Foster-Bell PaulPAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): Thank you and talofa lava Mr Deputy Speaker. Speaking on this Appropriation (2017/18 Estimates) Bill in this debate I want to begin by responding to a comment that was made by the previous speaker Poto Williams who just resumed her seat. She is a member who I have a lot of respect for but the statement that no increases in health outcomes are achieved under this Budget" is just simply patently incorrect. I want to speak to a community that has been for some time in New Zealand if not misunderstood then possibly neglected in thinking by Government departments around how we deliver services to them and which is benefiting significantly from this Government and that is the LGBT community in New Zealand.Budget 2017 invests an extra $60 million over 4 years into Pharmac services and that is an extra $20 million over the 2017-18 year. What this has meant in real terms is that there will be more access to cancer drugs—and this is something quite close to my heart as a very dear friend of mine is undergoing cancer treatment right now; hepatitis drugs which are close to being a miraculous cure where up to 90 percent of hepatitis sufferers achieve a complete remission; new antibiotics particularly those that are useful for treating children who have antibiotic-resistant symptoms; and importantly for members of the LGBTIQ community the funding of HIV medication at a much earlier stage in their treatment. This is something that has been neglected for many years including I have to say under the previous Governments. Drugs like Truvada have been available for some time and I am delighted that now HIV patients will not have to wait until they have a CD4 cell count of 500—which effectively means they are very very ill. They will be able to get access to drugs like Truvada and other drugs that are very complicated and often served up in a multi-drug capsule. These include sometimes mixtures of transcriptase inhibitors nucleosides reverse transcriptase inhibitors protease inhibitors and strand transfer inhibitors. Scientifically these are well beyond my understanding but in simple terms they have the ability to extend not only the life expectancy but the quality of life of those patients massively and also have the very positive benefit of reducing the ability for those people to pass on HIV to others. Last year unfortunately we had the highest infection rate of HIV in New Zealand for some time and this will be a very real help in reducing infection as well as assisting those who are suffering from HIV. So I want to commend that part of the Budget in particular. On the Government Administration Committee we deal with a wide and varied range of issues and the Ministry for Culture and Heritage is one of the departments that we scrutinise. I was particularly pleased to see the Hon Maggie Barry announce $303.9 million of screen grants—a huge investment over 4 years into our screen production industry. This is money very well spent because the return from the film and TV sector over the last year was around about a $3.3 billion direct return. That does not account for the fact that 18 percent of visitors who arrived to tour around our beautiful country—to places like Northland Whanganui and the far south—listed The Hobbit trilogy as a key reason why they chose New Zealand as a visitor destination. I think this is money very well spent and in real terms it is keeping 14000 people working across 24700 contracts in highly paid and quite skilled work and there are technological contributions that the film industry makes. The techniques and technologies perfected in film have later gone on to be used in a wide range of other areas like artificial intelligence like robotics and like healthcare imaging for instance.Again I think this is an example of a Government that is united that is focused on raising incomes of working New Zealanders and that is focused on a better standard of life for all New Zealanders. It is a Government that cares about parts of the community that in the past were neglected. I am delighted about in particular the Pharmac increase which has seen HIV sufferers given better treatment earlier and will I think lead to a reduced spread of that pernicious disease."