Alexia Russell

So what would you have liked to have seen in terms of new psychologists on the ground?

So these are people who have been through the system before, been through whatever these people are suffering from.

They're there to support them and hold their hand kind of thing.

So there's, what, $28.45 million for 150 new psychology assistant roles over four years?

So will that go some way to ease the burden of clinical psychologists?

Okay.

And this need, I mean, I guess we know this.

We've had story after story.

It's grown hugely over the last, what would you say, couple of decades?

This lack of data collection, it's a thread running through a lot of our stories, that it's pretty easy to cut a line in the budget by just stop collecting information.

Is that what you're experiencing here?

Right.

Well, in the absence of data, how do we make decisions on what's needed?

Is it all based on anecdotal stuff or who gets in the minister's ear?

Sounds like you're talking about the Gumboot Day funding for $24 million that wasn't even asked for.

A couple of years ago now, but it was pretty notorious.

And now this latest announcement includes a million per year to go to NGOs like that to increase support.

But is this just funding that had been previously taken away?

The Royal College was not consulted about this round of funding allocation.

Let's look at maternal mental health now, because that's had a lot of publicity in the last few years.