Clark DavidHon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): Madam Chair thank you for the call. It gives me great pleasure to rise and speak to the review and the achievements of this Government to date in terms of making sure that we are addressing the underfunding that we inherited in the health sector. We are boosting critical public services and as a Government we're determined to tackle the long-term problems and challenges we've inherited. We know that when we took Government we had kids living in cars we had hospitals with rot and mould in the walls and we had rivers so dirty they couldn't be swum in. We are determined to tackle these things. We're determined to take mental health seriously. The previous Government did nothing. They talked about the need to put some money in; they never actually appropriated money specifically for mental health.In this Budget that we're discussing now we picked off three big things that needed to be dealt with. The first was addressing the ageing infrastructure. Now we know that some of the hospitals had rot and mould in the walls—that's been well publicised. Of course many have seismic issues. In this Budget we put the biggest injection into capital spending in the health sector in over a decade. We put in $750 million. For many years the previous Government didn't put any in. They just expected district health boards (DHBs) off their balance sheets to try to deal with the infrastructure that they had and it's been getting worse year after year after year. But we believe in a public health system where every Kiwi can access healthcare not just those who have deep wallets. So we've been determined to get on with the mess we've inherited in that regard. It'll take many years and we are determined to make the investment that's needed to have a strong public health system. Budget 2018 kicked that process off.We also in the Budget put money aside to make sure that people could afford to go to their GP. We know that when we came into Government over half a million Kiwis were saying they couldn't afford to go to the GP in any given year—over half a million Kiwis couldn't afford to go to the GP. Now that's just not right. So we as a Government said we're going to do something to tackle this and we have put in place a scheme whereby people can go to visit the doctor for under 20 bucks—any doctor around the country that's registered in a regular practice—if they've got a community services card. Now that means it'll be on average $20 to $30 cheaper for those people to go to visit the doctor. But the important thing is—Angie Warren-Clark: Say that again.Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: —$20 to $30 dollars cheaper—that they will actually go to the doctor because we know that before they were choosing not to. They were getting sick and they were ending up in our hospitals but 540000 New Zealanders who didn't have that access before now have access to cheaper doctors visits—under $20—thanks to Budget 2018 which we're discussing now.It's also true that we extended free children's visits to under-14s. We made it able to be free for more kids to get to the doctor. We've extended access and accessibility for around 600000 Kiwis. Also in Budget 2018 we got real about a growing and ageing population. We put more money into DHBs than had been put in in a decade—$2.3 billion over the forecast period. This had been underfunded for so long. In Opposition we had a piece of work done by an independent economics agency that told us they had been underfunded to the tune of $2.3 billion—$2.3 billion—under the last Government. That was money required just to stand still with services. That was an estimate of what it would've cost just to stand still under the last Government.Of course some of the money we're putting in now is money to address the fact that healthcare costs a little bit more every year as we get more expensive treatments as we have more people going through. But some of it is to address that backlog of underspending on our health system from a Government that really didn't care about a public health system and was more focused on looking after the wealthy and making sure the private system flourished.So this Government is concerned about addressing those long-term problems that have accumulated over many years and as I said we're taking mental health seriously. In our first hundred days we launched the mental health and addiction inquiry and we'll be reporting back on that before the Budget. But in the meantime we put $200 million in this Budget into ring-fenced funding for DHBs to support existing services. We introduced the community services card initiative I've just discussed which means that people can access through their GP mental health services at an affordable rate and get into services. We've introduced nurses in schools to decile 4 schools—a proven policy. We have brought forward Piki which gives integrated therapies across the Wellington region to 18- to 24-year-olds. That's a pilot; we'll see more of that. We've put money into addiction beds in Auckland and also invested in Hillmorton mental health facilities. There's plenty more to come but we take mental health seriously. That's another problem that we're determined to tackle.