Chadwick Steve: Financial Review Debate 
Chadwick Steve: Financial Review Debate 
[Volume:607;Page:4168] 
STEVE CHADWICK (NZ Labour—Rotorua) 
: 
 I am very proud to speak on this bill and to follow on from the Hon Ruth Dyson who really set the scene about what this Government in this term is all about. 
Rodney Hide 
: She’s a scene stealer. 
STEVE CHADWICK 
: Yes she certainly was when she reiterated statements such as “We are building on a very strong foundation for growth.” That is exactly what the country understands. We are also building up a public service that had been decimated in the previous 9 years. The depth of strength and reliability in the Government service simply was not there when we came in. We will see infrastructure sustainability built up in the three terms for which we are secure in this Government. We have really positive programmes that we are going to move on and this appropriation bill will support the Budget that will set targets for us for the next year. 
One of the interesting things we are seeing is some cross-sectoral programmes beginning to bite. That is the all-of-Government approach we have talked about. A programme is opening in Rotorua that focuses on truancy. In the previous 9 years the Government did not have a problem with truancy. It just flicked the truants off the books and let them go home. We are prepared to do something about it and we have a cross-sectoral group in our community that reflects the Police the Department of Corrections the Ministry of Education the Ministry of Health and the Department of Child Youth and Family Services. They are all working together on this. The police have taken a coordination role and we are out there now working with the principals of all the schools to work with the truants who we know are in our community and we all know what idle hands get up to. 
They are the sorts of targets we are getting into this year and that will be seen in the Budget support. There will be support for the family violence strategy. When we put out Te Rito this last term people said “more words”. Well mark my words this year there will be Budget appropriations that go towards reinforcing that strategy then we will see the results that come—not the Budget cuts that we had in the past that we have since had to increase incrementally appropriation bill after Budget round and Budget round. 
The other thing we are doing that the Opposition cannot stand is that we have a whole raft of proposals about keeping people well. One proposal that I am proud to mention today is the Smoke-free Environments (Enhanced Protection) Amendment Bill that I am very proud to sponsor in this House. Opposition members can carp on about waiting lists but let me tell them that the deficits of the district health boards are less than what this Government spends on smoking-related disorders in hospitals every year. If we could eliminate smoking-related conditions we would not have a deficit and we would be able to treat people on waiting lists. If I hear Opposition members vote against that bill then they may not talk about deficits in district health boards again because they were not prepared to do anything about keeping people well so that we could reduce waiting times and that is what we said we would do. 
So we are putting in that money and we have the strategy and the pathway. It is a 10-year pathway and the Opposition cannot bear it. Opposition members cannot bear the whole strategy that is going into health. We put in money for a meningococcal vaccine. Members opposite may laugh about that but in this world we are about to face a pandemic potential from severe acute respiratory disease. We need to resource our ministry to be able to respond according to world health directives and we will. We can be proud of the fact that we have a strategy to respond to such a high level concern. That sort of sustainable planning in health was not done by members opposite for 9 years and that is why we are tidying that up. 
I also remind the Opposition that we now have 147 elected members around the country working on boards and putting community perspectives into boards about how they will utilise their health dollars. We have a bit of democracy coming through. If members go out into the communities to talk to people they will find that communities like that. We are also tidying things up through for example the Health (Screening Programmes) Amendment Bill. It is a tidy-up after the absolute mess of cervical screening and cancer registry maintenance in this country. This appropriation bill allows us to tidy up those things and to put money towards them. 
I also want to talk about primary health development. In our community we now have three primary health organisations set up that will give us 100 percent cover for people in our community to enable them to have low-access cost when seeing their general practitioner. It is about keeping people well and then being able to get on with managing waiting lists and that is what this Government is all about. In fact by 1 April this year there will be 37 primary health-care organisations in this country covering 1.4 million people. What will we see from that? We will see low costs when visiting a general practitioner. Every mother child and elderly person in this country will get to see his or her doctor at a much-reduced charge from what they are paying now. In fact after July—and the appropriation bill will enable this with budgeting—people over 65 years of age will see their doctor for free. No one in the Opposition can argue with that. We are keeping people well and we are getting people back on their feet. We are focusing on wellness health sports recreation and getting people going again and that will save us an enormous amount of money. 
I want to go back again today to the Smoke-free Environments (Enhanced Protection) Amendment Bill just to say that we should remember that there are 380 deaths every year from smoking-related disorders. That is quite sobering. In our health services we are spending at least $22.5 billion a year on smoking-related disorders and it is not only at the hospital level of service. That is an absolutely huge amount and it is money that we will save as a result of that bill. 
There is one other thing in health that this Government got on and did and it never occurred to members opposite. I come from Rotorua and we have a level of concern at the moment about the wellness and the state of our lakes which are part of our tourist icon. We are very concerned about them and we need to ensure that we are doing something about it. This Government has put in money to put in sewerage schemes. For small poor communities like the community at Mourea that is a very big public health contribution to the wellness of that community and as well the wellness of our environment and our lakes which are incredibly important to us. New Zealand makes $9.7 billion a year out of tourism. If we do not environmentally sustain our environment that the tourists pour into this country to see then we will be the poorer for it. 
Talking of rubbish I also want to say—and I am not talking rubbish—that the waste management strategy that this Government committed to is starting to have an effect around the country. Yesterday I opened a recycling transfer station in Rotorua and that is our contribution to reducing the solid waste going to our tips. We need to reduce that waste so that we are protecting our environment. That is another contribution that this Government is putting forward to prevent the environmental degradation of New Zealand which means so much to us as a tourism icon. 
I am really proud to speak on this bill and overall I am proud to be part of this Government which has a strategy and a long-term vision for leveraging up the economic growth of this country.