Chadwick Steve: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Chadwick Steve: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:615;Page:10848] 
STEVE CHADWICK (Labour—Rotorua) 
: 
 I rise to address—more moderately perhaps—a deep concern we in Government felt today as the Leader of the Opposition rose to his full height and prescribed the kiss of death. He is the “Dr Death” of the Opposition. It is death to ideas. We have had one policy position so far which is about assimilation—one size fits all. It does not work. It did not work in the past and there is no leverage in going back to those failed policies of the past. They are the kiss of death to inspiration for New Zealanders. It is back to the future and it is certainly a kiss of death from “Dr Death” to leadership to a sense of nationhood and to an overall sense of fairness. The doctor’s prescription is one that will develop a fearful weakened and divided New Zealand. 
What are we witnessing in the House today? This is not Orewa with the welcoming audience that adored what the Opposition speaker was saying. We are watching the right cut each other’s throats sucking the lifeblood of that 10 percent of anxious and ill-informed New Zealand. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: Ninety percent. 
STEVE CHADWICK 
: Then what is the right going to do with them? Once they have rarked them up they will just desert them. We witnessed that tonight on the  
Holmes 
 push poll Mr Shirley. It made $34000 for the coffers and that shows us that the Opposition has only one way to run on empty and that is to go downhill and it is going downhill really fast. 
A great mentor of mine and also of Georgina te Heuheu Rev. Manu Bennett said: “Let’s build our dreams today and make our plans tomorrow.” I came to Parliament to be a bridge-builder and I have to say that the saddest thing that happened to me personally this year was to look at the way Georgina te Heuheu my friend and the only Maori in the Opposition was so expediently dumped by her leader to gain leverage in the polls. It worked but it did not appeal to the average fair-minded New Zealander. It offended womanhood the family of te Heuheu the tribe of Tuwharetoa and the people of our region and they will speak at the next election. I hope the honourable member stays in the Opposition and embarrasses it for its expedient dismissal of the only Maori voice it had. 
But I want to move to the good news on health. I am a midwife mother and—proudly in November—a grandmother. I understand the fabric of the average family better than Dr Brash who rabbits on about the two-parent paradigm. When is he going to come into the real world? I have delivered 5000 babies—not all to two parents actively there at the birth but to family members ready to support and help that child have a fair and reasonable life. That was the most old-fashioned paradigm I have ever heard. 
But we in this Government know that healthy mothers make healthy families and that is why the Opposition laughed at the Families Commission’s focus this year on positive parenting. Why would anyone laugh at putting education funding into becoming a positive parent and knowing how to look after one’s child? No one can carp at the $7 million extra that has gone into Plunket this year. I congratulate our friends in Government on their initiative in getting the Minister’s support for that help to families. 
The Opposition also dismissed parental leave. I can remember Judith Collins standing up and wiping the floor with paid parental leave. But 14000 parents in New Zealand have already accessed paid parental leave and their children will be better for it. National was going to have none of it. This Minister will also be extending breast screening which is very very important to the women of New Zealand. But Opposition members would not know about women’s policy. They do not want a spokesperson on women’s affairs any more. Their leader has already shown that women are not important. He just flicks them when they are not useful to him in the polls. 
That Opposition would not increase childcare subsidies. Those members believe that mums should be at home and not contributing to the economy by choice. Our leader talked about the 30 percent gap that can be filled by women when they re-enter the workforce. Well we cannot enter the workforce without adequate access to childcare subsidies. 
We also believe in healthy housing. We know what the Opposition did to affordable housing. But when will the Opposition realise that health is more than waiting lists? After an incredibly positive financial review of the Auckland District Health Board I noticed that all that Dr Lynda Scott could talk to reporters about was waiting lists. Health is not about waiting lists alone but let me get the record right for  
Hansard 
. This Government has delivered 158000 operations which is 6000 more than were delivered by members opposite when they were in Government. Waiting lists have shrunk from 39000 to 26500 and there are fewer people waiting longer than 6 months. 
I want to get back to Dr Brash’s stance that primary health organisations are racially funded. The Minister has pointed out already that they are based on the needs of the community set by democratically elected members to the board. Those members decide what they want. Each board sets its needs and in our district the board has decided that Maori health needs are its highest priority and I am really proud of it for that. 
I also think that we have the health framework for the future—we know that in this Government. The chair of Waitemata District Health Board Kay McKelvie told us: “We are moving away to the survival of the patient compared to that of the financial survival of the organisation.” District health board deficits are reducing and capital planning is being approved on a regional approach—signed off by the ministry in Wellington—to make sure that those bricks-and-mortar decisions meet the needs of the regions in the future. We are seeing huge funding going into our region. 
The three Auckland district health boards came before us and it was exciting. They talked about regionalisation and collaboration not about mergers. But one can sense National’s policy on health which talks about too many district health boards. Well the chairs of those district health boards told us that they were working together on collaborative initiatives on information technology the numbers of managers in health cross-boundary flows and new initiatives based on reducing chronic disease. They are working on developing plans to face those things. 
I say to the Opposition—and this is not a policy position I have heard from Dr Lynda Scott—that primary health organisations are certainly here to stay. Seventy percent of New Zealanders are enrolled now $47 million more is going into primary health organisations this year—and Dr Brash says they are racially funded. That is absolute rubbish. Funding is based on need compared with the nasty grubby politicisation of struggling primary health organisations like Drury which had only 5 percent of high – health-needs clients. Opposition MPs politicised it rather than working with the board to find a solution—as another primary health organisation did with the Waitemata board. 
 I find the whole rhetoric of the Opposition very very sad. Dr Brash needs to know that primary health organisations will continue to be funded on the basis of need. The academic Tom Rochford said: “How can a man born and bred in privilege whose working life is spent at the centre of the Crown’s machinery of power accuse the poorest and the most powerless people in New Zealand of having too much privilege?” I find that simply appalling. 
Our Minister for Small Business has looked at non-governmental organisations and said that we need to sharpen up accountability. We would all accept that that would be a good piece of work to be done this year. 
I just want to finish by saying that in this year alone $1.5 billion has been spent on mainstream Maori health. That is 14.7 percent compared to the 15.4 percent of the population that is Maori. Only 2 percent of the total health budget is being spent on Maori-targeted programmes. How can they say that we are not meeting those needs? We will ignore that demographic brown bulge in the future at our peril.