King Annette: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
King Annette: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
[Volume:626;Page:21285] 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister of Health) 
: 
 I am very pleased to speak in the appropriation debate. This is an opportunity for parties to showcase their policy for the forthcoming election. This is the last appropriation debate we will have before we go to the polls. Parties are able to come into this House and set out clearly for the voters of New Zealand what they intend to do. 
I have to say that I have been underwhelmed by the contributions from the National spokesperson and the ACT spokesperson. John Key’s speech was less than memorable. He managed to attract an audience of one—Lindsay Tisch. He was the only person who turned up to hear John Key’s speech. That would not be unusual except that I was in the House on the day John Key gave his Budget speech. Some members will recall that on that day he had an audience of one—Lindsay Tisch. I want to ask National members why they do not like John Key. Why will they not come into the Chamber to support and listen to John Key? I can only assume it is because he has absolutely nothing to say. That is what his speech was. It was full of nothing. It was empty blancmange. There was not a bit of policy not a single principle. All his speech was was a rant a rage and a whinge. 
Then I listened to the verbal diatribe—or was it verbal diarrhoea?—that poured out of the mouth of Rodney Hide. But I have to say that I looked at him when he was giving his speech and I pitied him. I felt pity for that man. He is a sad case. He is a sad man. He is desperate and he is dateless because nobody wants to play with that party. He is undermined by his own members. He spent the whole weekend trying to shore up his leadership of that disappearing party. He is outshone daily by Richard Prebble the previous leader. He is out principled by Ken Shirley. He is out of sorts he is out of condition and he is out of here. That is the truth about Rodney Hide. No Parliament I have to say needs to have a malicious fabricator but that is what Rodney Hide is. 
Kenneth Wang 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I think you should draw it to the member’s attention that this debate is about the 2004-05 supplementary estimates. It has nothing to do with leadership. I think this speech is totally out of order. 
Darren Hughes 
: I understand and respect the member’s sensitivity about the state of the ACT leadership but this debate is traditionally a wide-ranging debate. I am sure the Minister was well within the Standing Orders but we respect that party’s sensitivity at this time. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich) 
: I thank the member for his help. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: I know that the member has not been here long and that this is his first appropriation debate. He probably did not listen to his own leader’s speech which was very wide ranging. 
I have to say that I do not think this Parliament needs a malicious fabricator. Rodney Hide makes up figures he makes up stories and he is full of blatherskite. I do not think this Parliament will miss that at all. I am waiting to hear the National Party’s health policy. I suppose New Zealanders are as well. We get a lot of negative whingeing and moaning from National’s health spokesperson. He goes around New Zealand saying how it is all bad; how the whole health system is in crisis. Most people scratch their heads and say that when one looks at the patient satisfaction surveys one can see that 88 percent of patients think that the health system is very good indeed. However I thought that Dr Hutchison might in the near future like to give us some health policy. We have waited for 6 years and we are prepared to wait another 6 weeks or so. However I did get a little glimpse of what we are likely to get from the National Party’s health policy on television during Queen’s Birthday weekend when Dr Hutchison gave the first hint. He said that National’s health policy in relation to elective surgery was to bring back waiting lists. 
Hon Members 
: Oh! 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: Yes members heard me right. He said: “We’ll bring back waiting lists.” I was interested to hear a person from the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists say that putting people on waiting lists would not improve their health one way or the other. However we now know that part of the National Party’s health policy will be to bring back waiting lists. That is a complete turn-round from National’s policy which was clearly set out by Bill English on 16 September 1997. It was a policy that National set about to implement from 1998 and it was called the booking system. When we became the Government we looked at that policy and asked how it worked. We asked whether it was a good policy whether we should continue with it and whether we should try to improve it. We thought that it was an honest policy. It was one of the few that we got out of the National Party in the 1990s but it was an honest policy. 
The booking system told people whether they would get an operation when they would get an operation whether they were close to getting an operation or could expect to get one and whether they would not get one within the resources. That system was set up through a series of interventions that were made in the late 1990s. First of all Bill English said that we needed to get people off waiting lists and he said that the way to get them off waiting lists was first of all to just keep raising the sustainable threshold. That would get them off any waiting lists. Then by 1998 National started to implement that policy. So I can only assume that having implemented it they now think we will go back to a waiting list system where 96000 people waited and waited. They were the same people—they were not going on a list being seen and going off a list. They were the same people and some of them had waited for 12 years. Some had waited 8 or 10 years or whatever. Some of those people never went on a holiday because they were scared that a letter might come from a hospital saying that their name had been taken off the list and they would be offered an operation. Now we have a party that says it will go back to putting people on waiting lists—[ 
Interruption 
]—and David Carter thinks that is fantastic. I say that it is dishonest to tell people that by putting them on a list they might get an operation. A health organisation should be able to tell people what can be done and when it can be done within the resources it has. 
The other thing Paul Hutchison has taken to doing is going around New Zealand telling people how terrible everything is. He was in Tairawhiti just last week and he said that the number of people waiting for operations and the number of people getting operations in Tairawhiti was worse than it was in the past. Well I have to tell members that he made that up. I have the latest information from the Tairawhiti District Health Board and it shows that it is doing more operations than it was in the past. It is doing more operations this year than it did last year and people there are scratching their heads as to why he came to their place and said that in the media. We do not need that sort of dishonesty when it comes to the health system. Members should look at what is really going on. They will see that huge progress has been made by the many many doctors and nurses who work within our health system. 
Kenneth Wang said that our doctors and nurses are not overpaid. He is absolutely right. They would have been paid a whole heap less if we had not put money in this Budget to settle the biggest nurses’ pay claim this country has ever seen. Half a billion dollars of health money will go to increase the wages of nurses in New Zealand. Let me hear ACT deny that that is good expenditure of money. Over the last 3 years our doctors in our hospitals have had a 50 percent increase in their pay. Why did we do that? We cannot run a health system unless we have doctors nurses hospitals and facilities and we have to invest money in that. It does not happen by itself. We respect that investment. We want that investment. Finally we are starting to see that investment pay off in New Zealand. The rebuilding of a public health system takes money and time. We under-invested in health right throughout the 1990s. Only now have we got it to some state of equilibrium and 60 percent of that expenditure has gone into the wages and salaries of our health professionals in particular. 
We have heard a lot about the growth in numbers of bureaucrats. I have to tell members that more people have been employed in the health system but the growth in bureaucrats—which has been thrown around—has been 0.4 percent over that whole 6 years. Only 0.4 percent of that increase has been in so-called bureaucrats. Of course the bureaucrats are the booking clerks the people who ensure that people will have operations and the people who answer the telephones. They are the sort of people that National said it will get rid of. National said it would take that money and put it into health. Well a person will be lucky to get an extra ingrown toenail operation out of getting rid of the bureaucrats—as National calls them—in the health system. I am very proud of what we have done for health in our Budget and we intend to do more when we return to Government.