\u201cAnd after six years and battling kidney disease and the loss of my son, I\u2019ve had a bloody tough time of it, and I just know the dear old taxpayer\u2019s paying my wages, and I cannot do the job that I once did with the kidney disease that I have.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do dialysis three days a week now, because my kidneys are completely failed, and it\u2019s just not fair on the people that I represent and the people that pay my wages.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cameron had plans to return to Parliament after a kidney donor was lined up for a transplant earlier this year.<\/p>\n
He expected to be able to return to work in March or April, but two days before Christmas his heart failed, making him no longer eligible for the donor list.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything changed at the moment, I was taken off the transplant list, and I sit in this purgatory of unknown.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a real \u2018bugger me\u2019 moment where you swear at the sky and consternation and don\u2019t get any answers back.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he\u2019s been in recovery and rest mode since and been unable to return to his work in Wellington.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to do best by Kiwi folk, and the people I certainly love, which are rural people, and I simply can\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Long way to go\u2019 on rural mental health support<\/p>\n
Cameron said his experience of the health system was \u201cincredible gratitude and immense disappointment\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said he doesn\u2019t know where the country\u2019s $33 billion of funding for health goes, given how many people are waiting for help at hospitals where emergency departments are full.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the average user, we spend an inordinate amount of money and sometimes the results are not what you would want or expect.<\/p>\n
\u201cCertainly in my case… I rang my specialist and didn\u2019t get a reply for five days. One would argue at that point, with all the money being spent, that professionalism is being lost, and maybe in that instance it was.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cameron lost his son Brody to suicide in 2024 and, as a farmer, has been an advocate for the rural community and mental health.<\/p>\n
He said there\u2019s still a \u201clong way to go\u201d to get the right assistance to rural men suffering mental health issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cIsolated rural young men, often working long, long hours in quite difficult jobs, and they find themselves isolated and don\u2019t have the wherewithal to reach out.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe still have a long way to go and the $2b we spend on mental health in part should be spent in rural New Zealand,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Where to get help:<\/p>\n
If it is an emergency and you feel like you or someone else is at risk, call 111.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cAnd after six years and battling kidney disease and the loss of my son, I\u2019ve had a bloody…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":466527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4619,17517,53314,42343,2255,12514,32573,185116,6368,111,43,139,69,1118,24637,61],"class_list":["post-466526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-act","tag-because","tag-cameron","tag-failure","tag-kidney","tag-leave","tag-mark","tag-moir","tag-mp","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-parliament","tag-to"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}