Hutchison Paul: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations  and State Enterprises — In Committee 
Hutchison Paul: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations  and State Enterprises — In Committee 
[Volume:626;Page:21308] 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 A few speakers ago we heard the member for Rotorua Steve Chadwick say that one of the achievements of this Labour Government was that it had given certainty. I say: “Tell that to the 25000 patients taken off the waiting lists in 2003 by the Minister of Health Annette King and sent to a life of absolute uncertainty.” And I also say: “Tell that to the Auckland District Health Board.” which in this financial review is recorded as having a deficit of $44.7 million and there is a prediction that by 2004-05 it will be $83 million. 
The Minister of Health came to the select committee and said that she did not believe that. She said that the Minister of Finance and she had got together and they just did not accept that there would be a $100 million deficit by the end of the year. But let us look at the letters the Minister of Finance sent to the Hon Annette King in 2003 in which he stated: “It will be important that the additional funding leads to increases in outputs and is not absorbed by cost increases. My officials will be working with the ministry to put in place appropriate accountability and monitoring measures to address this issue. … Output activity data continues to support our shared concern about productivity in the health sector. Analysis of Ministry of Health data suggests that despite significant revenue increases”—significant amounting to about $3 billion—“volumes in the sector are static if not declining.” 
So when the member for Rotorua talks about certainty when she just happens to forget that 25000 patients were culled from the waiting lists to spend the rest of their time in uncertainty—and then again on 1 April this year at the Counties Manukau District Health Board another 2000 were taken off the waiting list to live a life of uncertainty—[ 
Interruption 
] We hear Moana Mackey the pretender for East Coast and what happened at the Tairawhiti District Health Board? It took 596 patients who had been waiting longer than 6 months for a first specialist assessment to get to square one and send them back to their general practitioners. What does the Minister say? She says they will be monitored. 
When I spoke to one of the patients Peggy Griffiths who had been thrown off the waiting list at the Counties Manukau District Health Board she told me that no one had said how and when she would be monitored. The Minister of Health will say that she is now back on the waiting list. It took a huge amount of effort by me to bring it to the attention of this House and suddenly and mysteriously Peggy Griffiths is back on the waiting list—and the Minister of Health will claim credit for that! First she cuts people off waiting lists causes the huge disappointment and uncertainty to people of just not knowing what was going on— 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Have you got more? 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON 
: Yes there are eight or nine. I have a little file. Members can imagine that every time I bring those people up they will suddenly and mysteriously be put back on those waiting lists! 
While we are talking about the Auckland District Health Board it will be helpful to say just what a professor of surgery had to say about this Minister’s interpretation of the waiting lists: “So now patients are culled upfront and those accepted for surgery are still required to wait just like the old-day waiting list. A double jeopardy now exists. The elective surgical booking system has degenerated into the elective surgical blocking system. The Ministry of Health has some explaining to do itself. Blaming health boards is a patent distraction ploy.” It is one of the things this Minister of Health has become an absolute mistress of: perpetrating the patent distraction ploy. She is an absolute mistress of that particular performance. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: That’s a career option. 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON 
: There is a career option. I shall talk about some of the other things that have plagued the Auckland District Health Board with its predicted deficit of $83 million when the Minister said there would be no deficit.