Roy Heather: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers Questions to Members 
Roy Heather: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers Questions to Members 
[Volume:620;Page:15873] 
4.  
HEATHER ROY (ACT) 
 to the  
Minister of Health 
: Following her answer to written question No. 12986 (2004) in relation to elective surgery how many people in the booking system were transferred to the category of GP Care in the year ended June 2004? 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister of Health) 
: 
 As I advised the member in my written answer to question No. 12986 (2004) the information can be obtained publicly through the national booking reporting system administered by the New Zealand Health Information Service. According to the New Zealand Health Information Service 5103 patients were referred to their general practitioners in the year ended June 2004. 
Heather Roy 
: Given that there were 62581 persons on all residual lists in June 1999 given that the Minister has already admitted that there were well over 56000 patients in the Booked / Given Certainty and Active Review categories alone in June 2004 and given that she has now admitted that another 5103 exited to the final category GP Care when will she admit that the equivalent waiting lists have gone up under her stewardship—yes or no Minister? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: No. The member cannot add up. Even if one were to add all those figures together the total comes to something like 61000. She has the latest figure—June 1999—for how many were on the waiting list but she chose to use something else. I gave her December figures; she chose to use June figures which show something like 72000. When one adds them up one finds there are still fewer. However in the past we did not count those patients who went back to their general practitioners. 
Steve Chadwick 
: Did the waiting lists of the 1990s—which sat at 72318 in December 1999 when we became the Government—include people who were returned to their general practitioners; if so was this information publicly available? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: No it did not include those people and the public had no idea whatsoever as to how many people were sent back to their general practitioners. This information has been collected since 2001 only under this Government and we are determined to make the true figures available. 
Judith Collins 
: Does she stand by her statement: “The buck stops with me.”; if so what responsibility does she take for the 346 patients under the Counties Manukau District Health Board who were removed from the waiting list for orthopaedic surgery and returned to their general practitioners in the 2003-04 financial year? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: The buck certainly stops with me; $10 billion worth of bucks have stopped with this Minister. Since I have been Minister $10 billion has gone into the health sector up from $6 billion under a National Government. I tell that member that it is this Government that has undertaken to double the number of hip and knee replacement operations in New Zealand. Under a National Government we were doing 1.2 operations per 1000 head of population. We will soon be doing 2.4—$70 million worth of expenditure. That is what we have done about it. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: If the 1999-2000 publicly funded operations figure is 160000 and the 2002-03 figure is 157000 which is down 1.2 percent why should we believe any of the flimflam we have just heard from the Minister? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: I am happy to table in the House the latest figures for operations in New Zealand which show an increase over 2002-03. I will table those when the question finishes. 
Heather Roy 
: How does the Minister reconcile her answers to my written questions the first of which told me that the information is publicly available when it clearly is not and the second of which in response to a question about what statistics are kept stated that there is no national data collection; when will she stop evading my questions and tell New Zealanders the real story about waiting lists? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: This Government tells the real story about waiting lists every day of the week. I cannot be held responsible for a member who not only cannot read figures but also constantly makes mistakes. The information is publicly available but I cannot— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: When the member asks a question she cannot shout out the whole time the answer is being given. The member should at least allow the Minister to answer; the member can then come in at that point. I do not want to stop interjections altogether but the member was not being reasonable. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: The next point I would like to make is that this Minister and the Ministry of Health are not responsible for being the ACT research unit when the information is publicly available. ACT members want the Ministry of Health—they want to use the bureaucracy—to hunt out information they can get publicly. I say to them that they should use Peter McCardle because he is there to do that. He picks up two salaries—one from the district health board and one from ACT. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The Government was hoping that there would be an intelligent supplementary question on this issue. I indicate to the House that if Dr Hutchison wanted leave to ask a supplementary question we would not oppose it. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The Minister is being too cute for his own comfort. 
Judith Collins 
: I seek leave of the House to table a letter from the Counties Manukau District Health Board stating the numbers of people removed from the surgery waiting list. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Heather Roy 
: I seek leave of the House to table a copy of web pages from the New Zealand Health Information Service website which the Minister referred me to and which eventually took me back to the elective services part of the Ministry of Health website. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.