Roy Heather: General Debate 
Roy Heather: General Debate 
[Volume:620;Page:15681] 
HEATHER ROY (ACT) 
: 
 A revelation was made in this House today by Associate Minister of Health Jim Anderton that 25028 patients are on waiting lists. They are patients who have been booked for treatment or who have been given certainty of treatment within 6 months. Whether they get treatment is another story. However that revelation follows 2 years of fudged figures deception new definitions and misleading information that today have been exposed by Jim Anderton. I do not know whether the Minister of Health when she gets back from her trip to China will be very pleased about that revelation because she has spent all her time as Minister of Health for this Labour Government in trying to hide those figures. 
Residual waiting lists had just on 50000 patients waiting for treatment when Labour was elected. Mr Anderton admitted today that the number of patients on the real waiting lists is now about 56000. So this Labour Government has totally ignored the number of patients it has been sending back to their general practitioners because there is no hope of their ever receiving treatment or surgery—it has totally ignored the tens of thousands of patients on those lists. We know that all this Labour Government has done for Kiwi patients is see a huge rise in waiting-list numbers. 
Today speaking on Ms King’s behalf—and as I said I am sure that she will not be happy about that when she finds out about it—Mr Anderton revealed that those 25000 will be added to the 31000 patients on active review—a little-known category that New Zealanders have no knowledge of. Active review is the waiting list one goes on when one is waiting to go on the waiting list. It is the waiting list for the waiting list. With the figures put together the total of 56000 patients is much larger than the number on the waiting lists when Labour came to power. 
Those figures are an absolute disgrace. Cutting waiting lists was a key Labour election promise not only in 1999 but also in 2002. But what has happened to those figures? They have gone up. It was a key Labour election promise but 5 years on and after huge surpluses this Government today has admitted failure. 
In February 2001 the deceptions began. In February 2001 the Minister of Health announced—on a quiet Sunday afternoon when there was no news—that hallelujah the country’s waiting lists had dropped by 20000 people. Fortunately for the country a couple of smart journalists were around who thought: “Hang on a minute. These people can’t have just been swallowed up. Where have they gone?”. They were all transferred sideways on to active review—every last one of them. Those patients had been transferred to a category where they were then destined to wait to go on to the waiting list and today we have been told that 56000 people are now waiting for treatment. 
The deceptions do not stop there either. Labour has deceived us over health spending. Last year there was a $500 million underspend. Of a $9.6 billion budget half a billion dollars was underspent. Of that $188 million was operational and another $320 million—[ 
Interruption 
] Members can argue all they like. I have a parliamentary question answered by the Minister of Finance which members would not let me table today showing that exact figure—$500 million underspent. The spending only becomes clear well after the years have gone by. It is only now that the Government is admitting—as Mr Anderton did today—that there was a real spending drop in the 2001-02 year. 
So the Minister of Health’s legacy to health is an increase in the number of patients needing treatment in New Zealand. They have been assessed and told by doctors that they need treatment but most of them will not get it. That Minister of Health will be held accountable at the next election; her days are numbered. 
Firstly elective surgery and waiting lists are in serious trouble despite Labour’s deliberate policy of providing misleading or incomplete information. Members should view the Ministry of Health’s website and try to work their way through that. Secondly new health operational funding for this financial year is tens of millions if not hundreds of millions less than the Minister of Health has spun. She has been standing up and telling the country about all the new funding going in when we know now that $188 million of last year’s money was underspent. Thirdly the Minister of Health has seen a cut in real per-person funding.