Ryall Tony: Valedictory StatementsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRyall Tony: Valedictory Statements[Sitting date: 30 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19703. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health):Can I start by acknowledging three very special people: my wife Kara son Llewellyn and daughter Maisie who are with us here today. Thank you very much for the fantastic support and contribution that you have made to my career. My wife will tell you that in 1997 when we got married I told her that I was going to do only another 6 years in Parliament. I think I actually said six terms but she is running that line. I would also like to acknowledge my parents Malcolm and Lenore who have come down from Whakatāne today my mother-in-law Pam and the rest of the family who are here too.Can I say it has been an absolute privilege to work with a group of exceptional and highly talented people in the National Party over the last 24 years. Every one of those people has been an outstanding New Zealander and it has just been the greatest honour to have any association with them over that time. And I have to tell you I think they are all looking absolutely fantastic this evening.I was first elected in 1990 as one of 32 new MPs who came to Parliament in that stage. That is actually bigger than some caucuses in Parliament. I must say I am really surprised at just how much I have forgotten in the intervening years because actually I knew everything when I first came here in 1990. I had spent 14 months campaigning and I would like to acknowledge the support of my parents during all that period of time. I spent 14 months campaigning and it was a fantastic opportunity to learn so much about the different communities in what was then the East Cape electorate.We spent a lot of time door-knocking to become known in those days and you know you really have to take every opportunity. I was out door-knocking in I think it was Richard Street in Ōpōtiki just opposite the high school I think and it was not the most salubrious part of my electorate. I was out there knocking on this door and then all of a sudden along from the side of the house came this pit bull terrier. It looked at me I looked at it and it came for me. I got my clipboard and I tried to protect myself. It bit my leg. It hung on my hand. I had this dog hanging off my arm like this and I managed to get rid of it. I have got to say it was really quite a worrying experience.So I got back in my car and I drove back home to Whakatāne. I rang up Ian McLean—who is with us here today—who was my caretaker MP and I said: “Oh well you know I’ve had a very bad day. I’ve been bitten by a dog.” He said: “Great.” I said: “No no I’ve been bitten by a dog.” He said: “Fantastic. Did you get a photo?”. So I drove all the way back to Ōpōtiki had my hand re-bandaged and we got a nice picture in the paper. In fact that story got on to the front page of the New Zealand Herald which is no mean feat when you are a new candidate. I think the paper was somewhat attracted to my quote that the dog had bitten me but if it had been the Labour candidate it would have eaten her.I have been supported locally in the National Party by a great team of people over the years. You know who you are and I am very grateful for all the support that you have given me. When I came to Parliament back then David Lange and Robert Muldoon were still here. I had dinner with Sir Robert one night. I have got to tell you that after I struggled to make any conversation we sat there and ate our dinner for 15 minutes in silence. Then he got up and he said: “Right that was really good. Let’s do it again sometime.”Look it has been fantastic. I have had tremendous satisfaction from the work that we have done in the electorate and I was just reflecting today on some of the amazing things that people ask you to do. I remember that just a few days before Christmas one year a lady rang me up and said: “My husband is stranded on a live sheep shipment in the Middle East and I can’t get him home for Christmas.” You would ring your MP and so I rang Don McKinnon and her husband got home for Christmas. That was fantastic. There are also the number of people whom you have assisted at their saddest time to get bodies back to New Zealand when their children have died overseas and there is the fantastic support that happens there. I am reflecting on how every year our family gets a Christmas card in an email from some guy whom I helped 22 years ago. Every year he sends a Christmas card. I have been reflecting for years on what I actually did to help him but whatever it was that response has just been marvellous.I would like to reflect on my electorate agents. I would like to acknowledge them. There is Pam Eglinton who was actually the best employment decision I ever made because she is now my mother-in-law. Robyn Pam Jenny Trish Nigel and Jackie have been fantastic in the work that we have done. We have had a lot of challenges in our area and a lot of natural disasters—you know floods oil spills kiwifruit collapses Labour Governments—and we have got through them all.I want to also acknowledge the constituents who have been fantastic. They have been kind and they have been incredibly generous to my family and me over all the years. Often you hear about people having problems with constituents shouting and screaming at them. I have got to say that the people of the Bay of Plenty and the East Cape have shown just the greatest kindness and generosity to me and my family over the time and I would like to pay great tribute to the people of the Bay of Plenty. It has been a very fast-growing electorate in the Western Bay of Plenty. For example when I started as the MP for Papamoa which came into my electorate in 1996 there were 6000 people. Today there are 21000. So it just goes to show that if you get a good MP lots of people shift to the area.I want to acknowledge Dame Jenny Shipley who as Prime Minister promoted me to Cabinet in 1997. It was my great privilege to play a part in delivering New Zealand’s first woman Prime Minister and it was a great privilege. We were a group as we were planning that called the Te Puke Bypass Committee as some will remember and it is a great pleasure to me that we are now spending $400 million on the proper Te Puke bypass which will be opening shortly.Mrs Shipley gave me the fantastic opportunity to be a Minister. I have got to tell you that when you have a young baby at the time your mind is sort of on everything. I remember pulling in at Whakatāne Airport one day taking the baby out of the car checking the luggage in and getting stopped by a constituent and then we flew off to Auckland. As we were flying there was an announcement: “Ah Mr Ryall we’re just letting you know that your car keys are at Whakatāne Airport. You left them in your car with the engine running and the driver’s door open.” So it always pays to have a sign-written car.Being in Opposition was incredibly frustrating—a very frustrating 9 years—but the one thing I learnt there is that it is a great opportunity to listen learn travel the country and find out about things that you did not really know about and so many people were very generous with their time in helping me in that role. In 2005 Dr Brash—who is here today—gave me the responsibility of being the health spokesperson and I will touch on that shortly.I have certainly appreciated the responsibility the Prime Minister has given me as the Minister for State Owned Enterprises working with Bill English on the mixed-ownership model programme. Bill commented to me the other day that he and I in my role as Minister for State Owned Enterprises both under Mrs Shipley and in this Government have privatised or partially privatised $7.7 billion worth of assets. He thought that was more than Richard Prebble had done but we are not going to tell anybody about that.The Prime Minister also gave me the job of Minister of Health. I have got to say that this has been the best job in the Government. You work with quality people every day who are dedicated to the welfare of New Zealanders. I wake up most mornings and I turn to my wife and say: “Ugh imagine being Minister of Education.” Now that is a really tough job.Look I think many people underestimate the size of the health sector in New Zealand. It is 10 percent of GDP. For every $1 spent in New Zealand 10c is spent in the health sector. There is not only our $15 billion public health service with 75000 staff but a very strong and dynamic private sector—$1 billion in natural health products $1 billion in health IT and devices—which has some great New Zealand companies. I think it is this intersection of health and technology that is going to provide an opportunity to create untold wealth in the future and it is really important that New Zealand is part of that.I am very proud of our Government’s health plan which we are rolling out and will continue to roll out. I think the seminal decision was that we would stick with the structures that we inherited and really focus on results and improving performance. I think that over the last 6 years our doctors and nurses in the team have delivered exceptional results for New Zealanders across quality productivity and the financial domains within constrained funding—those six national health targets. You know doctors and nurses are very competitive people. No one likes being at the bottom of those national health targets and that has really driven a much better performance including 40000 extra elective surgeries quicker emergency departments and much faster cancer treatment.Immunisation—I noted Dr Hutchison talked about the fact that in 10 of our 20 district health boards the rate of immunisation for Māori 2-year-olds is now higher than the Pākehā immunisation rate. No one would ever have thought that that was possible in New Zealand. We have shorter cardiac waits.Tobacco smoking—fantastic work that we have done there. I went to the World Health Assembly in Geneva—I have got to say Prime Minister that I have taken only two overseas trips as Minister of Health—and I was there talking about this work that we were doing in New Zealand on Pathway to Smokefree 2025. We have a programme that we have systematised across the whole country called ABC. “A” is when health professionals ask whether you are a smoker; if you are it is “B” for a brief conversation because that is quite effective in getting people to quit; and “C” is for when they offer you cessation medicine—ABC.So I went to the World Health Assembly and I was giving a talk about this. I do not know how many people in this House have ever given a speech where they have lost their audience—it had never happened to me before that time—but everyone from Africa started talking amongst themselves and I thought: “Oh my goodness I have caused an international incident.” So I completed my contribution. I sat down next to a lady from Jamaica and I said: “Why was everyone from Africa quite dislocated by my speech?”. She said: “Well in Africa they have ABC for HIV/AIDS—‘A’ for ‘Abstinence’ ‘B’ for ‘Be faithful’ and ‘C’ for ‘if you can’t use a Condom’—and they couldn’t work out how that stops smoking.” So we have got a lot of acronyms in this area.Look it has been a fantastic portfolio and with the Prime Minister’s support we have achieved quite a lot. I think the decision that we made to fund 12 months’ Herceptin for New Zealand women is something that has made a huge difference to the lives of so many people. I remember an experience I had at a cafe in Tauranga a couple of weeks after the 2005 election. I was standing in the line and this chap whom I had never met before came up and gave me this big bear-hug. I thought: “Well this is very dislocating in public.” It turned out to be a guy who said that a month before the election he had had to put his house on the market to get the money to buy Herceptin for his wife and the day after the election he was able to take his house off the market. Fantastic that contribution. So we have done a lot.I must say I had a fantastic opportunity meeting a lot of people in the health service. It always pays to be very careful. Jo Goodhew as the Associate Minister of Health is doing this hand hygiene thing. I was visiting an endoscopy suite a couple of years ago and I thought: “Well here is a great photo opportunity with the hand gel.” which I did and proceeded to rub my hands at which every person in the endoscopy suite theatre gasped in horror. I thought: “What is all the worry here?” and well of course it was lubricating gel. So we ought to get that prostate awareness programme started.I wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about what the next 10 years in the health area is going to be like. You know with regard to ageing the number of people over the age of 80 is going to treble in the next 10 years. So who is over 65 is just not the issue any more because 65 is the new 45—I am trying to convince myself as I get there.I think there are five big mega trends and the interaction between all of them is going to just change health care completely. The first of the five is care being closer to home. All this care is coming out of hospitals and into communities and into people’s homes. Pharmacists GPs home-care workers nutrition advisers—all these people are playing a greater role and there is going to be this much greater responsibility that we are all going to have to take for our health care in something that they call self care. It is a bit like Air New Zealand—it is getting us to do all the work and we like it. This is where we are going to have to take responsibility.You know Sir Ray Avery is developing a piece of technology the size of your wristwatch with a beam that comes on your wrist and measures your temperature your blood pressure and your pulse. That information is then transmitted to a device that can be monitored by your general practice. So as you can imagine this technology is going to change everything. That is my second point. This “anywhere any time” use of innovative technology is going to change our health care. This device it is just going to help change everything over the next 5 to 10 years. You are going to be able to plug your own personal ultrasound device into your cellphone and imagine being able to beam that message to your local GP. These advances are incredible.Thirdly intelligence and insight from big data—this work that we are doing collecting information across Government departments across patients and across people with all the privacy protections—is going to allow us to build a picture on how health care interventions change people’s lives and on the best place to do it.The fourth trend is personalised medicine. All this knowledge about your genome and your biomarkers is going to allow clinicians to develop very personalised therapies applying solely to you and they are going to be able to provide you with information about your risk factors in the future. This will have huge ethical issues about whether we actually want to know these risks but this personalised medicine is going to be amazing.And I think the fifth big trend that is going to affect health care is that we are going to have this expanding role of non-physicians and payment that actually rewards the quality of care and the outcome that people provide.I would like to also just take a moment to thank the fantastic people who have supported me over the years. I would like to acknowledge my ministerial staff—in particular my “head of filing” Peter McCardle. I thank them for the wonderful contribution they have all made—officials at the Ministry of Health the State Services Commission Treasury’s State-owned enterprises unit the travel office the security guards the Bellamy’s staff the messengers and the gallery officers the VIP drivers the cleaners and the district health board staff and their chairs in particular.I cannot finish off without acknowledging my three comrades: Bill English Nick Smith and Roger Sowry. You know Parliament can be a very lonely place. It can be full of self-doubt and frustrated ambition. I think it is pretty unusual for any member of Parliament to have had three very close friends throughout their whole career. The relationship with those guys has been enduring and sustaining. They are extremely capable people who have continued to be friends over the last 25 years and contrary to public opinion we have never worked as a group. Frankly we can never agree on anything. On any issue it is always two versus two and the two are always variant. So it has been wonderful to have had that association with them. It has been the most fantastic association anyone in Parliament could have and I have just really appreciated the support that those guys have given.Everybody else is going to be going off and I am going to be supporting the Prime Minister by campaigning as well. I wish you all a lot of activity and I wish all the best for our side for the work that you are going to do over the next period of time. You will all be going out. Many of you may be doing rest home visits. I stopped doing those a few years ago. I remember going to one. You spend a lot of time giving out your card and you know shaking everyone’s hand. I had the name tag on and I did all that and as I left the day room I heard one of the ladies say: “Was that the nice new young doctor?”. And then I discovered that they all had voted 2 weeks earlier.So thank you very much Mr Speaker for the opportunity to be here to thank my fantastic family for the contribution and support that they have made. It has just been marvellous. And thank you for the great privilege it has been to be here to represent the National Party and the Bay of Plenty and to have worked for New Zealand over the last 24 years.Sitting suspended from 6.09 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.