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• A draft plan revealed 1500  workers are needed, but the final report omitted this.
• Mental health minister Matt Doocey faced criticism from Labour for hiding workforce shortage numbers in the final report.
• Labour MP Ingrid Leary accused the government of prioritising appearances over addressing the mental health workforce crisis.

The government is being criticised for hiding and removing key mental health worker shortage numbers in an official report.

3News reported that a draft version of a plan to increase mental health worker numbers showed nearly 1500 workers were required, but when the final report was released, those key numbers disappeared.

The mental health minister, Matt Doocey, came under fire from the opposition today for his lack of transparency.

In September last year, Doocey celebrated the newly released Mental Health and Addiction Workforce Plan and its committed stance to increase those trained in the professional mental health space.

“I’ve been very open, the biggest barrier to timely mental health and addiction support is our workforce crisis.

“We have too many vacancy rates,” Doocey told 3News.

The mental health minister, Matt Doocey, came under fire from Labour today for hiding the numbers of workforce shortages. Photo / Mike Scott

3News said it had obtained a draft version of the plan, which showed that Health New Zealand hid the size of the problem on purpose.

The draft version of the plan had a page showing the workforce shortage, with the title ‘What We Need.’

It said 1,485 more frontline mental health and addiction workers were needed today.

This number included 470 specialist nurses, 145 psychiatrists and 145 clinical psychologists.

Each page broke down an estimate of how many workers the health system was short by in each area.

But, in the final version, these estimates did not exist.

When asked why these statistics were removed Doocey, said, “well I didn’t take that out, so I don’t know where that is, but actually a lot of that information is publicly available.

“I know when I was in opposition, I was using that data as well.”

An email thread 3News obtained showed the removal was a direct order.

3News said that on September 11th, the communications manager sent an email to the minister’s office with a brief outline of changes made after feedback from the Health NZ commissioner at the time, Lester Levy.

The email said that the Page 5 “what we need” page “would come out of the document.”

The email also said the bubbles on the other pages that stated what the health system was short by would also be removed from the final version of the plan.

“In some places we will make some associated narrative changes, to refocus towards highlighting growth against target numbers as opposed to deficit framing,” the order said.

When asked about the lack of transparency, Doocey said “I’d be more than happy for Health NZ to be transparent and to give that information.”

Labour’s Ingrid Leary said, “It’s a government focused on trying to look good rather than trying to do good.”