Watts SimonSIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Look I rise on behalf of National as the member of Parliament for North Shore. Today I want to highlight the workforce crisis in healthcare in this country. During the Estimates process in March I asked the Minister of Health What was the size of the workforce shortage across the health sector?" and you know what? He could not answer. But I've got the answer. I've got the answer right here and I'm going to talk through that today in my short call here.There is a saying: that there is no healthcare without the workforce. I can tell you here and now that I know that the numbers on this piece of paper are big. There are big shortages in this country. It is a big number and it is a number that is growing. In DHBs alone there are over 4183 vacancies today. Over 1600 of those vacancies are nurses alone. Nearly 1000 of those vacancies are allied health professionals and in one district health board alone in the Waikato—the DHB that is crippled by a cyber-security incident that has no plan in order to deal with it—they have over 450 nursing vacancies today.But what is hidden by these hard numbers are the human lives and the human stories. This workforce shortage is highlighted in the media continuously. It is impacting our most vulnerable our elderly. We are seeing people waiting in corridors and long waiting times nurse burn-out GP fatigue including in my home electorate of the North Shore. My personal experience of these human stories comes from working within two of the largest district health boards in this country and in a clinical capacity front line as an ambulance officer with St John. My observations of this problem tell me this problem is important but it is also real. The workforce shortage is also a cause of our vaccination programme that is progressing at the pace of a turtle. This is leaving our country vulnerable and is constraining our growth.This Government is just making this problem worse and let me give you a few examples. What effect will the public sector health pay freeze have on this problem? Well I'll tell you what: it will make it worse. What will the effect of the immigration changes announced by this Government have on this problem? I can tell you it will make it worse. What will the effect of the restructuring of our health system have on this problem? I can tell you it will make it worse. Focusing on changing the structure within our health system without changing the root cause of the problem is not solving the issue which is that we have a health postcode lottery of outcomes in this country and that is made worse by the health workforce shortages across this country as well.Lastly I will refer to our aged care sector in this country. These are the people that are working with our most vulnerable our elderly within our community those that do not have a voice those that need our protection. The aged care sector has confirmed to me today that they have they estimate between 300 and 500 registered nursing vacancies in this country alone. That is on top of the 4183 vacancies that I've already quoted. But wait; there is more. There are over 300 additional vacancies of healthcare assistants those people that are working with our elderly population within our rest homes every single day.We have a significant crisis on our hands and this Government has no plan to resolve it. We need to fix this problem and get on with resolving the workforce shortages within this country."