Woodhouse Michael: General Debate 
Woodhouse Michael: General Debate 
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MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) 
: 
 I will begin by wishing my daughter Isabel a happy 10th birthday. I also congratulate the All Whites. I do not think that this has been mentioned in the House today but I offer my congratulations to the All Whites for the magnificent result in Rustenburg early this morning. Like a huge number of other New Zealanders I watched the game with a sense of pride at their gutsy performance. Late in the game at 1 nil down I was thinking that it was a pretty good effort against one of the comparative giants of world football and then I was dancing around the room like probably half of New Zealand in bars and lounges all around the country when young Winston Reid hit the equaliser. So I say well done to the All Whites and good luck for their future pool games. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Give them a knighthood! 
MICHAEL WOODHOUSE 
: Now there is an idea. Maybe a gong is in the offing. If they lift the trophy it will definitely come. 
I think the performance of the All Whites is something of a metaphor for my Government’s aspirations for this country. It is a team that is not flush with resources or talent compared with the sometimes massive wealth that some of the countries it is playing against have. The combined salaries of the Italian team probably match the gross national product of a small Pacific nation. But are the All Whites envious? Do they accept defeat before they even go out on to the field? They are not and they do not. They do not even consider that they are punching above their weight. They firmly believe that they have earned their right to be on that stage and good on them. They are an inspiration to us all. I think that the economic well-being of New Zealand is pretty similar. We are not flush with wealth or resources but the Government is not prepared to accept that this is as good as it gets. It has asked New Zealanders to tighten their belts and they are not on their own in that respect. 
The Government also has to control costs while improving services. I do not think there is a better example of that than in the health sector to show what is possible when we clearly set out expectations and empower clinical staff to make the changes needed and to deliver those improvements. The results have been amazing: 12000 more elective surgeries shorter waits in emergency departments and faster access to cancer services. The Minister of Health and I were at Dunedin Hospital last week and we heard from the clinical services leader of radiology Dr Ben Wilson. He described how his department was able to reduce waiting times for non-urgent CT scans from 57 weeks to just 9 weeks. There had been no huge investment in resources and no great wailing and gnashing of teeth just a careful look at the process and how productivity could be improved—and one that involved the staff in the process. We were at Dunedin Hospital so that the Minister could give neonatologists paediatricians nurses and mental health staff the news that they have waited years and years to get—that is that this Government understood the need to upgrade and expand the neonatal intensive care unit and upgrade the children’s ward and the in-patient mental health ward. 
I have been working hard on that issue on behalf of the people of Otago since coming into Parliament. It was out of personal experience from having my daughter in the neonatal intensive care unit for a few days after she was born. Thankfully she is well now and thriving but those few days there gave me an insight into the fantastic work those staff do and the incredibly cramped and difficult conditions they have had to put up with. The need was identified a long long time ago. I had surgery as a child and stayed in the ward that is now the acute psych ward and that was over 30 years ago. It appears that not a single thing has been done to that building in all that time. So I am delighted that the merits of that project have finally been understood by my Government and that it was prepared to invest in Dunedin’s future. 
There is a quid pro quo to that and those financial challenges at the Southern District Health Board are certainly very real. But if Dr Wilson and the radiology department are anything to go by it is possible to do a lot more with a little more. I think that is the challenge that should be laid down for all of the public sector. Despite Ms Dyson’s rantings about cuts what she says simply is not true. Vote Health has gone up in a recession. New Zealand’s total Government spending has gone up which is in marked contrast to what is happening in the public sector around the world. In Ireland there have been 15 percent pay cuts. In Spain there has been a 5 percent pay cut. Billions need to be cut from the National Health Service budget. I cannot say it any better than that great doyenne of democracy Margaret Thatcher when she said that the trouble with socialism is that sooner or later one runs out of other people’s money. Frankly I cannot say it any better than that.