Reti ShaneHon Dr SHANE RETI (Minister of Health): Thank you Mr Speaker. I want to start this discourse by thanking our hard-working health professionals both clinical and non-clinical for their continued support and commitment to serving New Zealanders and maintaining our health system. Despite the obvious challenges they've had in the past six years they turn up to work every single day. I met some of them this morning—several hundred of the clinical leaders at a function this morning—and their collaboration and their enthusiasm for a move for change was by itself infectious and much welcomed.With the health leaders this morning I talked about not only the work that needed to be done but also what we already have done and the success together that we have had in the past 121 days across key enablers for the health workforce which would be obviously your health workforce targets and infrastructure. I described to them that in the health workforce area we have placed more GP registrars actually out with practice than many of us can recall for many years. I want to say that there are several hundreds of GP registrars now as we speak currently out with practices hoping to ameliorate and it will certainly relieve some of the challenges we have with access and the heavy workload that primary care has.There have been 50 new medical school places filled this year; I believe the split is 30 to Auckland 20 to Otago. That's a good thing. There has been increased funding for nurse practitioners; huge numbers of internationally qualified nurses have registered with the Nursing Council in the past six months—in fact it was put to me that it's most number of registrations of internationally qualified nurses in the past decade. This is good for us also when we consider that one of the hurdles across all of the health domain has been the number of nurses that we have not had.When we reflect on targets—remember those key enablers are workforce targets and infrastructure—a few weeks ago the Prime Minister and I announced the five health targets which will set a key direction for health. Those health targets were: faster cancer treatment 90 percent of patients to receive cancer management within 31 days of the decision to treat; improved immunisation for children 95 percent of children to be fully immunised at 24 months of age that will be a challenge we have never ever reached that level of immunisation and I share that observation in the context of comments from epidemiologists like Michael Baker who are warning us of an impeding measles epidemic and we take this very very seriously as I'm sure does the sector; shorter stays in emergency departments (EDs) 95 percent of patients to be admitted discharged or transferred from an ED within six hours; shorter wait times for first-specialist assessments (FSAs) 95 percent of patients to wait less than four months for an FSA. Some might wonder why it's 95 percent. It turns out we could say 100 percent—everyone—but there's always those outliers who for reasons that are sometimes not clear you offer them an appointment but it just doesn't suit sit outside the measures. So we think 95 percent is more appropriate. And shorter wait times for treatment with 95 percent of patients to wait less than four months for elective treatment.As well as the five headline targets there's also been a whole body of work around the 100-day initiatives which again we've completed in this actually 121 days. That includes actions and initiatives such as taking our first steps to extend breast cancer screening for free to those women aged between 70 to 74; opening the 13 breast cancer screening mobile units at Counties Manukau; signing a memorandum of understanding with Waikato University to progress a third medical school; improving security for the health workforce and hospital EDs; turning the sod on the first linear accelerator radiotherapy cancer linear acceleratora—called LINAC—in Northland for the 520 patients a year who travel down to Auckland to receive their treatment. A big thankyou to the Cancer Society and Domain Lodge for housing our Northland people when they've travelled and who may well be able to use the National Travel Assistance which we've discussed here this morning. Opening the first provincial PET/CT scanner in Whangārei the seventh—they only exist in Auckland Wellington Christchurch and Hamilton. Imagine there's a PET/CT scanner in provincial New Zealand the first in Whangārei and what I heard from the developers was that they are looking to extend them into—Hon Member: Look after the regions.Hon Dr SHANE RETI: —further provincial regions—you're quite right. Ten new chemotherapy chemo infusion sites in Whanganui. The member from Whanganui and I were talking about that.Pharmac has decided to retain the 8.1B exemption for children; this means that children with cancer will be able to receive their medications from Pharmac and have it administered in a hospital. The previous Government put that under review. They reviewed whether or not they would continue free cancer treatment for children. That call has been made and we stand by it. New cancer drugs for acute myeloid leukaemia and metastatic breast cancer. And today we announced an $18 million a year increase to the national transport allowance. We're proud of our record.