Hutchison Paul: General Debate 
Hutchison Paul: General Debate 
[Volume:624;Page:19242] 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 What an extraordinary amount of bluster from a former history lecturer who purports to be a finance Minister. He is a man who taxes and spends. There have been over 30 new taxes in 5 short years under this Government. The final tax take in 1999 was $32 billion and 5 years later it was $42 billion yet the average take-home pay in New Zealand after tax has not increased one iota. 
I want to talk about a very important health problem. When the Chief Executive of Pharmac Mr Wayne McNee phoned the Minister of Health on 28 February and told her there was a problem with the flu vaccine she should have immediately found out what the problem was and told the New Zealand public. She should have asked the key relevant questions. But what did the Hon Annette King do? 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Nothing. 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON 
: She did absolutely nothing. She sat on the problem for over a week and told the House on 7 March that she still did not know what the problem was. 
Yet for months the Ministry of Health had been warning that an influenza pandemic in New Zealand would be very serious. It would cause up to 3700 deaths it would involve more than 20000 hospitalisations and it would result in the need for over 1 million consultations. Surely the Minister of Health would have realised the importance of that phone call from Wayne McNee on 28 February but she did not. 
The ministry also tells us that the flu vaccine halves hospital admissions and reduces death rates by up to 70 percent in high-risk patients. With all those warnings it is quite clear what the Minister of Health should have done on 28 February when she was first told by Mr Wayne McNee that there was a problem with the flu vaccine. Even the Prime Minister told us in this House yesterday that the Minister knew of the issues on 28 February. The Minister should have asked the fundamental questions as to why there was a delay in the vaccine—a vaccine that over 700000 people were expecting by the beginning of March. 
As far as we can tell Mrs King just did not ask the basic questions. Did she forget was she distracted or was there a lack of competence by this health Minister? I think so! Despite the potential for one of the most significant public health crises in New Zealand health Minister Annette King simply did not ask the relevant questions. 
What was she doing? She was probably deciding on her next move in expanding the biggest and most complex bureaucracy that the New Zealand health system has ever seen. That is the legacy of this health Minister and this Labour Government. She favours theNational Health Service model in the UK. But that is the third biggest bureaucracy in the world—1.4 million people second only to the Chinese Red Army and the Indian railways. That is the way the Labour Party wants the New Zealand health system to go. That would be a disaster because undoubtedly she has created the biggest and most inefficient health system in the history of New Zealand. 
While Mrs King has been so distracted with creating this huge and inefficient health bureaucracy she did not have the time to concentrate and to ask questions of her officials when they told her on 28 February there was a potential major public health crisis affecting 700000 people. The Minister waited for a whole week. She denied the reality of what was happening. It was not until Friday 11 March when I suggested there was a significant public health problem that she started downplaying it.