95bFM Petition launched over police withdrawal from mental health callouts over concerns transition is hasty
20 May, 2025
Interview by Max Micheel, adapted by Samantha Watson-Tayler
The Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand’s Shaun Robinson says New Zealand could be in “a very dangerous situation” without adequately phasing out police for mental health callouts, and has delivered a petition to Parliament addressing these concerns.
The Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand (MHF) has delivered a petition, signed by over 16,000 people, to Parliament, over concerns that the phasing out of police from mental health callouts is reckless.
This follows an announcement in November 2024 that the police will reduce their mental health-related callouts through four phases. Phase two has been rolled out in some regions in the country.
This move aims to improve callout responses so that mental health workers are better involved in the process, however, police will still respond to situations involving the immediate or severe danger to someone’s life or safety.
Despite the MHF believing the police are not the best agency to deal with people experiencing mental distress, the organisation are concerned that the process has been rushed, has caused confusion in the sector, and that there is a lack of clarity in the transition.
Chief Executive of the MHF, Shaun Robinson, told 95bFM’s The Wire that part of the organisation’s concerns are about funding.
“Are [the government] going to put resources into alternative crisis response services? Because if the answer is no, then this is an absolute disaster.”
Despite small initiatives, Robinson says more needs to be done.
“… until there is an allocation of funding that says ‘we're going to scale these up to a national level, we're going to put in additional new services and here's the money to do that, here's the timeline for how we're going to get those services actually running with trained staff’ — until all of that is very clear, this is a very dangerous situation.”
The MHF estimates it will take multiple years of substantial government investment to ensure the health system is adequately equipped to take over the police regarding mental health callouts.
Robinson says this is due to the development of infrastructure to deal with the 70,000 mental health-related callouts every year.
“We already know that there are staffing shortages in mental health across the country in existing services.”
“… you have to have the staff, you have to figure out what services are needed in different places, you have to then create those services … to bring staff online to increase the number of staff, know[ing] what sort of staff are needed, and then [hire them]; that all is going to take at least three to five years.”
Robinson says the petition was completed within a month with a low budget and was still able to receive thousands of responses, which he says was a strong success.
“[The amount of signatories in the petition] should be telling the politicians, people are concerned [and] people are watching,” he says.
“As the Mental Health Foundation, we are going to stay involved in this issue. We're going to keep monitoring and we're going to keep telling the public what's going on, not to rabble rouse, but because it's an important issue that the public needs to be aware of.”
