Reti ShaneDr SHANE RETI (National): There is only one person in New Zealand who will not acknowledge there is a health crisis and that person is health Minister Andrew Little. Every other rational person can see there is clearly a health crisis but from the Minister's Wellington office he cannot. So let's see what those at the coalface are saying. Nurses: the New Zealand Nurses Organisation surveyed its members last week reporting it gave its members the opportunity in response to health Minister Andrew Little's persistent assertions that there is no health crisis and that the system as a whole is coping. The 99 percent of responding members said the system was either in crisis or already beyond crisis. The New Zealand Nurses Organisation is reporting today that student nurses—some who are unlikely to have been on a hospital ward before—were paid with food vouchers. It has also reported that one of the students was hit. This is wrong on many levels. Firstly the New Zealand Nurses Organisation reports that their students receive inadequate orientation. The Minister's suggestion that this is what enrolled nursing is like shows how out of touch he is. Enrolled nursing is vastly different to this. Second is it now a Government policy that nurses will not be paid wages and salary but instead will be paid with food vouchers and where does this cross the boundary of work for payment versus volunteering? Thirdly it is reported that some of the work was watch duty. The question arises: were unqualified students on watch duty for people who might harm them or maybe might even harm themselves? Minister Little this is what a health crisis looks like. Emergency department (ED) doctors: what are they saying? Those who are actually at the coalface. Twelve ED doctors from Palmerston North Hospital recently wrote to the Minister saying There are people with major trauma waiting for more than nine hours in wheelchairs." ED doctors at Wairarapa Hospital recently said "It is beyond a crisis; it is a catastrophe." ED doctors at Waikato Hospital reported a crisis and an elderly woman at North Shore Hospital waited outside in freezing conditions in a leaky tent. Minister Little this is what a health crisis looks like. Orthopaedic surgeons: their surgical waiting list has doubled in the last 10 months from 14000 to roughly 28000 today. A large contribution to that surgical waiting list is orthopaedics so the orthopaedic surgeon should know a lot about surgical waiting lists. The president of the New Zealand Orthopaedic Association surgeon John McKie stated recently in a media release called "Elective Surgery Crisis": (1) "We can't blame COVID for the ballooning waiting lists"; (2) "The numbers of people waiting for elective surgery is much worse than the numbers released by the government." Minister Little this is what a health crisis looks like. Here are some of the features of our health crisis. ED wait times are the worst in a decade. Two-hundred people in April waited more than 24 hours and sometimes with tragic consequences. First specialist assessment: those who are waiting to even see a specialist are waiting more than four months—36000. The surgical waiting list: those who have seen a specialist have been promised their surgery will be done in four months doubling in the last 10 months. These are people with painful hips painful knees. They struggle to walk to the toilet. They sleep at night with a bent knee because it's so painful. These are people with cataracts who are slowly going blind. Mr Little this is what a health crisis looks like. And what has been the Minister's response? To demean and disparage the hard-working health workforce to tell nursing organisations that they speak with "forked tongue" to tell experienced ED doctors that their data cannot be trusted to tell ICU doctors that they have the figures wrong. This is what we are hearing from the current Minister. We know how we got here. We got here through incompetence in the first two years. The waiting lists were going up ED wait times were struggling in the first two years even before COVID arrived and then over that period—March 2020 roughly through for a year—we failed to build ICU beds. The safety valve or the buffer if you like for ICU beds is waiting lists. When you want to protect the health system you cancel waiting lists and that's what happened. A year ago a workforce warning letter from 20 DHBs was ignored and here we are now with health reforms and the distraction and redirection of financing. That's how we come to be here. What we need is a plan for how to get out of here. Our first thing that we could and should do is to give nurses the day one residency pathway to allow them to bring their skills and contribute to ask them to bring their skills and to contribute to the health workforce shortage that we have. Mr Little in Wellington you are not seeing from your office but I'm telling you there is a health force crisis and so is the rest of the sector.SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired. Before the next member takes her call I just want to remind members of the procedures when members want to speak to each other. We're not bound to our own seats but an incident involving Ms Grigg and me admonishing her quietly I think needs to be made clear to all members. If members want to speak to another member they can shift and sit next to them. They shouldn't stand crouch or similar. But the other thing is that it is very impolite to do that in between the member who is speaking and the Chair. I think if members have urgent conversations then they should either go to the lobby or go to the backbench. I think that way we keep a bit more decorum in the House."