Estimates Debate — Vote Health (continued)

In Vote Health in the coming financial year we will see the real investments that can be made in public services under a Labour-Progressive Government. This Government is good for people’s health. When we pick up the Budget, pick up any community newspaper, visit the local primary health organisation, visit the local Plunket nurse, call in to see a general practitioner, or go out there with the people working in our communities on health, we can see the massive inroads that have been made in terms of improving the health of ordinary New Zealanders over the last 6 years. We can also see what is planned for the coming year.

We have a very clear plan for health—for public health, for primary health, and for getting more operations done right throughout the sector. Then we have to go into the primary health organisations—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Why are twice as many people on a sickness benefit?

Nick Smith asks about the sickness benefit, in terms of Vote Health. I am not going to reply to him about that; I will let him think about that himself. The total number of people on benefits in New Zealand has fallen from over 400,000 to less than 300,000 in the last 6 years, under this Government. A quarter fewer people are on all welfare rolls than ever before. Just last week the Minister for Social Development and Employment put out a report that shows that the growth in sickness benefit numbers has halved, to just 3 percent. So the big increases that we have seen in the number of people on the sickness benefit have come right down. But even if we are uncharitable, as the Opposition members are, and just focus on that, we can still see that the total number of people on all welfare benefits has gone down, from over 400,000 under National to under 300,000 under Labour. That is progress. And, of course, we have halved unemployment in this country in the last 6 years, putting more people back into work.

In terms of Vote Health there has been a record spend—40 percent more than when we became the Government in 1999—and that is making a huge difference. I think of two projects that are being funded by the Hon Annette King in this financial year, which we are discussing in these estimates. One is the plan to conduct another 7,500 cataract operations. Those operations are life-changing for the people who receive them. Normally they are our senior citizens, who need access to that kind of surgery in order to improve their lives. This Government is delivering it, because we are prepared to put the money into the public health system. It is not for us to go around slashing taxes for our rich mates. We are not going to do that; we are putting money into the health system. The National Party members are interjecting wildly, but I ask them this question: what is their health policy? Silence. What is their tax policy? Silence. At the moment the Committee of the whole House is considering Vote Health, which is paid for by the revenue the Government receives. In both those areas, health and revenue, we have not had one policy from the National Party members. They are not using this estimates debate, 7½ weeks out from a general election, to front up to people with a health policy or a tax policy.

Let me ask Nick Smith this: would the 7,500 extra cataract operations stay under a National Government? Would the doubling of hip and knee operations stay?

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Absolutely!

Nick Smith says “Absolutely!”. Of course, he paused for a long time before he said that.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: There will be more.

Oh, there will be more, he says. So we now know that National wants to spend more than Labour on its health policy. Well, this is a very good debate. It is no wonder that Simon Power is keeping very quiet; he knows that that does not add up. What about National’s tax policy? That has not come forward, either. So the National members are going to spend a whole lot more, but they will not tell us what their policy is. We have gone from having Roger Sowry, to Lynda Scott, to Katherine Rich, to Judith Collins, to Paul Hutchison as National’s spokesperson on health. National has gone right through those people, sacking them left, right, and centre—there is no problem there. And on the revenue policy, nothing has been said in terms of tax.

There has been an absolute flip-flop on health funding. Don Brash said, first of all, when he was asked about primary health organisation funding, that he did not know what a primary health organisation is. Well, he would not know, would he? He would not spend any time meeting with ordinary people about their needs. So that was his first point.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: How many ordinary people know what a primary health organisation is?

The three primary health organisations in my electorate are making a big difference to people in my constituency. Why does Nick Smith not find out what is happening in Nelson?

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Because it’s a mess.

Oh, right! So for an old person to pay only $3 for a prescription is a mess, is it? For a senior citizen, a poor old pensioner, to be able to go out to pick up a prescription is a mess, according to Nick Smith. What National wants to do is to use that money—the money that those old people have been able to save by paying only $3 for a prescription—and hock it off to its rich Tory mates. The National members will not tell us how they would do that, because they are too embarrassed. National has no health policy. There has been no word on its tax policy. It will not tell us what it would do in respect of cataract operations, or hip or joint operations. The National members cannot tell us what they would do with regard to the primary heath organisations. It does not add up.

I say to people that National is bad for their health. If people think the flu was bad this winter, they should imagine how bad it would be if Don Brash were running the country, with no health policy and no tax policy.

💬 Clayton Cosgrove: “Blumsky-itis”!

Well, I do not want to do down that path, in terms of the health policy. I am not sure whether any primary health organisation could fix those particular problems. People should vote Labour.

I wish to speak on this whole matter of health, and I wish to thank the Government for the $200 million that is going into Waikato Hospital and Thames Hospital to improve emergency services in those hospitals. I am very thankful that my family has benefited from that money already, and so have many, many other people in the Waikato and the Coromandel. I am also pleased that Helen Clark spoke recently at a Grey Power meeting in Hamilton. The local chair of Grey Power was able to say, with his walking stick in his hand: “I no longer need this, because I have had my hip operation.” There are 7,500 people who are also pleased that they can see more clearly because they have had their cataract operations. There are people whose prescription costs are now down to $3.

Why does Mr Smith have to scream and yell on the other side of the Chamber instead of saying thank you to the Government on behalf of all the good people in Nelson who are receiving their hip operations? I probably know more people in Nelson who have received operations than he does.

We are very, very pleased that the primary health organisations are moving outwards. We had a briefing at the Health Committee yesterday, about meningococcal meningitis and how it is already apparent that immunisations are affecting health, particularly in Manukau where they began, and how they are having results. We are very, very pleased that the Hon Annette King, Minister of Health, has seen fit to continue with the meningococcal immunisation programme. We heard the National Party health spokesperson, whatever his name is—Dr—

💬 Darren Hughes: Brash, is it?

No, I do not think it is Dr Brash.

💬 Darren Hughes: Hutchison?

Yes, it is Dr Hutchison, and he was critical of the flu vaccination, but who did we see lining up to get a flu jab? We saw Dr Hutchison himself! He made sure he got one. We are very, very pleased the programme is continuing.

Another very good aspect of the Budget is the continued ring-fencing of money for mental health. Labour ring-fenced that money and will continue to do so. We are very, very pleased about that. Do we hear nurses saying how sorry they are they did not get a pay rise? No, because nurses did get their pay rise and we are pleased about that.

In the Waikato we are very, very pleased about Project Energize. That research programme is looking at the health needs of children in schools. Those children get free milk and free fruit. We are carefully monitoring the rate of reduction in obesity amongst children in our schools. This project is panning out well and making a great deal of progress. We thank the district health board and the Hon Annette King for the fruit in schools initiative, and the tremendous amount of progress on preventive health care for our children. Once again, that is a very, very good policy from the Minister of Health. I am very proud of the Government. Labour Governments always perform very well on the basic needs of society—namely, health, education, housing, and jobs. Beat that!

I take the opportunity to acknowledge the work of my colleague Annette King, and to provide the nation with one good reason to vote this Government back in—that is, its performance on health.

I encourage National members to read the newspapers occasionally and find out the facts. The New Zealand Herald ran a report the other day stating that reduced hospital admissions in south Auckland may be an early sign that the pouring of millions of dollars into primary health care is indeed making a difference. That is a great sign. The National Party has criticised us time and time again for putting money into primary health care, but we have done that on the basis that prevention is better than cure. If National were to get anywhere near the levers of power again, this country would revert to a market-driven, blindly ideological health system. Its members believe that the market will deliver to everyone and that a competitive system will deliver to each and every New Zealander. If New Zealand ever has to face again the disastrous experiment that was tried in the 1990s, then the health of each and every New Zealander will slip backwards—except for those who are wealthy enough to buy into their own private health system. People such as Mr David Carter, Mr Nick Smith, and Mr Power, who get nice big fat salaries, will be able to buy their own health care.

The least we can do is ask the National Party for its alternative health policy. There is silence. The newspaper quotes Dr Hutchison as saying that National is not planning to unveil its health policy for several weeks, so he could speak only in principle. Quite frankly, I did not know National had any principles. That is an oxymoron. We will be watching very closely.

New Zealanders know, be they general practitioners, the elderly, or the parents of young children, that the money this Government is spending on primary health care is making a real difference. There were general practitioners who were sceptical. They were not very enthusiastic about primary health organisations. On my travels up and down the country, and around rural areas, I have asked general practitioners upfront what they think about their primary health organisation. They have said they were a little wary at the start, but now see the real value starting to flow through—not only in better health-care for their patients, not only in better support for the general practitioners themselves, but in the fact that the organisations are working for each and every community. [Interruption]

If Nick Smith showed a little more support for the primary health organisation in Nelson, and if some of his Tory mates would not try to undermine it, then I am sure we would make a whole lot more progress in Nelson, as well.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Why have 50 percent Māori on the PHO board?

I am not going to say much more. The member asks why we have Māori on primary health organisation boards. Do members know the horrible reality for a Māori adult living in New Zealand—in Nelson as well? Do members know how many fewer years a Māori adult male in New Zealand—including in Nick Smith’s electorate—lives? They do not. The fact is that the average lifespan of an adult Māori male in Hawke’s Bay is 11 years shorter than that of a Pākehā.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Keep talking about it. It is costing you votes. They see it as PC crap.

The one thing about New Zealanders is they are fair-minded. When they hear the facts—that if one is a Māori one lives, on average, 11 years less than a Pākehā does, they know something has to be done.

💬 Hon David Carter: Why put 50 percent of them on the board?

Mr Carter does not want them on the board, either, because he will not look after Māori; neither will Nick Smith. They will not acknowledge the reality that through the 1990s the National Government’s competitive-driven privatisation attempts in the health system led to greater disparities in health status and greater disparities in access to health services, but over the last 6 years Labour has worked very hard to close that gap.

I am not going to say too much more other than to say we are very proud of our huge investment in health care. Annette King has worked hard to extract the money from Michael Cullen. We have endorsed that. We are going to spend that money to provide a public health system that is available to each and every New Zealander, regardless of one’s wealth, regardless of what school one went to—I say to Mr Carter—and regardless of where one lives. Because that is a basic tenet of the New Zealand way of life, and Labour is proud of it.

I am a member of the Health Committee and the former elected deputy chair of the Southland District Health Board. I am proud of what this Government has achieved, and proud to have such an excellent Minister of Health as Annette King.

I was the deputy chair of the Southland District Health Board when it opened the new $70 million hospital in Invercargill last year—a facility funded by this Labour-led Government. It is one of the many new, effective, and efficient hospitals that Labour has funded, because we believe in excellence, not in old-style buildings and services not suited to modern New Zealanders.

This Labour-led Government has been exceptionally, excellently, and outstandingly good for health. We found a mess in 1999. The Tories had gone through user-pays, bed night charges, the loss of professionals, and hospital closures. May I say that the Tories had also for years done such things as tell my elderly father, for whom I cared, that he would wait years on a public health list for a cataract operation. What has Labour done? The Tories had no ideology for health, no real belief that health was absolutely a public service and a public good. Labour came in with a philosophy that health was a public good. We actually talked about health promotion and illness prevention as a goal—not just about a sickness model, as the Tories like to speak of. We have thought as a Government about the future of good health for this nation, and we have a New Zealand Health Strategy that promotes that.

What has that meant? It has meant increased access to affordable primary health care since Labour has been in Government. Now, 3.7 million New Zealanders are benefiting from being enrolled in a primary health organisation, which means that by 2007 they will all pay cheaper doctors’ fees and prescription charges. We have delivered on our promise to deliver double the number of hip and knee operations this year, and I am exceptionally proud of the fact that we have also provided funding for up to 7,500 more cataract operations in the next 3 years—something that my father would have benefited from if the Tories had bothered to think it important to provide for elderly New Zealanders. We have invested $200 million to fight back against meningococcal meningitis, because we realise how important that is for the health of New Zealanders overall. Lastly, we have funded district health boards more than half a billion dollars over the next 4 years to help them meet the costs of this year’s historic pay increase for nurses. It was long overdue and well deserved, and has now been delivered; with Government funding, it is able to be provided over 4 years.

We have been an exceptionally good Government for health. We are proud of what we have done, and we are looking forward to doing a great deal more to improve health and to turn round those disastrous years of a National Government that could not keep a Minister of Health for 5 minutes.