Coleman Jonathan: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeColeman Jonathan: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 28 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:4140. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): Well I am really hurt by that speech. That was very very nasty from the member for Te Tai Tonga Rino Tirikatene. My advice to him is that he needs to cheer up because it just ain’t that bad. He needs to get out and talk to his constituents in the greater Wellington region and throughout the South Island. My advice is that he should spend a lot less time with Andrew Little because it is having a really negative effect on that member’s outlook on the economy and on life. As for calling Nathan Guy ineffectual—well I am just appalled by that. This is the greatest Minister for Primary Industries we have ever had. In fact he is the first Minister for Primary Industries we have ever had. But look this is a great Budget. I just encourage Rino Tirikatene to open the books to really have a good look and to actually read it because he needs some education. Stop hanging out with Grant Robertson and all the naysayers. Get in touch with the real people out there. This is a Budget—I tell you—that has gone down so well with the electorate Mr Tirikatene. It has been a real hit.One thing that really disturbed me about the member’s speech was he seems to think that the answer is more spending. He is going to spend more and more and more but he is not focused on the results. Where is he going to get that money from? Where is it going to come from? Is he going to conjure it out of thin air? What is he going to do? There has been no answer in the last 10 days as we have sat through speech after speech from the Labour Party members. All the Green Party has contributed to the debate is that vicious attack on metrosexuals by Kevin Hague that was reported in the New Zealand Herald today. There were no ideas coming from the left at all and yet here we have an excellent Budget delivered by the greatest Minister of Finance ever.What you see if you look back over the last 7 years is that we have done things in a very considered incremental way. You know we have not gone in there and slashed and burnt. We have been all about rejigging the spending within baselines to deliver the best possible outcomes for the people of New Zealand. I heard a report the other day from the Hugo Group where a lot of National Ministers went and spoke and then the Labour people got up. Andrew Little and Grant Robertson were there. The Hugo Group compère got up and said: “Look you’ll have to excuse Labour they’re in a rebuilding phase.” It is year 7 and it is still rebuilding—no policy no ideas just a lot of negativity coming out.What I can say is that I am thrilled as Minister of Health with the gains that we have achieved in this Budget. There is $403 million in new spending going into help working families in New Zealand achieve more access to the health system. It has been quite spectacular. The Prime Minister and I were out at Kenepuru Hospital the other week launching the $98 million initiative for more elective surgery for New Zealanders. We have been very targeted in our approach to health. These have been tight financial times but we have been very focused on delivering the services that people need and elective surgery was an area where the Labour Government was dramatically failing. We have lifted the numbers of elective surgeries from 118000 to 162000 while we have been in Government. That has been a massive increase. We have lifted the number of specialist appointments by 50000. More New Zealanders than ever are getting the appointments they need and they are getting the surgery they need. And do you know what? There are more doctors and more nurses in the system. So there are over 1500 more doctors and 3000-plus more nurses. That is a massive achievement because we have brought that very targeted approach.We have been all about looking at what money we have got and how we can increase that—a 2.5 percent increase in the baseline this year. When Labour was in Government it doubled the health budget but was doing fewer elective surgeries. It was pathetic. It was just not providing what people were needing.Hon Nathan Guy: Bloated bureaucracy.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Yes there was a bloated bureaucracy. There was not a focus on clinical outcomes. If you look at those six health targets for the first time with the announcement of the third quarter results this week we are hitting that emergency department target of 95 percent of patients in and out of the emergency departments in New Zealand within 6 hours. Is not that great? It is so different from when Labour was in Government. I can remember going to North Shore Hospital—Hon Nathan Guy: What happened there?Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Well there was a young man there with a broken leg who had been waiting under the neon lights for 24 hours in the corridor. That just does not happen at North Shore Hospital any more. We have turned that place round. It was in deficit it was performing poorly and people were not getting access to the medical services they needed.Immunisation is another very good example. We have really targeted immunisation. We have lifted those results. You know when we came in Labour was delivering about 70 percent of Māori children being immunised and slightly lower for Pasifika. That is now up into the mid-90s percent. There is real progress.Hon Ruth Dyson: All your own work Jonathan.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Well actually it is not all my own work. It is the work of the excellent officials doctors and nurses right across the system who have been working on that.If you look at cancer care cancer care is just incredible. When Labour was in Government 761 people had to go to Australia for cancer care. It was an embarrassment. It was shocking. Do you know how many people go now? Zero—absolutely zero. So we have turned that round. We achieved the first cancer target. We are now moving on to the second one which is people getting their whole cancer treatment pathway achieved within 62 days. That is the international gold standard. So very real progress has been made there.We are also focusing on primary care so a record amount of money is going into primary care this year. And of course there is palliative care—very important to New Zealand families. We have funded substantially into end-of-life care.Hon Nathan Guy: Very emotional.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Well it is a huge deal for people. There is new money going into hospices and new money going into the provision of palliative care nurses. It is a very important contribution to something that really makes a difference for New Zealand families.But we are not focusing just on procedures; we are actually taking a very clear view on preventive care as well. So in this Budget for the first time we are funding multidisciplinary teams in health in the joint and bone pain area. That is going to keep a lot of people out of hospital. They are going to get the treatment they need much earlier and actually we have had a very good response to that. So there are multidisciplinary teams out in the community.The other thing that we are doing at the moment actually is that we are looking at the health strategy again. It has not actually been totally revamped for many many years so we want to get more services out into the community. We have got to use all the skills that we have got across the health sector. We are going to use the skills of our nurses. We are going to use the skills of our pharmacists—all the allied health teams working out there in the community in primary care with the doctors and nurses who already work there. I will tell you what is interesting. When I go around the health system—I have been to all 20 district health boards—I sit down and say to the doctors and nurses and all the other members of the allied health team: “Well OK. I have heard your view of the world. Tell me is the health system getting better is it the same or is it worse than 10 years ago?”. And do you know what they say universally? They say it is getting better. So I am very confident that we have health going in exactly the right direction in New Zealand.I tell you that it is very noticeable that since the Budget Labour members have not asked one single question on health. I think they have given up on health. Health has moved into that space where actually we have got it happening exactly the right way. I will take you back though. It is a week ago since the Budget speech and Andrew Little’s contribution. There was not one single idea that came from the lamentable leader of the Labour Party—not one single idea. I think that what really happened was that he had had the ground pulled out from under him but not by Grant Robertson for a change—although some of those questions Grant has been asking us during the week have been a clear set-up of his leader. Yes check the Hansard Grant. We have moved there into that middle ground where we are producing policy that appeals to all New Zealanders. I must say that I reckon that Labour members will be ashamed that it took a National Government to raise benefit rates for the first time in 40 years and they really had no answer to that. I would like to hear the next Labour speaker get up and congratulate Bill English on a finely crafted very elegant Budget that in tight fiscal times has really focused on delivering the things that New Zealand cares about and what people need.The other thing that is coming up—Grant Robertson will be very supportive of this and I would expect him to mention it in his speech—is free GP visits for under-13s being rolled out from 1 July. That is a real achievement and once again it was delivered under a National Government.Grant Robertson: Every child? Every child eh.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: And Grant Robertson is very pleased about that. I am sure he will actually take a call on that. I am just surprised after 7 years that the Labour Party is not able to come up with a single new policy idea. I do not know where those people are going to go but I think there is a crisis on that side of the House. I think if you ask people like the fictional Gene Simmons - type character out there on the North Shore of Auckland whether he is happy I would say the average Kiwi is extremely happy with the Budget and with the National Government. Thank you.