Christopher Luxon wants a new threshold for ministers with mental health problems to be able to return to work – clearance from a clinician. It would be a high bar for employment at Parliament and one Chris Hipkins says would disqualify people from doing their job.
Comment: Two of the conditions Chris Hipkins put on Kiri Allan when she recently returned to work after time out to address her mental wellbeing, were that she continued to see a counsellor and received coaching for her management style.
Hipkins doesn’t believe mental health problems should disqualify anyone from employment.
“And it shouldn’t disqualify someone in this building, and it hasn’t in the past,” he said on Monday.
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Though National leader Christopher Luxon agreed with Hipkins' insistence that Allan received professional support while she had time away from work, he said he would have gone further and required a clinician to sign off on her return.
“I’d have a conversation with the individual and then have representation from their [professional] support that they were good to go,” he told media on Monday afternoon.
Hipkins said he’d made sure Allan had plenty of support and took all the time off she needed; he even encouraged her to take more time off but stopped short of compelling her to stay away when she said she was ready to return.
Allan isn’t alone in having struggled with her mental health.
National’s Todd Muller and Matt Doocey and Green Party MP Chlöe Swarbrick have all shared their experiences publicly.
Doocey, who is National’s mental health spokesperson, has extensive experience working in that field at a community level in New Zealand before joining Parliament.
He also had his own mental health struggles in his early 20s after a car crash that caused a serious head injury.
After putting off seeking help from a counsellor, he eventually did. Doocey told Newsroom in 2021 it “literally changed my life”.
It also led him to train in mental health and study counselling and psychology.
Newsroom approached Doocey personally to ask him what his experiences after nine years in Parliament had taught him about dealing with mental health struggles and how politicians could better address this.
But the National Party blocked the interview, instead referring any comments to Luxon and justice spokesperson Paul Goldsmith.
The National Party is campaigning to have a minister for mental health if elected to government but didn’t want its more-than-qualified spokesperson to comment on the environment and pressures that may have contributed to Allan’s behaviour.
Instead Luxon fronted media and pointed to there being “something going wrong in the culture and leadership of that Cabinet group”.
“Here we are yet again, another week discussing drama and personnel issues within the Labour government.
“It’s a Labour government that’s not focused on the New Zealand people,” he said.
Luxon is right to question whether Hipkins managed the situation well but shouldn’t be so quick to put expectations on MPs’ mental health that don’t exist in other workplaces for very good reasons.
Hipkins was in touch with Allan on Sunday morning via text message some hours before she crashed her car into a parked vehicle in Wellington and allegedly didn’t comply with police instruction.
She was arrested and charged with careless driving and refusing to accompany police. She was also above the legal alcohol limit, but it was at an “infringement notice” level and so she wasn’t charged.
That morning when Hipkins was in contact with Allan she was in the Beehive in her office working on programmes in her justice portfolio and preparing for Cabinet on Monday.
Hipkins said there was nothing in their conversation that suggested she was not coping, and he understood something had happened in her personal life later in the day that had triggered the events that unfolded that evening.
There are details about Allan’s mental health and the moments leading up to the crash that remain private, but will no doubt come out when she appears in court.
For that reason, it’s difficult to assess exactly what happened on Sunday night but framing it as another week of “drama and personnel issues” may not age well for Luxon.
And if National were taking the mental health aspects of this more seriously, it would front Doocey, who has the experience, compassion, and competency to deal with it best.
No doubt he would have a similar response to Swarbrick, who told media on Monday, “I would hope this prompts some reflection on how we do our politics and our parliamentary system differently.”
Hipkins will be racking his brain trying to work out whether there was more he could have done for Allan or if there were signs or clues he missed.
Even if he were to entertain Luxon’s idea of getting a clinician to sign off on the mental wellbeing of one of his ministers, there’s no guarantee Allan wouldn’t have masked the demons she is so clearly battling.
As Hipkins said, “Mental health is a very difficult area, and the experiences of the last few weeks clearly demonstrate that.”
Luxon is right to question whether Hipkins managed the situation well but shouldn’t be so quick to put expectations on MPs’ mental health that don’t exist in other workplaces for very good reasons.
MPs are humans too, after all.
