Lees-Galloway Iain: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Lees-Galloway Iain: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:671;Page:17472] 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North) 
: 
 There are New Zealanders out there who are saying this Government is out of touch. They are saying this Government is out of touch with what ordinary New Zealanders need and New Zealand’s health system is going backwards. The Government must be out of touch with ordinary New Zealanders because the Minister in the chair Tony Ryall the Minister of Health is completely out of touch with his own party’s stance on tobacco cessation and tobacco control in this country. He got up and said the Labour Government had been timid when it came to smoking cessation and trying to reduce the number of people in New Zealand who smoke. But it was his party the National Party that railed against everything that the Labour Government did when it was in office to curtail the number of people in New Zealand who were smoking. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: Once. 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY 
: It was not once; it was on the Smoke-free Environments Act it was on the increase on tobacco excise and it was on a whole range of measures right through the 9 years that the Labour Government was in charge. The National Party voted against every single one of those measures. 
Now because the Maori Party has managed to get one little thing out of its coalition deal with the National Government Tony Ryall suddenly turns round and says— 
Hon Annette King 
: That he’s in favour. 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY 
: —he is charge. He is in favour— 
Grant Robertson 
: Closing the gaps. 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY 
: He is closing the gaps; that is right. He has had his road to Damascus moment. He has turned round and said the National Government is interested in smoking cessation. We know the truth; New Zealanders know the truth. If the Maori Party was not involved—and I have to give this to the Maori Party—National would be doing more to make sure that the tobacco companies had their way and more people would be taking up smoking. That is the truth about this Government. 
I tell members that what people are really worried about is the cost of living. As the cost of living continues to go up as this Government adds GST to people’s food bills and lets car registration and ACC costs go up people are becoming more and more worried about the cost of living. The reason they are so concerned about the cost of going to see the doctor is that that has gone up under this Government as well. The cost of seeing the doctor is going up and what is really appalling is the outrageous cost of going to see the doctor after hours. People in Auckland and Wellington are being charged up to $100 for after-hours care. In Queenstown it can be as high as $139 just to go and see the doctor. For children under 5 who are supposed to have free access to primary care in this country the cost can be as much as $102 if they happen to live in Queenstown. 
It is an outrage that the National Government has let those costs skyrocket and made it very much harder for hard-working Kiwi families to get to the doctor or to get their kids to the doctor. Sometimes if we are adults we can wait and we do not have to go to the doctor after hours but when it is our children—when it is a 2-year-old a 3-year-old or a 4-year-old—we want to get them straight to the doctor. We want to get them dealt with straight away because it can be a very scary time for parents when children are ill their temperature is going up and they are showing signs that something could be seriously wrong. If we are adults we can handle that and deal with it. We might take an aspirin and go to see the doctor on Monday. But we never ever want to do that with our children and that is why the Government should be doing more about the cost of primary care. It should be rolling up its sleeves and doing something for Kiwi families. It should be making sure that there are no barriers to access to primary care because of its cost which this Government has allowed to explode. 
The Minister got up and crowed about the $750 million extra that the Government provided in its first year and the $512 million extra in its second year. Well $750 million was simply a continuation of the funding track that the Labour Government had put in place and $512 million was actually the first cut because the Government needed $750 million just to tread water basically—just to maintain current services. The first cut was $512 million and the Government is forecasting more and more cuts over the years to come. That will mean there will be more and more cuts to front-line services: the kind of cuts we have already seen to mental health to diabetes clinics to primary care; the cuts that we are seeing right across the country. I say to the Minister in the chair that people are feeling the effect of that and it is real to people. 
This is what ordinary Kiwis are crying out for: they want their basic services to be retained. That is not what this Government is delivering. It is all about smoke and mirrors. It is all about pretend targets that the Minister makes up with no substance behind them whatsoever. He says there are 500 extra doctors a thousand extra nurses and a thousand fewer administrators. I ask where the evidence is. He will not answer the Official Information Act requests that our spokesperson has put in. He will not put it on paper. 
Report noted.