Address in Reply

The House continues this debate on the Speech from the Throne at a time when there is real crisis within the New Zealand health service. Every day there are stories of poor management by the Labour Government, and every day there are more and more indications that the Government is not providing the health service that ordinary New Zealanders deserve. It boils down to what I think is a very simple figure. In 1998 the Opposition spokeswoman on health, Annette King, said that having 96,000 people waiting for their first specialist assessment was a criminal situation. The latest figure is well over 150,000 people waiting for their first specialist assessment. So even though this is a Government that has put millions and millions of dollars into the health service, it is just not delivering the results that New Zealanders would expect.

The situation was echoed by the New Zealand Treasury in its briefings to the new Minister earlier in the week, where it talked about the fact that in the 3 years up to 2003-04, the number of operations performed in hospitals rose by 5 percent, compared with a 21 percent growth in hospital spending. What is more, it went on to state that it is difficult to tell what improvements in health outcomes or services have been achieved for the additional spending in health, and whether New Zealanders are getting value for money.

So there are incredible problems within the health system, which have even been foreshadowed today in the release of the Minister’s briefing paper in the health sector. Members should look at what it talks about. It talks about organisations facing huge capital risks in trying to update their facilities. It talks about the huge cost pressures facing us in order to keep our nurses and our doctors in this country. There seems to be hundreds of millions of dollars for strategies, bureaucracies, and action plans, but no money to increase the number of doctors and nurses in our hospitals and in our communities to provide the operations we want.

And this is the most telling criticism of all: there is an urgent call from the Ministry of Health to overhaul the pay and conditions of residential support workers in the aged-care sector. I want to tell the House about the deceit of the Minister at the time he was an Associate Minister of Health. He stood up during the Budget debate in the middle of this year and told Parliament that he was voting $71 million of new money for aged residential care. Do members remember that? Do they want to know how much the sector got? It was $24 million! That is all they got out of the $71 million that Pete Hodgson, poncing up and down the country, said that he was going to give to those aged-care providers in this country.

Do members know what his excuse was?

💬 Lindsay Tisch: No. What was his excuse?

He said: “Oh, I gave it to the DHBs.” So we then asked him why he had not given it to the aged residential care sector. He said he could not tell them to spend it all on aged residential care. Yet he was happy to stand in this Parliament and tell the rest home operators of this country that he would put $71 million of new money into their pockets, but all he gave them was $24 million.

I wonder whether he has a mother or father in a rest home. This Government is risking putting a whole lot of ageing New Zealanders into second-rate rest homes where corners are cut to balance the books. And what about the care of elderly New Zealanders? In the last few years 40 rest homes have closed. More and more New Zealanders who need residential care are being forced to stay in their home and not get the care they deserve, just because this Minister, when he was an Associate Minister of Health, stood up in Parliament and said: “I’m giving aged residential care $71 million of new money.” He has given them only $24 million dollars. When I was growing up in Whakatāne we had a word for people who said things like that. If someone promises $71 million and knows that those people will receive only $24 million, then that person is not telling the truth.

But that is not unusual in health. The Associate Minister of Health, now Minister of Health, also said: “There’s no problem with maternity care in New Zealand. I’ve fixed it.” Well, what he is not telling people is that in west Auckland, the area represented by Paula Bennett, women cannot get an independent midwife. They cannot get a midwife who will visit them in their homes, and provide the continuity of care and contact they need. Those of us who have children know that women want a midwife within 2 hours of knowing they are pregnant, because it gives them comfort and support—and the midwives do a fantastic job. But in west Auckland there are no midwives who will come to the home. The Government has known about this for 3 years and what has it done? Nothing.

In Wellington women are waiting 5 months to get a midwife to take them through their pregnancy and give them what they need. The same problem occurs in Southland. Rotorua was represented during the last term by Mrs Chadwick, the chairperson of the Health Committee. She had known about the problem there. But she did nothing. That is why she had a 7,500 vote turn-round in the Rotorua electorate—almost beaten by a man who had lived in Rotorua for only 4 months.

💬 Steve Chadwick: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. The member has made false allegations about the level of midwifery care in Rotorua. There is no shortage.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ann Hartley): That is not a point of order; it is a debating point.

These problems are getting worse. The Government has not done enough for our midwifery workforce. Let us see Steve Chadwick take the next call and deny that the Government has known that there has been a midwifery shortage since 2002. Can she deny that? Can she deny that the Government has known about midwifery shortages since 2002? She says nothing.

The Government has had appalling workforce planning. This Government has known that there has been a problem, and it has not done anything about it. We now have women in Paula Bennett’s west Auckland electorate who cannot get a midwife. We have women waiting 5 months in Wellington. The risk is that they are not going to get the level of care and support to which they should be entitled. That is because this Government is prepared to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on strategies, action plans, and hui, and not enough on giving the services we need: more doctors, nurses, midwives, and operations. It is happy to have the money tied up in bureaucracy and inefficiency, and not provide the sorts of services that New Zealanders want.

Our challenge in the National Opposition over the next 4 months, before we become the Government, is to tell New Zealanders what we will do to fix the problem. We will make sure that New Zealanders know what the options and alternatives are. Labour knows that there is a huge staffing shortage. In the next few months we will talk about the crisis in general practitioners throughout the country. Do members know that there are huge workloads on general practitioners—enormous workloads? Many parts of the country cannot get 24/7 general practitioner care, and major cities cannot get 24/7 care.

💬 Steve Chadwick: Not true.

“Not true”, says the woman who almost lost Rotorua. In fact, she did lose Rotorua. The only reason Steve Chadwick is here today is that she won Kawerau. She lost Rotorua, and won Kawerau, so she is here by a few hundred votes. But she is here in her last few weeks as a member.

Debate interrupted.