough time to consult or engage with the sector went nowhere.
It is hard to understand why this fund was of greater urgency than the promise to allocate money this financial year to train an additional 13 psychiatry registrars.
We have already noted the failure of the government to meet National’s election promise to boost medical school numbers by 50 this financial year, only funding 25, despite the two schools’ insistence they could cater for the full complement.
It makes it difficult to take any government talk about the importance of home-grown health workers seriously. It is easy to understand the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists’ (RANZCP) view the money would have been better served to deliver National’s pre-election promise of training more psychiatrists, rather than a fund with an unproven track record.
The RANZCP says there are now 650 mental health vacancies, including 130 psychiatrists. Some regions have a 30% vacancy rate among psychiatrists.
So far, the fund, which gives money to time-limited initiatives in the community sector, has allocated about $2.3m to four projects.
No doubt these are worthy projects focusing on prevention and early intervention, but RANZCP national chairman Hiran Thabrew questioned whether two years of funding would be enough.
Shifting money away from hospital and workforce funding was not the answer.
"We’re just plugging one hole while another one leaks."
Mr Doocey has some way to go to show he has fully grasped the complexity of this leaky ship and what should be given priority to make long-term improvement in the sector.
