O'Connor SimonSIMON O'CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Firstly Mr Deputy Speaker happy birthday to you while I get this opportunity. Look I am absolutely delighted to take a call in this urgent debate. Echoing in many ways what the Minister himself said this is a marvellous opportunity a silver lining if you will on a dark cloud but a silver lining to actually highlight what is really good in this health sector.But let me firstly address the accusations if you will that have been put forward. We have to start by absolutely acknowledging upfront that there has been an error within the Ministry of Health in how it has allocated the increased spending on health the increased spending into the district health boards (DHBs). The Opposition is making a lot that somehow this is a cut this is a huge disaster the DHBs will fall over—a Chicken Little moment. It actually makes very little sense at all. It is a mistake absolutely and I do not think any of us step away from that but mistakes must always be put into context and given a relative proportionate element. The first point we have to make of course is acknowledging that mistakes do happen. It is the nature of being human. I know that the Opposition has been crowing a lot around the figures being misunderstood. I just have to remind the Labour Party of course that I think in recent years it put out a baby start" or a "best start" programme which it trumpeted in the media along with its leader at the time—I cannot remember which one it was—but of course it got all its figures wrong. Within a couple of days it was exposed that it had not allocated that correctly. That goes through a whole lot of other things. In fact I would be fascinated to see the costing that the Green Party has put forward around refugees today—fanciful thinking. So there is little bit of richness in some of the commentary coming forward from the Opposition that somehow mistakes do not happen.But this mistake is around how an increase in funding has been allocated to the DHBs. So we have to start with what is a record spend in the New Zealand health sector of around $16.8 billion—a record spend in New Zealand's healthcare of $16.8 billion; the largest spend ever. We saw in the recent Budget an $888 million overall increase. As part of that increase there is about $430 million $440 million that has gone into DHBs and that is actually quite important. The DHBs have been calling for more and more money and that too makes perfect sense. For those of us fully engaged in the health sector it is never a surprise—never a surprise—that more money is needed. I say it somewhat off the cuff and quickly when I am out and about speaking publicly but actually you could double the health budget tomorrow and we would still have people who would want more money.So DHBs always want more and this Government is reacting as best it can. And really importantly too because I am hearing it coming from the Opposition it is the DHBs that in turn pass the funding on and through into their communities. So decisions around primary care around mental health those decisions are made by the DHBs. I think it is really important to spend.We heard from New Zealand First a few moments ago talking about how much the Government puts directly into primary healthcare. Very few dollars in effect are put directly by the Crown into "GP land" if you will because it is done through the DHBs. So what we are seeing in this Budget is $439 million extra for our DHBs—$439 million. In all this debate today and what we have read in the media in recent days not one cent not one dime—granted if we were American—not one dollar has been taken away from that $439 million increase to DHBs.What has happened—what has happened—is that in the apportionment that the Ministry of Health was doing it has done that incorrectly. As I said at the start that is a mistake. It should not have happened. We do not want that to happen. In fact no one in this Parliament would want that to happen. But it does not take away from the fact that the DHBs are still getting an increase in their funding. In fact this error this mistake is less than even 0.3 percent I think of a DHB's total budget. And really importantly too while they are working on their budgets from 1 July they have not received this apportionment yet. In other words there is nothing that needs to be taken back. This is an accounting issue effectively. This is something to be dealt with on paper.What it does highlight too though and no member of this House so far has touched on it is the complexity of the population-based funding model that we have. It is a funding model that has been around for almost I think 20 years. For those who do not fully understand it it is the model that is used to work out exactly how much money should be allocated to each DHB. I am not going to go through all its iterations but everything from the demographics of a community its geographic spread whether or not its hospital has tertiary services—by that I mean cardiac surgery neurosurgery and so forth—apportionments are made.Importantly a number of people do—and we hear it in the select committee all the time that the funding model should be reviewed. There are issues within it. But really importantly and again we did not hear it from the Opposition today no one has come back with a viable alternative. Time and time again when DHB officials are in front of us they say: "Yep in many ways we'd like to see it adjusted in different ways but we see it as a good operating model." But it is a complicated model. It will be interesting to hear from perhaps former Ministers of Health who may or may not be in the Chamber around the complexity of that system and in some ways why we end up sometimes with mistakes like this. It has been a mistake which the ministry has acknowledged. They are setting up I believe Deloitte to do an audit to understand how this came about and how to stop it again.But I come back to my initial point. Not one cent not one dollar is being taken away from the DHBs. This is a Budget whereby we have just had a $439 million increase to the DHBs. What has to happen now is that the DHBs and the Ministry of Health have to go back and readjust their spreadsheets and plan from there.We have also heard throughout this debate effectively a lot of personal attacks. I think that begins to belie the fact that this particular issue has just been a launch pad for sort of playing the man and not the ball and I think that is completely and totally inappropriate. I think attacks on the Minister are completely unhelpful. It is not to try to give counsel to the Opposition but if you cannot actually play the ball then playing the man shows great weakness.The other two are this continuing claim—and again it is why I am delighted to take a call today—that we are not increasing funding. Well again that is demonstrably false—demonstrably; we are not going to get into the semantics to the Hon Scott Simpson. That is demonstrably false. The other is this constant claim from the Opposition in trying to link this accounting mistake to some indication that the sector is being underfunded. Last week I believe according to the Opposition—Labour and the Greens in particular—we were underfunding by something like $1.7 billion. This week I hear it is up to $2.5 billion. Next week I am waiting for it to be at $5 billion. The fascinating thing—and I have explained it to the House before in the health area—is we continue to increase the funding. The Opposition understandably has its wish list of what it believes should be funded what it wants to be funded and in its utopia what it feels is appropriate.I have often put down the challenge—I am not sure why the Opposition stops at $2.3 billion or $2.5 billion or $1.7 billion—why not say it is $15 billion underspending just to make things sort of fanciful. Again it is not actually based on much fact and I suppose that is where it all comes back to this debate today. In fact there is not a lot of substance to the wider elements of the debate. Yes a mistake was made but actually it has no material impact on the increase of funding that has been put into the DHBs.I thank all of those who now are clearly working in the DHBs and the Ministry of Health to tidy this up. Fundamentally the same services that were delivered last week that were delivered yesterday and delivered today and will be delivered in the future are going to be delivered and will be delivered—announced on the back of an enormous array of positive changes that the Government has brought in. I am conscious I have got only about a minute left.We often hear claims from the Opposition around mental health and wanting inquiries. That is all very well and good to talk about. This Government is about more than talk. It has invested over $224 million into mental health. The Opposition talks about supporting the disability sector. Well the Hon Nicky Wagner has put in a substantial amount of money through this Budget to support the disability sector.We get calls from time to time to increase funding to Pharmac. We have done that to the tune of something like $60 million which has now been able to fund a whole range of treatments from the likes of Keytruda or Pembrolizumab right through I should say to retrovirals for HIV and hepatitis C.This is a Government that is now double-crewing ambulances—double-crewing ambulances. This is something we heard from the rural sector in particular. We are doing that. We were told that we need to have more funding for doctors and nurses in hospitals. We are delivering on that and we have delivered on that. There has been an enormous amount of positive work that this Government has led and is continuing to lead in the health sector. As someone who is out in that sector day after day I say the feedback is positive but there are also the challenges too and the Government is happy to engage those. Thank you."