Goodhew Jo: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Goodhew Jo: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:640;Page:10438] 
JO GOODHEW (National—Aoraki) 
: 
 Like my colleague Jonathan Coleman I too saw that photograph of the Prime Minister with the Minister of Health but I read it slightly differently. The way the Minister of Health was holding on to the Prime Minister’s arm I thought reflected perhaps him asking to be let out of the health portfolio—“let me out now.” 
I rise to speak in this appropriation debate about the aged-care sector and I do so because it is truly in disarray. Not only are there the workforce crises that we have been hearing about—crises that involve not only low pay but also poor training opportunities—but also there is a lack of discharge planning in the aged-care sector. “Discharge planning” now sees elderly people who have broken hips being sent back to a rest home without a walking frame and elderly people being sent home from hospitals in taxis and when they ask how they will unlock the door and turn on the heater they are told to get the taxi driver to do it. People are sent home too late in the day to access a pharmacy to get prescriptions so they go without their medications and elderly people are in the hallways of hospitals for days on end waiting because they cannot get admitted—elderly people who are frail and those same people are very much disadvantaged in our health system. 
The compliance costs in the aged-care sector are very high with duplication of auditing and inconsistencies as well. Then there is the latest debacle. It is indicative of the chaos and the conflict within the health-care sector. It is a sector that is beset by strikes by negotiation breakdowns by management and health professional distrust and mistrust and now we have the judicial reviews. There is a line-up of judicial reviews: we have a judicial review for breast cancer patients a judicial review regarding pathology contracts and judicial reviews in the aged-care sector now and then also threatened in the pharmacy contracts. 
Let us just touch on why there would be a judicial review and I might add it is not an option that would be lightly taken because it is an expensive option. It is truly one that is taken when it is thought there is nowhere else to go. So what has driven the aged-care providers to go down this track? I tell members that it is simply more distrust more mistrust and their negotiation process has certainly not served them well. Those providers have said they will pass on all—and I do not understand what the Minister does not understand about the word “all”—of the funding for wage increases. 
Hon Pete Hodgson 
: Ha ha! 
JO GOODHEW 
: The Minister laughs and that is exactly the sort of response I would expect from him. I tell the Minister that that is the response that gets the aged-care providers so angry and hacked off. They are the people who are trying to run businesses and when they promise you and when they guarantee that they will pass on all of the funding you laugh like that and you wonder why there is distrust. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Order! 
JO GOODHEW 
: My apologies. So the aged-care providers have said they will pass on all the funding but they have been told that to do that they must promote a collective agreement not just offer collective and individual employment agreements but they have to promote collective agreements. They think that is beyond the law. They think that is asking too much and that is one of the reasons they are seeking a judicial review. 
They also want people to understand the realities. Last year caregiver wages rose on average 4.7 percent and nurse wages by 6.7 percent. That was in line with a 3 percent inflation agreement increase given to rest homes and a 5.9 percent increase given to geriatric hospitals. There is so much distrust even though they have been passing on this money that they have gone to a judicial review. They believe the district health boards are acting outside the scope of the Employment Relations Act and therefore they have sought a judicial review. 
Now the union has waded in. It says that providers do not seem to think they have a responsibility to pay workers a decent wage. The money $35 million will all go to those caregivers’ wages; that has been guaranteed by the sector. What do the Minister and the district health boards not understand about “all”? Business New Zealand chief executive Phil O’Reilly has also had this to say about it. He said the district health boards appear to be attempting to impose obligations on aged-care employers that go beyond what other employers are required to meet under the law. This is most certainly yet another example of the distrust—the mistrust—within the health sector.