Collins Judith: Estimates Debate —  
Collins Judith: Estimates Debate —  
[Volume:610;Page:7197] 
JUDITH COLLINS (NZ National—Clevedon) 
: 
 I rise to speak in relation to the health estimates. First I would like to thank one of the previous speakers Steve Chadwick for the very nice comments she made about a previous speech I had given in relation to the health system. I would also like to follow on from the comments of my colleague Dr Lynda Scott and to thank her for the great contribution she has made yet again tonight. 
The Counties Manukau District Health Board covers an area that is of particular interest to me because my electorate of Clevedon is in fact within the board’s area. It has been a real concern when I have been working in the electorate to see how badly off the Counties Manukau District Health Board is compared with any other district health board or area. The last time I checked the district health board had still not signed off its plan for the financial year that has just finished. One wonders what is going to happen with the next one—it is as bad as that. The board is severely underfunded and continues to be so despite the fact that there is an increase in the health spend. That is because so much money is going on things that it should not be going on. 
I will have a look at some of the actual statistics for the Counties Manukau District Health Board area and compare them with those of other areas. I have been to visit the neonatal unit at Middlemore Hospital which services the board’s area. Middlemore Hospital has the third-highest number of births in Australasia for its catchment area. In 2000 there were 6250 births in the area but there were only 20 neonatal beds. Compare that to Dunedin with 1751 births and 16 neonatal beds. That is an indication of the shortfall in the Counties-Manukau area. What is happening is that these very sick little babies and their parents mostly the mothers are being flown all over the country in order to have any sort of care. This is totally unacceptable. I was heartened to hear that under the plans of the Counties Manukau District Health Board a new neonatal ward is being built that will be bigger. However it will not have the 40 beds that are needed; it will have only 29 beds. That number of beds will be insufficient. It is absolutely ridiculous to build a new health unit that we know already will not be big enough. 
One of my sisters worked in the neonatal ward at Waikato Hospital for close on 25 years so I have some knowledge of this area having visited there many times and seen the work and the dedication of the staff and the doctors in these units. They are dealing with people at the most stressful time of their lives—when they have very very sick babies. The last thing the staff need to be doing is trying to find a room somewhere to put an incubator or sending people off in helicopters all over the country away from their families and support. In many cases the mother cannot even feed or express milk for her baby because she has to be in another part of the country from her baby. It is a dreadful situation. It is Third World. I heard the speaker from the Greens talk about our becoming effectively a subsidiary of Australia. Well I am sure that Australia does not treat its women and its babies like this. When National is back in power in 2005 we will certainly stop that. We have a commitment to provide superior health-care rather than provide politically correct funding based on race rather than need. 
That brings me again to the Counties Manukau District Health Board. Two weeks ago I received some flowers from a grateful constituent who wanted to thank me because he said I had got him knee surgery. This man had been referred at the end of 1999 for a knee operation. He was clearly in need of it. He had it done only this year and only after I had spent months and months nagging the Minister and nagging the Counties Manukau District Health Board to for goodness’ sake let this man be able to walk again. He has paid his taxes all his life he has been a good contributor to society yet he received nothing until his MP got on to this issue for him. Frankly for an elderly person who is not getting any younger to spend 4 years waiting in pain is simply not good enough. 
The Minister knows that I am not someone who makes silly comments—nor do other National Party members—that we should pour more and more funding into the health service. We all know that it can become a huge black hole in terms of the Budget and that no matter what we can never ever achieve everybody’s wants and needs. But the fact is we must do far better in the use we make of our health money. 
We certainly cannot afford to have policies like the ones affecting the people of Drury in my colleague Dr Paul Hutchison’s electorate of Port Waikato. Drury is all of a kilometre away from my own electorate. The doctors in Drury are looking at closing. They are very badly off because of the race-based funding policy. No doubt the Minister did not intend that result but my having said that she has not done anything about it. She has not done anything to help those doctors 40 percent of whose patients come from Papakura in my electorate and have been travelling the 1 kilometre down the road to Drury to go to the doctor of their choice. Now they are being told that if they go to a doctor in Papakura where it has been decided special funding will apply they will pay only $8 a visit. If they go down the road to their own doctor in Drury whom they have been going to often for 15 years they will pay the full rate of $48 a visit. 
These people often like many others do not have money to throw around. They are having to leave their doctor of choice to leave the continuity of care that they have enjoyed to leave the comfort of knowing their doctor very well of being able to tell him or her their problems and of being able to discuss their family’s health with him or her. They now have to go to a different general practitioner at a different health centre which will not necessarily be able to cope and will not necessarily suit their needs. This is all because of preferential funding based on the position of the surgery not on where the patient lives and because of the race-based funding that now occurs. It does nothing for the people of Drury or for the 40 percent of those doctors’ patients who happen to live in Papakura. 
It also does nothing for the people at the other end of my electorate in Howick who find that they are not a favoured group of people. The majority of them happen to be elderly and to be Pakeha New Zealanders. They feel that they are now left out of the funding because they are not Pacific Islanders or Maori. They are people who have paid their taxes and been good New Zealand citizens and they deserve to be treated as well as anyone else. I look at this from the position of being a mother of a child who has Pacific Island heritage and a wife of a Samoan. It shocks me that our country is being divided on the basis of race. People are being asked and told—in fact it is demanded of them—that they choose what race they are when they are often of many different races because that is the nature of New Zealand today. We are a people of many races and ethnic backgrounds. It is appalling to see health funding dollars being wasted on race-based policies that have nothing to do with need that presume that someone of a certain race therefore has a health need or that presume that people of a certain race therefore do not have a health need. That is wrong. What about the people who happen to be Chinese English or whatever and who happen to have a need? They are being left out of this equation. 
What does this policy say to the people who need health care who happen to be Maori or happen to be of Pacific Island heritage? It says to them that they are needy because of their race and that is wrong. It is insulting to people. It is absolutely wrong that people are not being credited with being able to make their own choices. If this policy continues we will end up with a divided system and a divided country. Everything that I see happening in this area is going to contribute to that. I am sure that the Minister does not really wish to have all these ramifications but the fact is that is what is happening.