Barry Maggie: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBarry Maggie: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 20 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18135. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): I rise to speak on the Budget debate. This sixth Budget from our Minister of Finance the Hon Bill English delivers where it matters most for our children and for their families. [Interruption] Thank you. Shall I start that again? What do you think—start the clock?Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: All right.MAGGIE BARRY: Start the clock. OK. This is a Budget that delivers where it matters for families and for vulnerable New Zealanders. There are a lot of measures I could talk about in my contribution to this Budget debate. I will concentrate on justthree of our priority areas: health education and how we have helped vulnerable children. No Minister or member of Prime Minister John Key’s caucus is ever allowed to indulge in the kind of rubbish and rhetoric that we have heard from the Opposition so far. Its big-spending big-borrowing squandering of taxpayers’ hard-earned money—no way. We have a plan we have targets we work towards them and we have a very disciplined approach. When we reach the targets and when we reach the savings then and only then do we allocate money to invest in our priorities.Tony Ryall is a very good example of his kind—a canny manager of the public health purse strings. Our Minister of Health’s very careful control over the health budget in the past 5 years has seen district health boards reduce their deficits from an estimated $200 million overboard to around $25 million. Clawing that back has helped free up some $412 million of savings which is now available to invest in new health initiatives. That is a stark contrast to the incompetent management by Labour’s Annette King when she bumbled her way through far too many years of mismanagement of our health system borrowing and spending up large in all the wrong places. Waiting lists grew. We had people going overseas for cancer treatment. We had endless examples of people who were very ill on stretchers in corridors. I am talking about only my own electorate in North Shore Hospital. The district health board inWaitematā has been turned round. Under TonyRyall’s governance and Lester Levy and the rest of the team it is now a world-class top-performing district health board and one I am very proud to have in my community. Again that is a stark contrast to the hopeless bumbling we saw from the Minister of Health in the Labour administration Annette King.Under TonyRyall’s watch 40000 more patients every year now receive hip and knee replacements and we will be spending another $110 million on those sorts of elective surgeries. These are the sorts of operations that really are priceless to the patients who receive that new knee or that new hip. It reduces their pain it restores their independence and it really does improve their quality of life. Under Tony Ryall for the first time ever our health spending will top a record $15.6 billion. That has allowed the Minister of Health to target the spending at where it will make the most difference. He has invested $33 million into better cancer services. The 20000 New Zealanders each year who receive the terrible news that they have cancer will have better and faster diagnostic and treatment services. Again that is priceless.In my North Shore electorate people have come up to me in the last few days since the Budget and they have said how delighted they are with the extension of free general practitioner visits and free prescriptions which is now being rolled out to all children under 13. That $19 million investment has been welcomed by agencies like Plunket and all of the parents I have spoken to who have said they will not hesitate any more to take their children to the doctor as soon as the children start to show signs of illness. That means that the children will not get as ill. It gives peace of mind to the parents and saves a lot of misery for the children. It is expected that some 400000 primary school - aged children will benefit from that measure alone. An extra $112 million for disability support services to meet rising needs and costs will make a huge difference to the one in five New Zealanders who suffers from disability. Our seniors will also really appreciate the $96 million for home-based support services and the $40 million for additional support for elderly people including those with dementia. There are more details to be announced on that a little later.There is also going to be spent in this Budget a further $20 million for the rheumatic fever prevention programme and $4 million to increase the number of renal transplants performed. I know about that firsthand in my own electorate. A couple of weeks ago I represented Tony Ryall and opened a new community dialysis centre inMairangi Bay—a state-of-the-art world-class facility that is going to make a phenomenaldifference to the quality of life of the people who suffer and have to do renal dialysis all the time. It is a marvellous facility and the stories were absolutely heart-wrenching—the joy that those people felt at being able to have such a facility within their own community so they no longer have to travel long distances to get the treatment they require.When it comes to education our Minister of Education Hekia Parata and Associate Minister of Education Nikki Kaye have really delivered for our children in places that matter. Our spending on early childhood education is excellent and combining that with primary and secondary education spending is going to be about $10.1 billion in this financial year. We are investing $155.7 million of that in early childhood education services and that is really going to help the parents who have to make the choice to go back to work and the parents who need to know that their children are being looked after well. We all know I think that early childhood education plays a crucial role in giving children the right start in life particularly in our most vulnerable communities. I know that Hekia Parata is particularly proud of the gains we have made for Pasifika and Māori children in that regard. It has gone from a very poor turnout and a very poor uptake of early childhood care services and early childhood education to a much more robust participation.As many of you know—we have talked about it in the House often enough—we have targeted that 98 percent of New Zealand children will participate in early childhood education and that will be by 2016. We are already delivering at 93 percent and are very likely to reach the target beforehand. When you look at where money has been spent Labour managed about $800 million on early childhood education back in 2008 and we have put in $1.5 billion. That is how much we care and that is how much we believe that we put our money where it counts—with our young and with our vulnerable children.That brings me to the Hon Paula Bennett. This Budget has also invested to protect our most vulnerable children. The tragic statistics are indeed sobering. On average there are around 22000 cases of abuse and neglect of New Zealand children each year and more than 50 children have died in the past 5 years because of extreme abuse. That is intolerable that is unconscionable and it must not continue.Tim Macindoe: Horrific.MAGGIE BARRY: It is horrific as the junior whip has just said. It is sobering for all of us to be reminded of the statistics to know the names of theNiaGlassies to know the names of those children who represent the tragic face of these terrible figures. We really need to put some money into that and to make a real and practical difference by committing to the most vulnerable children. We are doing that. The protection of children from abuse and neglect has been further strengthened in this Budget by $33 million in operating funding. The Budget has committed $16.5 million to continue to develop new ways of working together implementing the new services and ensuring greater monitoring of at-risk children and young people.One of the things I really like about the way the Hon Paula Bennett operates in this space is that she knows it so well. She has an enormous enthusiasm for it. She came to my electorate and we went into the Work and Income office and the Child Youth and Family office. These were unannounced visits. She certainly made an impact when we went in there. She has a way of bringing people together. I think one of the very successful things she does is encourage the various agencies to work together in a way that is cooperative. They do not share private details unless they need to but talking together and working together on a common cause has really worked. I think that with the good progress she is making on implementing the Children’s Action Plan with two Children’s Teams up and running already—one in Rotorua and one in Whangarei—thenew funding is going to mean that eight extra Children’s Teams will be rolled out in the next financial year.These are the measures that are making a phenomenal difference to families to children and to vulnerable people in New Zealand society. We are not sidetracked by the sideshow the muckraking and the ludicrous antics of a desperate Opposition. Those members are braying and their unhappiness is evident. You look across the Chamber—they are unhappy people. They do not like their leader. They do not like their policies. They do not like their chances of getting the Treasury benches any time soon and for the good of the country I am very grateful about that. When I look at this Budget I see a family-friendly Budget that makes a huge difference to people’s lives where it matters. We will put aside the trivia the nonsense and I suppose the desperate posturing of our political opponents and instead focus on the extraordinarily good benefits that have been handed down in this Budget. I am very proud of this Budget and I commend it. Thank you.