Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations  and State Enterprises — In Committee 
Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations  and State Enterprises — In Committee 
[Volume:626;Page:21301] 
Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations  and State Enterprises 
In Committee 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: The debate on the performance of Crown entities public organisations and State enterprises is a series of debates on individual reviews of Crown entities public organisations and State enterprises as reported by select committees. The debates on the individual financial reviews should be relevant to their performance in the 2003-04 financial year and their current operations. A member may have no more than two calls on each review. Three hours is allowed for the debate. At the conclusion of the 3 hours it will be reported to the House. A list of financial reviews available for debate is on the Table. I understand that members have indicated the Crown entities public organisations and State enterprises they wish to debate. 
Reserve Bank of New Zealand 
LINDSAY TISCH (Junior Whip—National) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. If we do not speak to it are we able to vote on it? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: Yes. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the report be noted. 
Ayes 69 
New Zealand Labour 51; Green Party 8; United Future 8; Progressive 2. 
Noes 47 
New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 7. 
Report noted. 
Air New Zealand 
Earthquake Commission 
Government Superannuation Fund Authority 
The Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation 
DAIL JONES (Junior Whip—NZ First) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. Can I just clarify something? I take it this is a fixed 3-hour debate so if we have pointless votes we are cutting into our own speaking time. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: Yes that is exactly right. 
DAIL JONES 
: And that last vote was called by the National Party? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: Yes. 
Reports noted. 
Television New Zealand 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 Well it is just over 2 years ago that Television New Zealand was turned from a State-owned enterprise into a Crown entity and given new legislation a new charter and a new mandate. There was a tremendous amount of hype and indeed a lot of hope. We were going to have a State broadcaster that would reflect New Zealand to New Zealanders. It was not going to show the same incessant diet of foreign programmes available on TV3 and other commercial television channels; it was going to show New Zealand to New Zealanders. We gave it money to implement its charter—about $25 million last year and the previous year. I think it is timely 2 years later to take stock and to ask ourselves whether it has worked. Has TVNZ lived up to its expectations and have we seen as we were told at the time that we would more and better of New Zealand on our television channels? 
Hon Marian Hobbs 
: All that ballroom dancing! 
SUE KEDGLEY 
: I will come back to the ballroom dancing. When I looked at the fine print which I did recently I discovered that we have had less not more New Zealand programming on TVNZ since it has turned itself into a Crown-owned entity since it has had its charter and since we have been pouring money into it. The total number of first-run New Zealand programmes is actually down by 3 percent or 185 hours since the charter came in in 2003. If one takes out the repeat programmes and looks at the 6 a.m. till midnight figures—which is what internationally one normally does—one finds that the Television One figure was actually down last year from 43 percent to 42 percent and the TV2 figure was down by 1 percent to 17.9 percent. Overall for both of our publicly owned television channels 38 percent of the programmes that screened from 6 a.m. till midnight were New Zealand programmes—in other words 62 percent of the programmes were foreign. Frankly that is appalling. In particular what is the point of owning a television channel TV2 when 83 percent of its programmes are foreign? We were assured that we would not see the same incessant diet of foreign programmes available on other channels. In fact that is exactly what we have. 
The television channels have managed to hide slightly the fact that we are actually going backwards in terms of New Zealand content by setting voluntary quotas. That is basically a public relations exercise where one sets a quota one would like then trumpets that one has met the quota. But when I actually looked at the quotas I found that Television One has reduced the quota it has set itself. It was 53 percent in 2003; in the last year it has reduced the quota it has set itself to 52 percent. And TV2 has set itself a quota of 19 percent. We have to ask why TV2—the channel that our young people watch—is screening fewer than half the number of New Zealand programmes that Television One screens. It is quite extraordinary. The total number of first-run New Zealand programmes has gone down by 3 percent since the charter came into effect in 2003. 
We have to ask ourselves what the point of it is. We are not getting more New Zealand programming; actually we are getting less. Where has all that money gone? What was the $25 million spent on last year if it was not spent on increased numbers of New Zealand programmes? It certainly was not spent on children’s programming which was something else we were assured we would have more of. In fact TV2’s children’s programming was down by 115 hours to the lowest level in 5 years. Once again we see a steady decline and that is exactly the opposite of what we were assured would happen—we were going to see more New Zealand programmes and so forth. 
Everyone is asking where all the charter programmes are. People are talking about the fact that we seem to have an off-peak charter in that the charter is being met in off-peak hours. 
Report noted. 
Auckland District Health Board 
Bay of Plenty District Health Board 
Canterbury District Health Board 
Capital and Coast District Health Board 
Counties Manukau District Health Board 
Hawke's Bay District Health Board 
Hutt Valley District Health Board 
Lakes District Health Board 
MidCentral District Health Board 
Nelson Marlborough District Health Board 
Northland District Health Board 
Otago District Health Board 
South Canterbury District Health Board 
Southland District Health Board 
Tairawhiti District Health Board 
Taranaki District Health Board 
Waikato District Health Board 
Wairarapa District Health Board 
Waitemata District Health Board 
West Coast District Health Board 
Whanganui District Health Board 
Health Research Council of New Zealand 
Health Sponsorship Council 
New Zealand Blood Service 
Residual Health Management Unit 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 Thank you Madam Chair for the opportunity to speak in this very important debate on the financial reviews of Crown entities public organisations and State enterprises. It is very important to look at these reviews in the context of some of the things that politicians like Annette King and Helen Clark said in the 1990s. At that stage of events they went around the country saying they would cut bureaucracy and blitz the waiting lists. They said that if they taxed people a little more they could fix health and education. They said they would deliver. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: I just remind the member that we are talking about the estimates. 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON 
: I absolutely agree with that. 
If we look at the 2003-04 financial review of the Auckland District Health Board what do we see in terms of delivery? We see that the board has a current deficit of $44.7 million. In 2002 the Minister of Heath told the Health Committee that there would be no deficits by 2005. They would be gone—blitzed; nothing there. But what do we see in the report of the Health Committee? We see that in 2003-04 that board has a deficit of $44.7 million. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: How much? 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON 
: It is $44.7 million and according to our advice that is likely to increase in the 2004-05 financial year to more than $83.3 million. The Minister of Health who is the Minister in the chair told the select committee in 2002 that there would be no deficits in any of the health boards. She said the combined deficit would be nothing—it would be blitzed. 
That is just like what she said about the waiting lists during the 1990s. What do we know about the waiting lists in the district health boards in 2004? Let us just have a little snapshot because the Minister is keen on snapshots. The number of patients waiting longer than 6 months for their first specialist assessment is 2602. According to the Minister of Health that is blitzing the waiting list! What about one of her other commitments about delivering? 
Clayton Cosgrove 
: Scalpel! 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON 
: Well if only she had got the scalpel out and sorted them out! What about patients waiting without a commitment to treatment and whose priorities are higher than the actual treatment threshold? These are patients who undoubtedly are pretty unwell who are in pain and often are losing their vision. How many were there? There were 351. This is the Minister who said Labour would deliver and blitz the waiting list and in the Auckland District Health Board in 2004 1261 patients were given a commitment to treatment but were not treated within 6 months. 
That is the sort of clarity that Annette King gave patients when she went tearing around the country in the 1990s saying that Labour would blitz waiting lists cut bureaucracy and deliver results. But in the Auckland District Health Board in the year in question there were literally thousands of patients waiting for longer than 6 months—patients who had worse situations than those required to receive treatment and who did not receive treatment and patients who were given a commitment to treatment but were not treated within 6 months. 
Hon Marian Hobbs 
: There was a new hospital being built. 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON 
: Well there was a new hospital and who went and opened it? 
Hon Annette King 
: Nobody yet. 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON 
: We can guarantee that when someone does open it—well there is every chance that she will not get the chance. In 2 or 3 months’ time there will be a new Government. The Minister will blame the previous Government for any cost that might have accrued to Auckland City Hospital. It is as predictable as night following day that the Minister will once again not accept responsibility. She will blame the last National Government—after 5 years and $3.3 billion. It is probably only $3 billion I say to Mrs King but to her that does not mean much because she gets nothing from it. 
STEVE CHADWICK (Labour—Rotorua) 
: 
 I am pleased to speak in this State-owned enterprises debate because this is a Government that has incredibly strong leadership. The important issue as we go into the election is that we have financial security and that is what New Zealanders care about. This Government is committed to Crown entities and State-owned enterprises working together with industry and with the private sector to benefit all New Zealanders. I am proud of that. 
Our commitment to State-owned enterprises is not something we are going to flip-flop on or change our minds on. Our State-owned enterprises are working really well and before I talk about health I would like to talk about Mighty River Power. In my own electorate it is working with industry—Norske Skog—to look at cogeneration of geothermal power. But our State-owned enterprises are also involved in social spending. Mighty River Power is involved in a “maintain New Zealand” partnership with the tertiary sector the local college and Norske Skog and it is training maintenance engineers and has young kids doing apprenticeships. I think that is fantastic. Good on it! 
We have looked at the Opposition’s view of these State-owned enterprises. Dr Brash says that minor changes are not quite enough. John Key on the other hand knows that privatisation is a really really toxic issue. But what is more they do not know quite where or what to target. I say they will move into icons like Kiwibank and New Zealand Post. Just watch this spot. I wonder how many electorate MPs in the Opposition have gone out and seen the wonderful initiatives undertaken by New Zealand Post. It is working with communities on such things as New Zealand Book Week for little schoolkids—lovely iconic brands like that. 
I want to move on to which State-owned enterprises National will flick. I am deeply concerned about the health sector. I worked for 9 years under the National Government when it made its cuts. What did it cut? It cut the very things that made the difference to connecting communities together. National said that parenting courses were not part of maternity care any more. It said they were not part of core services so it flicked them out to the private sector to see who picked them up. It is deeply worrying to me when National members talk about tax cuts that come to $1.9 billion. I have to look at health and ask what will go next. Of course there is a very tidy package called the Working for Families package which we really love because it targets— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: I am sorry to interrupt the member but this debate is about financial reviews. The member needs to come back to the question. 
STEVE CHADWICK 
: I will get back to the financial reviews although I am talking about health Madam Chair. I heard the Opposition talk about deficits. Under this Government deficits in our district health boards are better than they have ever been. It is all right to go out there and give a promise but do members know what Labour has given to this sector in terms of deficit management? It has given certainty. How did the Minister give financial certainty to the district health boards? She went out with a 3-year funding package. So for the first time for years the district health boards were able to actually get their heads around long-term security of funding. Funding was based on a population-based formula so that it did target areas of deprivation and it did target inequalities in health status. Because of this good funding in health—and it is a substantial increase in funding—we are seeing reduced mortality rates and reduced morbidity. That is important to me. I would hate to see cuts to our funding of services of the kind that the Nats did when in office for those 9 years when they said those things were no longer seen as core funded issues. They cut bits out and just funded what they believed Vote Health should actually support. 
In health I want to talk also about this “exploding public sector” myth. In health let us just see what has gone. The Crown Company Monitoring Advisory Unit has gone and the Health Funding Authority has gone. In health the size of the State spend has reduced from 33.3 percent in 1999 down to 30.1 percent. So the exploding public sector is a myth. Labour members will counter those myths when we go out there in the election campaign because we know that this sector is working well. 
BARBARA STEWART (NZ First) 
: 
 New Zealand First members are very pleased to have seen increased funding for health Crown entities over the last 2 years. We want to see health funding reach levels that are comparable with other European nations such as France which spends around 10 percent of its GDP on health. Dealing with the health sector is tough. It is at the coalface of society’s ills and it must deal not only with the physical but also with the emotional brunt of healing. 
One of the most disturbing studies over the past year has been a Treasury report showing that despite increased spending on health the sector has falling productivity—that is fewer operations from more money. This report highlights the obsession within district health boards to balance the books no matter what even if this does mean cutting some of the services. A clear example of this was the Nelson Marlborough District Health Board which reduced the number of operations it was performing by 12 a week last October when it was discovered that surgeons were performing more operations than were funded to be provided. So meeting the obligations of the balance sheets has come to mean vacancies and cutting staff even in essential services. This is not the way to provide the First World health services that New Zealanders deserve. 
We must question many of the monitoring regimes which are expensive and seem to be yielding few results that are in place across the district health boards. Do not get me wrong; adherence to procedures and protocols is really important but when it becomes an end in itself rather than a means to an end we begin to lose sight of why they are there in the first place. When we choose to keep increasing the number of accountants and auditors at our district health boards rather than the number of doctors and nurses we have a real problem. Given the advances of modern technology both in medicine and in information technology the health sector ought to be booming. Instead it is barely managing a fizzle in some areas. 
A second issue of major concern in the health sector is the training and retention of health practitioners across the whole range of professions. Hospitals are crying out for qualified doctors surgeons and other specialists. We know we have shortages of dental therapists rural general practitioners radiographers and other technicians and the list goes on. 
Jill Pettis 
: We need more immigrants. 
BARBARA STEWART 
: The member on the other side of the Chamber calls out for more immigrants. We actually want qualified immigrants—people who can add to our economy. 
We have to face up to two simple facts in this area. The first is that we are in a global marketplace for these skills and we are competing with Australia the UK and Canada. If we wish to maintain a First World health system people who have those skills are absolutely essential otherwise we are consigned to sending more and more of our patients on to waiting lists or offshore for treatment and that is something that we definitely do not want to do. We need to develop some strategies to ensure that we have sufficient graduates in the areas of need. [ 
Interruption 
] The Minister is acknowledging that we will do that. Secondly we also have to face up to the reality that we have to pay First World wages if we are to have a First World health system. This could include options such as bonding graduates for a number of years in return for writing off their student loans. It could also include targeting increased funding in health spending specifically for pay rises for those parts of the sector that need them to retain staff. 
One of the areas where we particularly want to see some action is that of adolescent oral health. Many teenagers cannot access dentists because the subsidy paid to dentists is insufficient. Parents often come to me and say that they cannot even get their child on to the dentist’s waiting list because the books are closed. The dentist has enough teenagers on his or her books and cannot provide extra cheap services to any more. Another area we need to be more honest about confronting is the state of our mental health services. Dealing with those who have mental health difficulties is one of the most taxing areas covered in our health system yet this is one aspect of health care that often has its budget cut and its staff numbers reduced and its staff have substandard wages. 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 As the previous speaker referred to an interesting debate is emerging about why despite all the funding that has been poured into the health sector over the last couple of years Treasury reports falling productivity. Why could this be so? There are many speculations about why this might be so but I believe that one of the key reasons is pointed to in a report that came out quite quietly last year from the Ministry of Health called  
Looking Upstream: causes of death cross-classified by risk and condition New Zealand 1977 
. That report quite extraordinarily analyses the 20 top causes of death by risk factor in New Zealand. Diet is twice the risk factor of any other single risk factor. Poor diet is the cause of an estimated 30 percent of deaths in New Zealand. Somewhere between 9000 and 11000 deaths are caused by poor diet. No one believes me so I have to take this chart with me when I go out and show it to them. Then they finally believe me. 
So if that is the case what have we done about it over the last year or so of this Government? We have published a wonderful health strategy that does appear to be addressing the issues. It states the 13 population health objectives: improve nutrition reduce obesity increase the level of physical activity reduce the impact of diabetes improve oral health and so on. When these population goals were announced we were absolutely delighted. Then the Government announced that it was going to bring out a world-leading report on healthy eating and healthy action and we were delighted with that too. The Minister of Health has trumpeted it internationally at the World Health Organization saying: “Isn’t this wonderful?”. 
But the problem is that we have this major initiative this Healthy Eating - Healthy Action but when we look at the books alas there is not any funding for this wonderful new initiative. Thirty percent of deaths are caused by poor nutrition and poor diet and this strategy states that it is going to focus on this issue. We have these population health goals. One would think that this flagship strategy would have some new funding but alas there is none. 
Sure some district health boards—and I have met them—in some parts of New Zealand are beginning to get their heads around the issue and there are some positive initiatives particularly in the Waikato and in Manukau but basically the Government has no specific funding for it. One would think that if this were the overwhelming cause of death in New Zealand way more than road deaths and all the other issues we tend to focus on there would be a national strategy a huge new programme but alas there is none. 
I have just touched on one issue of big concern. The second issue concerns Pharmac. The Green Party strongly supports Pharmac. We are concerned that a big public relations campaign is developing against Pharmac and against its single-supply contracts. We saw that earlier in the year when some public relations people visited me and I could see it coming. Suddenly and it does not surprise me at all some parties in this House like United Future rose up and became part of this campaign to undermine Pharmac and its single-supplier contract. 
We do acknowledge that there are all sorts of issues that we would like to see improved with Pharmac. There is great room for improvement but we are concerned that there seems to be an across-the-board strategy to undermine it and that is a real concern from a fiscal point of view and many other points of view. 
Finally I would like to talk about how the Government is quietly working without any political mandate to hand over the control of our dietary supplements and our pharmaceuticals to a trans-Tasman therapeutic goods agency in Australia. It has no mandate for that whatsoever. 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 A few speakers ago we heard the member for Rotorua Steve Chadwick say that one of the achievements of this Labour Government was that it had given certainty. I say: “Tell that to the 25000 patients taken off the waiting lists in 2003 by the Minister of Health Annette King and sent to a life of absolute uncertainty.” And I also say: “Tell that to the Auckland District Health Board.” which in this financial review is recorded as having a deficit of $44.7 million and there is a prediction that by 2004-05 it will be $83 million. 
The Minister of Health came to the select committee and said that she did not believe that. She said that the Minister of Finance and she had got together and they just did not accept that there would be a $100 million deficit by the end of the year. But let us look at the letters the Minister of Finance sent to the Hon Annette King in 2003 in which he stated: “It will be important that the additional funding leads to increases in outputs and is not absorbed by cost increases. My officials will be working with the ministry to put in place appropriate accountability and monitoring measures to address this issue. … Output activity data continues to support our shared concern about productivity in the health sector. Analysis of Ministry of Health data suggests that despite significant revenue increases”—significant amounting to about $3 billion—“volumes in the sector are static if not declining.” 
So when the member for Rotorua talks about certainty when she just happens to forget that 25000 patients were culled from the waiting lists to spend the rest of their time in uncertainty—and then again on 1 April this year at the Counties Manukau District Health Board another 2000 were taken off the waiting list to live a life of uncertainty—[ 
Interruption 
] We hear Moana Mackey the pretender for East Coast and what happened at the Tairawhiti District Health Board? It took 596 patients who had been waiting longer than 6 months for a first specialist assessment to get to square one and send them back to their general practitioners. What does the Minister say? She says they will be monitored. 
When I spoke to one of the patients Peggy Griffiths who had been thrown off the waiting list at the Counties Manukau District Health Board she told me that no one had said how and when she would be monitored. The Minister of Health will say that she is now back on the waiting list. It took a huge amount of effort by me to bring it to the attention of this House and suddenly and mysteriously Peggy Griffiths is back on the waiting list—and the Minister of Health will claim credit for that! First she cuts people off waiting lists causes the huge disappointment and uncertainty to people of just not knowing what was going on— 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Have you got more? 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON 
: Yes there are eight or nine. I have a little file. Members can imagine that every time I bring those people up they will suddenly and mysteriously be put back on those waiting lists! 
While we are talking about the Auckland District Health Board it will be helpful to say just what a professor of surgery had to say about this Minister’s interpretation of the waiting lists: “So now patients are culled upfront and those accepted for surgery are still required to wait just like the old-day waiting list. A double jeopardy now exists. The elective surgical booking system has degenerated into the elective surgical blocking system. The Ministry of Health has some explaining to do itself. Blaming health boards is a patent distraction ploy.” It is one of the things this Minister of Health has become an absolute mistress of: perpetrating the patent distraction ploy. She is an absolute mistress of that particular performance. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: That’s a career option. 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON 
: There is a career option. I shall talk about some of the other things that have plagued the Auckland District Health Board with its predicted deficit of $83 million when the Minister said there would be no deficit. 
RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT) 
: 
 I should say upfront that none of this is personal about the Minister of Health. I actually quite like Annette King. I think that she is a lovely lady and is good fun but I have to say that she is the most inept Minister of Health we have ever had. We see that from the data we now have before us in this country. While we are doing the financial reviews I shall take members through the Treasury report. It is damning of Annette King and I shall read from it. The report is to the Minister of Finance Michael Cullen and it states: “The current oversubscription reinforces the importance of not only managing the immediate pressures back but of addressing the unsustainable growth path of health spending over the longer term. Treasury advises that you”—that means Michael Cullen—“request the Minister of Health to manage within her allocation and that you defer any consideration of the roll-out of future allocations until the sustainability work has been completed.” The concern there was that the current expenditure path is totally unsustainable and Treasury went on to recommend that the Minister Annette King resubmit her budget providing “a reprioritisation of her current proposals so that total expenditure comes within the allocation and a demonstration of how she will manage known risks so that expenditure remains within the agreed funding track.” 
Why did Treasury recommend that? Because that Minister cannot manage. That Minister has taken the expenditure on health up to $3.6 billion a year and produced worse outcomes than previously. She has actually produced worse outcomes. She has increased expenditure by 57 percent. The number of operations has increased by 1.3 percent. [ 
Interruption 
] Government members do not like to hear their own numbers. The number of operations has increased by only 1.3 percent. [ 
Interruption 
] They do not like it do they? They do not like to hear their own numbers come back. We know that Steve Chadwick the chair of the Health Committee said in this Chamber last week that no New Zealanders on the health waiting list were in pain—that is what she thinks. We know that Annette King has totally failed. Why? She told the National Party that to have 96000 people on the waiting list was “criminal”. How many people are on the health waiting list now? There are 180000 people on the health waiting list. They are queued up waiting to get on the waiting list. 
Here is another thing. Annette King said to the Health Committee that she would take the district health board deficits down to zero. What happened? What is the deficit at the Auckland District Health Board? 
Dr Paul Hutchison 
: $83.4 million. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: Annette King poured money in and got no result. I am afraid that as a Minister she is a total failure. That is why $3.5 billion— 
Hon Annette King 
: Louder. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: The Minister asks me to speak louder. She should actually ask her colleagues not to set up a barrage of interjections—I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. It is not about whether I can take it; it is about the Chair. [ 
Interruption 
] 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: Please be seated. The member knows very well there will be silence during points of order. That is the final warning. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. That is the problem. You are not applying the rules at any stage. The Government whip just called out during a point of order. Opposition members are invariably asked to leave when they do that. It is against the Standing Orders to set up a barrage. I am having to speak through six Government members who are not actually interjecting. That would be one thing but they are just calling out a barrage so no one can hear me speak. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: I have heard your point of order. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: I am not finished on my point of order. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: I have heard your point of order. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: Well you will hear another one. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: Mr Hide I have heard your point of order. When I get to my feet you must sit down. I accept that there was barracking and that it was too much. I ask members to refrain from barracking. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. The Government whip called out during my point of order. The rule that has been set down on that by the Speaker is very clear. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: Please be seated. I have dealt with that matter. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: No please continue your speech. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: Please be seated. I have dealt with the point of order that was raised and I have spoken to the Government whip and given a general warning. There was a lot of barracking going on from all sides. I have spoken about that. Mr Hide I ask you to continue your speech. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. I want you to explain to me the rules. There was a lot of barracking but not from all sides; it was only from the Government side. My point of order about the Government whip calling out is that there was no barracking while I made my point of order. There was one interjection from a Government whip. The rules that have been set down in this House are very clear. Whenever an Opposition MP calls out during a point of order the member is immediately shot out of the Chamber. Madam Chairperson I would like you to explain why the Government whip who should be setting the standard and certainly should be held to the same standard as other MPs is allowed to get away with that. What is the difference? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: I give you another warning about raising points of order that are not points of order. When I have dealt with a point of order that is the end of the matter. I have dealt with that point of order. There was a lot of barracking. I have dealt with the two points of order that you raised. I give you a warning that raising points of order that are not points of order is in itself disorderly. I now ask you to continue your speech. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: Mr Hide please be seated. Your point of order will be heard if it is a new point of order. You will not relitigate the two rulings that I have given. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: I am not relitigating your ruling. I want to understand what you are applying here. You have not— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: Mr Hide you will be seated please. You are relitigating my rulings and I ask you to continue with your speech. [ 
Interruption 
] 
RODNEY HIDE 
: Thank you. So what we see from this Labour Government—[ 
Interruption 
] 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: Order! Please continue. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: So what we see from this Government—[ 
Interruption 
] I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: Please be seated. I had asked that the barraging stop. I want Mr Hide to continue his speech in silence. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: Is it the point I have dealt with? 
RODNEY HIDE 
: No it is a new one. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: Point of order Rodney Hide. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: When Darren Hughes called out he was in direct defiance of your ruling. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: Mr Hide please be seated. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: I have not finished my point of order. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: Please be seated Mr Hide. As you know interjections are tolerated. There was an interjection and then another one. When the second one was called out—although it was not barracking from one person—because there had been a lot previously I said you could continue your speech in silence. I expect there to be silence. That matter has been dealt with. I warn you again not to trifle with the Chair—not to relitigate the ruling I have given. Please continue with your speech. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. My point of order is this and you have not yet heard it. You gave a ruling and you said there was to be no barracking. I sat down. Immediately Darren Hughes barracked. That was not an interjection. You silenced him. I stood up to speak again. He immediately barracked. He is still in the Chamber and I say he is the member who is defying the Chair not me. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: Mr Hide I will give you one final warning. You are relitigating what I have already ruled on. Please continue with your speech. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. I have sat quietly and watched this interesting exchange. I think the problem we have here is that it appears that Mr Hughes has moved to another seat in order to gain advantage from the microphone being closer to you. There is no doubt that your instruction was that Mr Hide would be heard in silence. Then Mr Hughes—the very young member that he is and with perhaps a slightly impetuous nature—barked quite loudly towards Mr Hide. I think at least some rebuke of Mr Hughes would be necessary. He may even like to resume his own seat which is much further away from the interference zone than where he is currently sitting. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: I thank the member for his assistance. However I have dealt with the matter. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: What we see from this Labour Government is an inability for the Minister of Health to front up to the big issues. We have to have Trevor Mallard Darren Hughes and the fishmonger’s wife Jill Pettis stand up here. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. I am sure you heard what that member said and I am surprised you are not on your feet already to deal with it. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: The member knows that that is not acceptable. Members are to be called by their correct name. I ask the member to withdraw and apologise for that remark. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: I withdraw and apologise. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. The Chair cannot anticipate a speaker. From where I am sitting I clearly took the inference that after the name “Jill Pettis” there was a full stop and there was then the start of a new sentence which was not allowed to progress because of the point of order raised by Trevor Mallard. I would be quite interested to know what Mr Hide has to say about the fishwife. I am sure there is a lot more to come. I am sure it is not offensive to the Committee and I say that Mr Mallard should be asked to contain himself until he understands the circumstances in which any particular comment is made. I notice that Mrs Pettis also understood there was a full stop after her name. She certainly does not look offended to me. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: I just warn the member. Please be seated. I am dealing with this point of order which was not a point of order. Mr Brownlee that came close to trifling with the Chair. I had dealt with the matter. The member had apologised. I ask the member to continue his speech. 
Clayton Cosgrove 
: I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. We may have a dilemma here. You have ruled and I am not questioning your ruling that the member should be heard in silence. The issue then arises that those of us who are offended against by for instance Mr Hide’s last reference to a particular member are then precluded from any retaliation at all. I am not challenging your ruling. I just seek your advice. When it is ruled that a member of Parliament should be heard in silence that is fair but if that member then decides to hurl abuse and make derogatory comments or to use derogatory names about members on any side of the Chamber those members have no option regarding that and cannot retaliate. I seek your advice on that point. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: I just make this point. The members I believe overdid their interjections and that is why I asked that the member be heard in silence. That is the price to be paid. However the point of order that was raised by Mr Mallard was dealt with. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. I just ask you to clarify the rules of this debate. Is my understanding correct that this is a fixed 3-hour debate and that all these points of order have come out of the time that the Opposition has to scrutinise the Government? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: The member is correct. It is a fixed 3-hour timed debate. This time comes off the members’ time so we have probably wasted the equivalent of one speech. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: The fishmonger’s wife too is stuck on the waiting list. That is the trouble. We have 180000 New Zealanders stuck on the waiting list. The fishmonger’s wife the cobbler’s wife and the baker’s wife are all stuck on the health waiting list and here we have Steve Chadwick— 
Jill Pettis 
: Yes we can change our occupations but you will be out of here. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: Order Jill Pettis! Order! The member’s time has expired. 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. I stopped and because you were talking I sat down. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: Your speech time had finished. 
Rodney Hide 
: Yes but I am interested in why you were talking over my speech while my time was still going over the microphone. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: I was calling for order. Your speech time had finished and I wanted to call the next speaker. 
Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. Is Jill Pettis in trouble or does she get away with that one too? 
Jill Pettis 
: Tell him to dry up. Grow up! 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: I am on my feet. I warn the member. Mr Hide I have dealt with the matter. 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 The Greens are pleased to see in the supplementary estimates that some further money has been invested in the area of problem gambling and the enforcement of the gambling regulations although it is not enough to curb the social and economic harm caused by the proliferation of gambling opportunities including particularly pokie machines. My colleague Sue Bradford has been a strong and effective advocate for responsible gambling laws in this country that provide the greatest possible protection to our community from the harms of gambling. Sadly this protection does not yet exist in our law. 
In the health supplementary estimates there is $2.4 million for the funding of costs related to the administration of the problem gambling levy. That levy remains very small when compared with the profits derived from gambling The gambling industry has of course a massive vested interest in keeping the problem gambling levy as low as possible. Many of the industry’s representatives have argued that the scale of the gambling problem is exaggerated and that the cost of dealing with it is overrated. But in 2003 gamblers in this country lost a record $2 billion—an increase of 9 percent on the year before. That is $5 million a day in this country much of which is taken out of the homes of some of our lowest-income families. The industry continues to complain about the levy and clearly wants to keep problem gambling strategies focused on treatment rather than on the additional public health goals of health promotion and harm minimisation. 
We need only recall the case a couple of years ago of the pokie-machine outlet money-lending business and problem gambling treatment centre all within the same building complex and all associated with the same single director—a lucrative immoral ring of business interests. We need only recall the pokie-machine bar in the Otara shopping centre that contributed to the costs of a fenced children’s playground right outside the front door of that pokie bar. Or we need only recall the objection by the gambling industry to the regulations requiring pokie machines to display how long a person has played and how much money he or she has lost to know that the industry is committed to the maximisation of its profits and not the minimisation of social and economic harms from gambling. 
Sky City recently wailed about how these regulations would lose it money—regulations that will affect all new slot machines after 1 October this year and all machines from 2009. This company has over 2000 gaming machines in New Zealand with a forecast annual profit of $100 million. This complaint was despite the Government figures that show that New Zealand has 100000 problem gamblers who contribute $2 billion to that industry. Eighty percent of people who come in for treatment from the Problem Gambling Foundation say that they have a problem with pokie machines; for Maori women the figure is 96 percent. 
The fact that the proceeds of pokie addictions are then used for the benefit of all sorts of worthy causes should not be an excuse for any values-based group to continue to endorse this industry. The Greens would like the many community organisations that now rely on the proceeds of human misery for their continued survival to consider other funding options and for Government and other non-gambling funders to better resource the sector so that groups do not feel obliged to depend on the addictions and desperation of some of our poorest people for the pursuance of their good works. 
Despite some of the minor improvements over the last 6 months—and we note the increase in the Vote Internal Affairs supplementary estimates of $1.17 million to enforce the new regulations in the Gambling Act—the levy and the legislation so far are not enough to deal with these harms. The Greens want to see much greater reduction in the number of pokie machines operating in this country and a total revamp of the way the profits of those that remain are distributed. 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister of Health) 
: 
 I thank members for their contributions to the debate on the performance of Crown entities public organisations and State enterprises. It was interesting that both the National member and the ACT member raised the much-maligned Treasury report. Of course if we were to believe Mr Hide everything that Treasury wrote would be absolute gospel although I note that he does not take much account of Treasury’s report when it comes to its views on private insurance. However those members quoted the much-maligned Treasury report and talked of falling productivity. Of course what that report tells us and what Treasury says is that at this stage it is able to measure only about 46 percent of hospital activity and it is not able even to measure what happens in the primary health sector. 
It goes on to state that 60 percent of the costs are the wages of those who work within the health sector. I make no excuse for saying that the wages in the health sector have gone up—so they should. I think it was Barbara Stewart—and she always makes a considered intervention in this House—who said how important it is for us to retain our health workforce. Well we do not retain our health workforce in an international market if we do not increase wages and salaries. So the settlement for nurses which is backdated to last year and going forward is half a billion dollars. It is the biggest increase that nurses in this country have had at any time and they have fought for it for a decade. Past Ministers of Health know exactly what the campaign has been over that time. It has been settled and I am proud that nurses will have that increased pay—they deserve it. I also tell members that over the last 3 years doctors in the hospital system have had about a 50 percent increase in pay. We needed to do that to retain our medical workforce. I make no apologies for spending health money on that either. 
I also make no apologies for investing in new hospitals and rebuilding old hospitals. It was absolutely crucial because in terms of the hospital sector we actually have to have the bricks and mortar in order to provide the health service. We have put money into that. I believe that we are now seeing a health system that has had the investment in it that it needed. In fact if we look at investment in health throughout the 1990s we can see that in comparison with OECD countries we under-invested in health. We needed to catch up and we certainly have been doing that. 
Dr Hutchison talked of deficits. I remind the Committee that under the previous Government deficits reached 5 percent of the Health vote. They are now 1 percent of the Health vote. By anyone’s measure that is an improvement. We have seen nearly every board in New Zealand reduce its deficit with the exception of Auckland and Auckland remains a particular problem. Many issues impact on Auckland not least the impact of a building project that did not realise the $80 million of saving that was promised. It did not come about. However the board is working very carefully on the issue and we believe that it will reduce its deficit this year as well. 
Dr Hutchison mentioned the booking system. I think Bill English will be very disappointed in Dr Hutchison’s view on this. After all it was introduced in 1998. I think the booking system is a good system because it is honest and it is fair. It tells people whether they will get an operation— 
Hon Bill English 
: That’s not what you used to say. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: It certainly is. Let me tell the member this: in 1999 40 percent of those who were waiting for their first specialist assessment waited longer than 6 months. That figure now is 21 percent. It is getting better. I admit that when we started we started from a low base and it had to be built up. The system I believe is one of the best we can have in terms of being fair about elective surgery. 
Dr Hutchison mentioned bureaucracy. There has been an increase in staff of district health boards. In fact the biggest increase has been in nurses. The next-biggest increase has been in doctors. In fact the total increase in the number of bureaucrats in the health system has been 0.4 percent. Those are the facts. Opposition members talk about the bureaucrats but the people they call bureaucrats are those who book the operations answer the telephones and help to run the system. Those members would have us get rid of people who help to make the system work. National would turn the funding for that handful of people into “funding for health”. Well it would be lucky to get much out of that I have to say. 
I then heard Barbara Stewart talk about workforce issues. I agree with her. We have put a lot of investment into trying to improve our health workforce. To begin with we reopened two training schools for dental therapists in 2001 and 2002. I know that it sounds amazing to the member but all the training schools were closed in the 1990s; no dental therapy training schools were left in New Zealand. I am not quite sure how we were going to provide the service. Perhaps we were going to employ therapists until they were 99 years old; we certainly were not going to produce any more. It now takes 3 years to train a dental therapist—there is a degree course. We had our first graduates out of the Otago school last year and we had our first graduates out of the Auckland school this year but we need at least 40 graduates per year to provide oral health to the children and adolescents of New Zealand. We will get there but we have to invest in training. We have to be committed to training. 
We have also increased the number of medical students by 40 per year—the first increase since 1981. We actually have a much better grasp on those health workforce issues. We were training only 16 radiation therapists per year; we now train 38 and for the first time we can provide radiation treatment in New Zealand within the guidelines. It is fragile. We have to keep training and producing them for our own needs. It has taken a huge investment of money and energy to try to rebuild our health workforce. 
Then we heard from the very very sad member Rodney Hide. I actually pity that member. I have great pity for him because he is now a very bitter twisted and thwarted man. He has been thwarted by his own party actually. He had to spend the whole weekend stopping his members from getting rid of him. He has decided that he will go on a crusade on health. The unfortunate thing is that he is unable to put the facts out in a straight manner which means that people do not believe him. He over-exaggerates and overcooks everything and the consequence is that nobody believes him and nobody takes notice of him. 
He talked about the sustainability of health expenditure. Certainly there has been a big investment in health over these 6 years. I have already talked about the need to invest in our health workforce infrastructure and so on and also in our primary health care where we will get the results we want. But there does need to be a look at the sustainability of health funding in the long term. The Prime Minister announced at the beginning of this year that work would be done on the long-term sustainability of health funding. That work is now under way. It will be done properly and I can assure this Committee that the Government will go through each part of that expenditure in order to get the best use of it. It will not be done with slogans and smart statements. 
I conclude with reference to the Green member Sue Kedgley. She talked of the Healthy Eating - Healthy Action strategy. It is a nationwide strategy. It is not about a few people in the ministry trying to run a strategy around healthy eating and healthy action. It actually happens out in our communities in homes and in schools. It is about engaging all those players in getting through the message on healthy eating and healthy action. I believe that as one of the first countries—if not the first country—in the world to put such a strategy in place we will address those issues over time. But there is no quick fix solution to the fact that there are obese and overweight people in New Zealand. We have a growing number of them. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Oh where? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: I say to Gerry Brownlee that I could not possibly say I see any of them in this Chamber—I know that he is asking where they are. We have a few folk who are overweight and unfortunately far too many children are overweight. There is funding and action taking place. 
I conclude by saying that very rarely do I agree with Sue Kedgley in any debate but that I totally agree with her comments about Pharmac. She said that she supports Pharmac that it does a very good job and that there is a campaign to get it. I support her and I believe that she is correct. 
Reports noted. 
Career Services 
Learning Media Ltd 
New Zealand Qualifications Authority 
New Zealand Teachers Council 
Tertiary Education Commission 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
: 
 I want to raise some issues with the Minister Trevor Mallard about the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. The board has decided to appoint Ms Karen Sewell as the acting chief executive officer. I ask the Minister to tell me whether this is the same Ms Karen Sewell who used to be the principal of Green Bay High School. The community around that school thinks that it will take at least another 5 years to clean up the mess she left. I know that she has been running the Education Review Office— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Very well. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Well the Education Review Office reports are sounding more and more like old-style primary school reports than they ever used to. 
I ask the Minister to tell us why he thinks that that appointment will restore any confidence in the role of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority in administering our secondary school qualifications. I can tell the Minister that my feedback has been that it will not. That lack of confidence will be built on by his silly initiatives today. Is it not just so much the Labour Government that when there is a serious issue with exams and assessments for our secondary school students it spends months and months chewing it over and then comes up with the solution of having a workshop and a seminar? The other thing it will do is put out a pamphlet. This Minister thinks that less time spent teaching and more time spent putting out taxpayer-funded spin will fix confidence in the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA). I want to know why he thinks that that will be the case. I want him to tell us how he will explain to parents that sending teachers off to more workshops and more seminars is the answer for NCEA. 
It is time the Minister accepted that there are a couple of critical problems. The first is that the assessment is not consistent and valid and the second is that NCEA is not manageable. It needs more resources at the margin than are worth it. The Minister should just fix those problems. Instead we have gone back to the line that this Minister has taken right from the day he took the job—that any people who do not like NCEA or think there is a problem with it do not understand it and therefore must be stupid. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: No just this member is stupid not everyone. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: He thinks they are all stupid so the Government will send them a pamphlet in the mail that will tell them that NCEA is actually fine. Then they will think that the Government is fine. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: If they can read. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: If they can read—they are the lucky ones. I want the Minister to tell us a bit about that. 
I also want the Minister to tell us what his plans are for the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. I will give him a little bit of advice if he is still thinking about those plans. He should not roll the New Zealand Qualifications Authority into the Ministry of Education. That would be a mistake. If the qualifications framework is going to work then it needs to be administered by a body with statutory independence so that we do not see happening to the New Zealand Qualifications Authority what has happened to the Tertiary Education Commission whereby the Government is shamelessly manipulating the funding levers to meet its own political requirements. 
 The qualifications framework is important for New Zealand. It should be kept separate and at arm’s length from political intervention and that means running an independent statutory body in the way the New Zealand Qualifications Authority is set up now. If the Minister rolls it into the Ministry of Education that will do more than anything else to undermine the existing bipartisan support for the qualifications framework. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Oh we’ve really noticed that. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: The Minister knows that NCEA is only part of it. Of course there are questions about the quality of what is in that framework but the concept of the framework itself is supported by both parties. So I tell the Minister not to roll it into the Ministry of Education. That would simply put it under the control of people who have already made a mess of NCEA policy. Why give them the job of administering this as well? I am sure that if the Minister persists until the election he will not get a permanent chief executive officer. But as the new Minister after the election I will be able to get a new chief executive officer for the New Zealand Qualifications Authority because National will take a set of measures designed to increase the credibility of the qualification. [ 
Interruption 
] Well when the board sees a Government getting to grips with community concerns about the qualification it will be able to go to potential chief executive officers with some confidence whereas at the moment it is out there trying to recruit people to resuscitate a body that is on life support. Of course that is not a particularly attractive job. I want the Minister to explain to us also the rise in costs in the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and other bureaucracies because that is where he is spending all his money instead of in the schools. 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY (NZ First) 
: 
 I want to focus my attention upon the same agency. There are some genuine difficulties with this particular agency. As the report on the 2003-04 financial review notes during that period of time the New Zealand Qualifications Authority faced the challenge of simultaneously trying to introduce both level 3 National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) and the scholarship examinations. When the review was carried out in February this year we were right in the middle of the scholarship debacle. That exposed also some serious flaws in NCEA level 1 level 2 and level 3 particularly with regard to the variability of results. It has to be said that the New Zealand Qualifications Authority simply did not rise to the challenge it faced in the financial year under review. What is even more serious is that we do not believe it has faced up to the real problems that created the debacle at the end of last year and the beginning of this year and we believe and predict that as a result of it not being prepared to face up to the issues another debacle will occur at the end of this year. 
The real problem is the fact that the agency has focused absolutely on standards-based assessment and has not recognised the limitations of that assessment. For example something like 300 out of 900 students who sat the English scholarship examinations got a scholarship but only nine out of 1000 biology students got a scholarship. The authority tried to argue that that is because there was variability amongst the students. It is absolute bunkum to say that 33 percent of the students studying English were able to meet certain standards and only 0.9 percent of those studying biology were able to meet the standards. That raises some very very serious questions about the whole underlying premise upon which the authority set the examinations. That is its task: to set the assessment tasks. 
I have to say that the New Zealand Qualifications Authority has appeared before the Education and Science Committee and been reviewed more often than any other agency and with very good cause. Phil Smith who is the immediate past-president of the New Zealand Post Primary Teachers Association made a very telling statement. He said: “If only NZQA had applied the same level of quality assurance to its own processes as it insisted that schools apply to their processes then we would not be in the difficulties we are.” 
I say to the Minister of Education that one of the things that has come through—and as I think the Minister knows I am not somebody who goes out and tries to attack people; I try to get to the root of a problem—is that this is the most untidy organisation I have ever come across. The information that is received from it by the select committee is time and time again purely and simply inadequately prepared. It has not been considered and researched. We saw flow charts for example that had examiners being trained before they had actually been appointed chronologically. When we pointed this out to the people from the New Zealand Qualifications Authority they said: “Oh we got that one wrong.” It has been a continual litany of errors from this particular agency. 
We have the sequence of events that led to the announcement of the Level 3 Distinction Award which is all reported in the review report. The issue is that on 17 January this agency reported the variability of the results to the Minister by email. It did not red-flag it. OK that might have been a mistake—it is certainly untidy at least. But almost 1 month later the chief executive officer could not explain why it was not red-flagged. A month after that error which had caused the Ministers considerable embarrassment the chief executive officer still could not explain why that matter had not been red-flagged. That suggests to me that there are some systemic problems within this organisation. 
Explanations have been given for the variation in results. These are I have to say absolute and utter bunkum. They do not make any educational or scientific sense. Yet the public the Minister and we in Parliament are expected to accept that these are the rationales and that these are the proper processes. I say to the Minister that he has to take responsibility for this agency. He did not set it up. In fact this Government did not set it up or create its culture; that was done by the previous National Government. But this Government has been administering the agency for 5 years and should have fixed it before now. 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON (ACT) 
: 
 I too want to address concerns about the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. These are not just the concerns of this House; they are the concerns of parents all over New Zealand. Since 1990 the New Zealand Qualifications Authority has held itself up as a world leader in assessment; that is what it says it is. It has foisted on us the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) which parents now call “No Chance of Ever Achieving”. The New Zealand Qualifications Authority does not even know what world standards are; it is not even interested in world standards. The NCEA scholarship has been a disaster. NCEA levels 1 2 and 3 have been a disaster. As the Hon Brian Donnelly said the New Zealand Qualifications Authority has been reviewed reviewed and reviewed. The State Services Commission review set terms of reference relating to standards processes and communication. These things should have been in the system long before it got to the stage of a State Services Commission review. They are all basic things that the New Zealand Qualifications Authority could not even get right. 
The purpose of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority is to provide “quality assured qualifications”. What other Crown entity is the subject of a Tui billboard? This Tui billboard ridicules one of our most important secondary school qualifications. It says: “I past NCEA Inglish. Yeah right.” 
How shameful for a Crown entity that holds itself up as a world leader in education standards to be the butt of a joke on a billboard that advertises beer! That is about how far it has gone. The chairman Mr Fraser has gone. The chief executive officer Karen Van Rooyen has gone. The Ministers will not take responsibility for the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. We now have an acting chief executive Karen Sewell who I am reliably informed is a very nice person. But as one prominent New Zealand principal likes to say she was on her way to turning Green Bay High School into the only sole-charge high school in New Zealand. Parents took their children away from that school in droves. There were no standards at that school. In fact it was so bad that when the zoning boundaries were redrawn $50000 was immediately overnight wiped off the value of properties that were brought into the zone of Green Bay High School. That is how bad it was. And now this Minister has allowed his board to appoint someone like that. 
 The problem is that the New Zealand Qualifications Authority is so bad now and the level has reached such a poor standard that it will be well-nigh impossible to attract anyone of quality to that position. Who would want to be handed a hospital pass like that? 
What does the New Zealand Qualifications Authority cost us? In 2003 the Government threw $30 million at it. The Minister said that all the problems were due to not enough resources and that it just needed more money. What did the Government do? It threw $52 million more at it in 2004. What was it I ask the Minister—double or quits? Just keep throwing millions at it and all the problems will go away? [ 
Interruption 
] 
Labour’s solution to everything is to just shovel more money at it. Students already pay to sit their qualifications. Despite that when students were very kindly invited by the Minister to be reassessed in the NCEA scholarship disaster would this Minister rescind the $30 reassessment fee they had to pay? At least David Benson-Pope said he would consider rescinding it but no the Minister of Education totally ruled it out. Well why should the Labour Government rescind it? It was just another tax as far as it was concerned. 
The New Zealand Qualifications Authority and the Minister were warned and warned that the NCEA scholarship would be unworkable. A non-competitive system cannot be grafted on to a competitive exam. The solution is to give those qualifications back to organisations in the private sector like the New Zealand Education Scholarship Trust which for years has run scholarship with no problems at all. We never saw that on a Tui billboard. We never saw New Zealand bursary university entrance or even School Certificate which had some problems on a Tui billboard. A whole generation of New Zealand students has been subject to an experiment. It is not just an unfortunate experiment; it is a total disaster and they have been severely disadvantaged. It is child abuse of the mind. 
LYNNE PILLAY (Labour—Waitakere) 
: 
 I am pleased to speak tonight from a more positive approach to our education system. It is really depressing to hear members on the other side of the Chamber banging on all the time about doom and gloom and not acknowledging all the good things that are happening in our education system. I will start my speech at the beginning with early childhood education. We have seen the statistics and so much research that shows that through investment in early childhood education there are real results later on in terms of achievement. 
Jim Peters 
: For some. 
LYNNE PILLAY 
: Yes certainly not for the members of his caucus but generally speaking our children in New Zealand are achieving. We are seeing the statistics about the achievement of 11-year olds now who have had the benefit of early childhood education. That is something I prefer to celebrate. I am proud to be part of a Government that celebrates that. Why are those young people achieving? They are achieving because they had quality early childhood education that delivers. That is why we are increasing our commitment to and our investment in early childhood education. We have committed to 20 free hours’ funding per week in community early childhood centres for the future and we know that that will build on the achievements we already see. 
Jim Peters 
: Only for some. 
LYNNE PILLAY 
: I do not know what the member means by that. I just cannot understand why members relish being so negative. I know many of them have chosen to leave after the next election which is a very wise move but I prefer to work and to celebrate all the good things that are happening. Increased investment and achievement in early childhood education means there is also an increased demand for training. That means upskilling and it means scholarships in early childhood education. That is a major investment of this Government and it is one that I am very proud to see happening. 
I will move on now to when children move from early childhood education to primary school which I have seen in my electorate. It has been very very good to celebrate not only with children and our Government but with their parents and with the community at large. There are laptops in every school. Under this Government every schoolteacher now has the ability to have a laptop to work with and to share with the children. What an advantage! That is something that happened under this Government’s funding. We should not forget that this Government—which does not promote vouchers or private education—stands for the right of every child in New Zealand to go to his or her local school. That is something that this Labour-led Government is very proud of. It is a real right that we see not only for our children but for their families and our transport system is not clogged up by people trying to whip across town because a child might be a good rugby player and might have been poached by a school. We stand by the right of every young person in the country to go to his or her local school. 
We should also acknowledge the building that has gone on under this Government. I have been to more school hall openings refurbishments general extensions on schools and general celebrations of achievement than we have seen happen over the last decade in this country. Why? Because we are investing in our schools and we are doing it wisely. That also means many many more teachers and more funding for special education because we know that that investment delivers in terms of achievement. We are not a party that says we think we are spending too much and will advocate for tax cuts that will not deliver. 
BERNIE OGILVY (United Future) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of United Future to look at the financial reviews of three Crown entities. When I read out the names of the three education Crown entities—the New Zealand Qualifications Authority the New Zealand Teachers Council and the Tertiary Education Commission—what comes to mind for parents taxpayers learners and children when those three entities are made known across the airwaves in alleyways and in the schools and universities around New Zealand? People will reply straight away to my question by saying that the issue common to all three is that they have been poor performers. 
All three entities have been in the news as I understand it for very wrong reasons. All appear to be unable to control their own appetite for increase and for their own purposes. All impose on those they are looking after—monitoring and auditing—what they are not prepared to see imposed on themselves. In fact they are less able to control themselves than the schools universities or whatever that they are in charge of. Worse still I have noticed as have a lot of people that there is a tremendous overlap between those Crown entities. There is duplication and sheer waste when for instance the New Zealand Qualifications Authority the New Zealand Teachers Council and the Tertiary Education Commission all work separately to assess and appraise private training enterprises. I know of at least two teachers colleges where that has happened. There is a lot of duplication and waste. That is what comes to mind for a lot of people. 
 It has already been said that it is a fearful thing. It is of concern to myself and others and I think to some on the Education and Science Committee that it is intended that the Ministry of Education take some of those entities under its wing. We in United Future do not sense that their independence should be squished and squashed away and lost. They need true statutory independence to do their jobs. 
Some members have been talking in the House about the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) programmes which in my mind and in the mind of everybody in the National Party started as a dream in order to bring forth learning into our schools. But NCEA has not ended as a dream; it has ended as a nightmare for a lot of people and certainly for a lot of students and employers around this nation. Do I need to say more? Well others have said a lot and tonight I want to quote from the Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA) advisory officer Julie Ellison. She said that there was enough evidence in the report the PPTA had to show that some very poor-quality moderators were operating. That is only one comment she made. More dollars have been spent on NCEA with fewer outcomes than people have deserved. 
What is the New Zealand Teachers Council renowned for? It has produced more chief executive officers than any other Crown entity in the last 2 or 3 years that I have been in Parliament. It is amazing! The only thing it has ever produced as I see it is a code of ethics. When I asked in the select committee what that really meant—did it mean accountability?—they said it was definitely not a code of accountability. Then I asked why they went to all that trouble over $103000 worth to produce a toothless wonder in reality. 
So many people out there are declaring that the Teachers Council needs a complete rewrite—a complete rerun—because it is a toothless wonder. As for the Tertiary Education Commission it is becoming a very very protectionist organisation for a few what I would call State institutions. For instance I have on the table in front of me an application of concern from Unitec for that institution to obtain university status. The amount of money that has been spent by all parties at this time in our maturity to come to an obvious answer is laughable. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
: 
 One of the entities we are talking about tonight is the Tertiary Education Commission and I would like the Minister—now that he is in charge of tertiary education—to explain just where the Tertiary Education Commission fits in. It is my hope on behalf of 2.5 million taxpayers that he will do a better job than his predecessor the Hon Steve Maharey. I think that any history of public administration in New Zealand will record that member’s efforts as among the worst of any Minister—[ 
Interruption 
]—and it is laughable that the member for Otaki is probably going to vote for him when Labour eventually changes its leadership. In fact I think that Mr Maharey’s tenure as the Minister in charge of tertiary education should have put paid to any leadership prospects he had. 
Darren Hughes 
: Give us a tutorial now. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Just settle down. 
I want the Minister to tell us now what is going on with the Tertiary Education Commission. Mr Mallard is getting headlines again as in the Christchurch  
Press 
 today with talk of redundancies at Christchurch Polytechnic. Mr Mallard is wandering into the polytech sector like a bull in a china shop and he is causing a great deal of strife by proposing changes that he will have to back off from. In fact if he has not been told to back off by the Prime Minister already then she will probably do that before the end of this week when her media-monitoring unit counts the polytech headlines around the country. 
What has happened is that the Minister has made a number of aggressive and irritable speeches saying that he is going to cut back a number of course types. Now on the face of it that looks like a reasonable thing to do—except that a couple of months ago he announced a whole series of reviews of courses in tertiary institutions. And that sounds as if it would not be too unreasonable except that prior to that the Government made an agreement with those polytechs about how they would handle the community education allocations in particular. That would have made some sense except that before that the polytechs had done their charters and profiles in great detail for the next 3 years and they had been signed off by the Government. 
So people are trying to run a polytech and provide skills for an economy that needs them and there have now been four different interventions from the Minister and the Tertiary Education Commission. I do not necessarily sympathise with the sector generally but I have to say that that is just grossly negligent public management. It is a case of ministerial whim; every time Ministers feel a bit of pressure they go out and say they will do something else—whatever it is. So the chief executive and the council are sitting there trying to work out which plan the Government will carry out—because all those plans came from the Government. 
Well can the Minister tell us what he will do? Will he stick with the original agreements about charters and profiles or will he stick with the next agreement his predecessor made about community education? Or will he throw both of those over in favour of pursuing the raft of reviews that are being done by former corrections officers and people with PhDs—people who have never had a job but are reviewing our tertiary institutions? Or will he follow the statements he has made recently that he is sending a package off to Cabinet that will involve taking tens of millions of dollars out of the polytechs? I would like him to tell me that. 
The other thing I would like him to tell me is just what he is doing about the viability of those institutions. Will he go around the same circle that Steve Maharey did where everyone stands around collaborates and wrings their hands? He coughed up money for the polytechs just because he could not stand not being nice to them. So he bailed them out. Then 3 years later they were all back in financial difficulty again. Clearly the Government has failed to get to the nub of the problem in relation to the viability of polytechs and I want to know why the Minister will not take a sensible and measured approach to the matter. Why does he feel that he has to go out there and aggressively strut in front of the sector to show that he means business? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister of Education) 
: 
 I did not think it was possible. I really did not think it was possible. I did not think that Bill English could be a worse ditherer than Don Brash—but he is absolutely. I did not think it would be possible for someone in this Parliament much less in the country to dither more than Don Brash but we have had it from Bill English. He rammed into the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology and criticised it for all its courses— 
Darren Hughes 
: He didn’t enrol? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Well no. I think they have some standards! 
But now something is being done about it and some changes are being made. The jandal has flip-flopped. The wrist has gone the other way and it is almost unbelievable. We knew we had a tired and confused Leader of the Opposition who was very patchy in his approach and pretty hopeless overall. But what do we have now? We have the former Leader of the Opposition working really hard to try to make the present leader look good. [ 
Interruption 
] Well I think Bill English is more of a “Mr Sad” tonight because what he has seen is what a number of us have seen recently— 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Are you talking about the estimates? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Actually I am talking about the reviews and in particular the review of the performance of Bill English. He has been well reviewed by his caucus colleagues. He relied on Nick Smith to count the numbers yet he complained about a few polytechnics being out of balance. Well relying on Nick Smith to do the numbers is I think a fair sign of where that all sits. 
 But I turn back to the reviews. I think there is not much doubt that Career Services is a particularly tidy organisation. I do want to congratulate Patricia McKelvey on her Queen’s Birthday honour. She has made an enormous contribution to education in New Zealand as the principal of Wellington High School and recently as chair of the board of Career Services. I think she is also on the council of Victoria University. Career Services is a very tidy organisation and I think it is fair to say that if all the other education Crown entities were of the same degree of tidiness we would have some more focus on educational rather than administrative matters in New Zealand. 
I want to thank the Hon Russell Marshall for agreeing to take on the position of chair of the Tertiary Education Commission. He is someone who has a lot of respect in the sector someone who was my predecessor some time ago and someone who worked very closely with the Hon Richard Prebble when they were friends in the Labour Government. They worked very closely together on important issues at some stages and less closely later on. I look forward to the new chief executive arriving for the commission I understand at some stage next month. 
I notice that Mr English has taken a line that I think is rather unwise around Karen Sewell who is a well-respected public servant. She is someone who I think has given following the Rodger review and the initial work of Judith Aitken the Education Review Office the reputation of being an organisation with an iron glove. 
Hon Member 
: She is soft. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: No a velvet glove and an iron fist. On some occasions she is a little soft but as the member who used to be the principal of a college in Northland knows on occasions the Education Review Office is forced to tell the story as it is. It is full and frank and not always desirable and I tell Mr Peters that people are not always comfortable with the reports of Education Review Office. 
Jim Peters 
: Because they are not always reliable. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: I know on some occasions people get really bad reports and I am amazed that we have gone all this time with the member as a member of Parliament and no one has had a good look at them. But I have had a read of them. I think it is particularly— 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: Would you like to table them? 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Well I think they are on the public record. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: Oh please! 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: The member could go all high-tech and look them up on the web if he wants to. [ 
Interruption 
] I know we have a couple of very retiring members further back and I am surprised we have had a valedictory speech from Rodney Hide but have not had one from the two members who are going voluntarily. I invite them to take a call and tell us what they care about. 
Reports noted. 
Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority 
LARRY BALDOCK (United Future) 
: 
 I rise to speak on the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority. United Future members would like to make it known that we are great supporters of this agency. We think it is doing a good job and that it has some very practical solutions to some of the problems the country faces. 
For 2 years now we have put in Budget bids for this agency to have increased funding and we believe that it deserves to have more funding from the Minister of Energy. We hope the Minister will continue to be an advocate for this agency. If the Government is serious about its energy conservation strategy it ought to be putting more money into this agency so it can achieve real reductions and real successes in energy efficiency rather than just this little bit of money which is a slight indication of commitment. 
It is time that the Government walked the walk in terms of the so-called effects of climate change. I see that a great deal of the money that this agency is given is actually siphoned off to deal with reports on climate change and on the effects of carbon dioxide gases rather than actually doing the things many New Zealanders believe would make a difference in our country such as increasing the use of solar water heating in our homes. We were pleased to see back in 2003-04 that funding doubled so that solar water heating could be installed in more homes but it is still so little that it is hardly going to make a dent in reducing our dependence on energy. What is needed on that front is for the industry behind solar water heating to be given a very clear signal that the Government is serious about solar water heating being installed in all new homes and seeing many of our older homes being refitted. Until the Government gives a clear signal that it really is serious about that the industry will not respond and get ready for the massive infrastructure it needs in order to meet the demand that will come. We urge the Minister to take that initiative to really deliver for the people of New Zealand in that strategy and to support the good people in the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority. 
We have welcomed the work that the agency has been doing with energy- efficiency ratings for homes and we are pleased to see that in the 2005-06 Budget it has been given another $0.6 million to increase the number of homes that it can rate. But again it is still too little. We would like to see United Future’s policy implemented whereby all homes will need to have energy-efficiency ratings when sold. We think that is a good way to have market measures involved in upgrading our homes to be more efficient. It is not a huge expense for a home to be given an energy-efficiency rating. The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority is able to deliver this service and more people would be able to be trained if the demand were increased. For a very minimal cost people could come and rate our homes find the spots where heat is leaking out and find the ways in which insulation and efficiency overall can be improved. They would consider the ways in which we light and heat our homes. There is much saving that can be made. We believe that if an energy-efficiency rating were required at the time of the sale of a home people would be motivated to get better ratings because they would be able to get better prices for their homes. The market would very much take care of this improvement. So we look forward to the Minister getting behind the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority and offering it more support through Budget allocation in the years ahead so that it can do a lot more. 
We hear an awful lot about the worries of climate change and the impending effects of human-induced climate change. The Government is imposing a carbon tax on our country and our businesses. It is seeking to raise something like $300 million with that carbon tax yet it is giving less than $30 million to the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority which could actually make a real difference. We do not think the carbon tax makes any sense at all and we oppose it absolutely. But perhaps the tax would make a little more sense if it was being directed to the authority so that it could make rapid progress in energy-efficiency initiatives around the country. 
Report noted. 
Civil Aviation Authority 
Land Transport Safety Authority of New Zealand 
Maritime Safety Authority of New Zealand 
Transfund New Zealand 
Transit New Zealand 
Transport Accident Investigation Commission 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 In the few minutes that I have I wish to focus specifically on Transit New Zealand. The reason I do so is that it is the Crown entity responsible for the maintenance and construction of the New Zealand highway system. I have to say that back in 1999 Labour came into office with the promise of fixing New Zealand’s roads. I recall that Labour members went up and down the country saying that and especially in Auckland they made that kind of boast. What is their record after 5½ years? 
Frankly it is one of failure. The reason I say that is that in 2000 and 2001 expenditure actually went down. Transit ended up with hundreds of millions of dollars of unspent money in the bank simply because the Government put everything on further review—the best single example being the North Shore bus lane. It was approved back in 1997 and finally started this year with construction to be completed at the earliest in 2009. Think of that—a 12-year period to do a simple project! 
Last year Transit issued a document which I will seek leave to table later that went to every single household in the Auckland region called  
Getting Auckland Going 
. The information in this document caused that now infamous rift between the Northern Employers and Manufacturers Association the Auckland chamber of commerce the Minister and Mike Williams. The reason is that this document is a bunch of lies. That is the truth of the matter. It lies from start to finish. 
I want to produce this particular evidence. The document refers to 17 projects. I guess they got two of them right. Do members know why they got two of them right? Because the construction had been finished when the document was issued. So I guess when they said in relation to the Puhinui interchange that construction was complete at least they could go down there take a photograph and say “Yes that is complete.” They did the same also for another project Grafton Gully stages one and two—also complete. They got that part right. The rest of it was fundamentally untrue. In particular and this is where Auckland feels so deeply let down they went through a list of projects. 
Construction on State Highway 18 the Hobsonville deviation was to start in 2005. Bear in mind that this document went out in September 2004. It was issued by Transit to every householder. Has construction started on State Highway 18? No. That was a lie in this document. 
The construction of State Highway 20 the Mount Roskill extension was to start according to this document in 2004. That is about 12 weeks after this document was issued. Has it even started yet? No. 
So they could not predict even 12 weeks in front. That is just amazing. The next example is State Highway 20 Manukau extension: “construction starts 2005”. Has it started? No. 
State Highway 1 new Waitemata crossing—“studies start in 2004”. Bear in mind that this document was issued in September 2004. They had to project forward only 12 weeks—just 12 weeks. Did they get that right? No. Has the project director started his work yet? No. 
 So that is the reason why Aucklanders feel so deeply disappointed. The truth is this. The only thing that one can now believe on whether construction has started is if one sees the bulldozers actually starting work. Anything else does not count. I read in the last week that State Highway 20 which as I said was to start last year is to start in August. All I can say is that we will have to wait and see whether that is true. 
The problem is this and it comes back to governmental responsibility. Everyone in Auckland knows that our highways are clogged. Everyone in Auckland knows in particular that State Highway 20—the western ring route which everyone acknowledges is absolutely crucial—has to be done to make Auckland’s traffic flow. The Government has said that we have said that and all Auckland mayors have said that. 
When the Government’s road builder Transit—under the authority of Ministers of Transport—says that the project will start and it gives very clear dates just within 12 weeks frankly people have relied on this document. The document was sent to every single household in Auckland—that is 500000 households—with the intention and expectation that people would rely on the document; that they would read it and believe it. In a sense I guess that was part of the Government’s preconditioning for this election. Frankly the Government has let Auckland down. Virtually every project that was predicted to start in 2004 and 2005 has not happened. 
Hon Parekura Horomia 
: Rubbish! 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: The Minister of Maori Affairs who I guess thinks he knows Auckland well says “Rubbish.” That speaks of his ignorance. If he had read this document he would be able to compare just looking at the roads themselves whether the roads were started on the days months or even the years stated in the document and he would know that the answer was no. It is a judgment on the Government that members in Cabinet do not know whether their own proposals to fix Auckland’s roads have succeeded or been started. In fact that is an incredible indictment on that Cabinet. That it is so ignorant and has let Auckland down so badly that it has deeply misled— 
Darren Hughes 
: Is the member’s tunnel part of National’s policy? 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: We support public-private partnerships I say to the junior whip. National has a clear policy on fixing the roads. We are committed to spending all of the petrol tax on roads over the next 6 years. We have also said that we support public-private partnerships. Well-conceived projects like a second crossing ought to be put out to tender. Frankly if we go by the situation in Sydney and Melbourne they will come. It does not require any Government funding to do so and that is the case in Sydney and Melbourne. 
This Government in its land transport legislation from last year has let this country down disgracefully.