Yang Jian: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Yang Jian: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 27 June 2012. Volume:681;Page:3436. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr JIAN YANG (National) 
: 
 Wo hen hao. It is a privilege to be given the opportunity to speak in today’s general debate. Earlier today I spoke on the Appropriation Bill and reiterated National’s responsible management of the economy and our goal of returning the Government’s books to surplus by 2014-15. Returning to surplus means we can start reducing debt. National’s balanced handling of the economy means we can rebuild and strengthen the country so that New Zealanders can have a brighter future. 
Already New Zealanders are reaping the benefits of this economic plan that invests in their future. Budget 2012 is precisely about this and more particularly delivering better public services. My colleagues before me spoke about the primary set of challenging results for the public sector to achieve over the next 5 years. They include reducing long-term welfare dependency supporting vulnerable children boosting skills and employment reducing crime and improving interaction with government. These are all good goals as the New Zealand public will be able to judge how well the general public services are performing under National. 
As a member of the Health Committee I meet many people from the health sector. These people should be commended for their hard work in an invaluable public service. We want New Zealanders to know that they can rely on a first-class health service when they need it. That is why investing in better front-line health services is a priority for National. Despite difficult financial conditions over the next 4 years we will commit almost $1.5 billion extra to our public health sector. This will help deliver more operations and shorter waiting-times. 
To ensure that our health service remains productive and efficient the National-led Government has set challenging targets for the health services to achieve over the next 5 years. One of them is ensuring that our children are fully protected from childhood diseases such as measles. We will be increasing infant immunisation rates and reducing the incidence of rheumatic fever. These are very important targets to focus on. As a father of two girls I am fully aware how precious children are. Protecting them from preventable infectious diseases so that they can grow into productive adults is very important. 
The National-led Government has worked hard to achieve the immunisation rate of 92.8 percent of 2-year-olds. Under Labour that figure was just 73 percent. But we want to do more. We want to get that figure to 95 percent of all 8-month-olds fully immunised as scheduled by 2017. It is an achievable target which we will be working hard on. We are also aiming to reduce the incidence of rheumatic fever by two-thirds by 2017. Not only is rheumatic fever a serious and life-threatening disease but also it can create significant health costs of up $40 million a year. Again we are working hard to get to our goal. 
National is delivering on turning round a public health service that was in crisis under Labour. Our commitment to ensuring that New Zealanders have access to better sooner front-line health services continues. Our success speaks volumes. We are spending over $14 billion this year on health the most ever. Under National there are 27000 extra people getting elective surgery every year. Our emergency departments are treating patients faster. There are more smokers quitting and shorter waits for cancer patients. We also have 800 more doctors and 2000 more nurses. Just last week the fourth intake of the Government’s Voluntary Bonding Scheme opened for new applicants. This is a very good scheme as in return newly qualified doctors nurses and midwives start their careers in hard— 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.