Hutchison Paul: General Debate 
Hutchison Paul: General Debate 
[Volume:652;Page:1856] 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua) 
: 
 That was not a very convincing leadership bid from the member. It was indeed a very subtle one if it was one at all. 
Today I want to talk about the legacy of the last Labour Government in health because it is of deep concern to all New Zealanders. What a huge sigh of relief we can breathe that an excellent John Key - led National Government is now in place to fix up the mess that Labour left. Four months on from when Labour left office it is important to outline just how badly the Labour Government mismanaged our health system. Who were the accountable former Ministers? First was the Hon Annette King who in 1998 had the gall to state that a waiting list of 68000 was criminal. Well what an injudicious statement because it came back to bite her. She was the very Minister who then set about deceptively culling tens of thousands of New Zealanders from the waiting list. She sent them back to their general practitioners to wait and wait and some of them tragically died. Then of course there was the Hon Pete Hodgson who helped to cement in the mesh of bureaucracy entangling the 21 district health boards and the 80 primary health organisations. That created a growth industry of filing clerks and red tape strangulating any efficiency within the system. We know that there was no increase in productivity during those 9 years of the Labour Government. 
What happened during that time? Crucial front-line clinical staff were neglected while Pete Hodgson talked and talked about workforce planning. That is all he did; he talked about workforce planning. In fact Labour ordered 43 reports into health workforce planning in its time in office and nothing happened. Thank goodness for National getting straight into action and getting straight into solutions such as bringing in the voluntary student bonding scheme for doctors midwives and nurses employed in hard-to-staff areas and specialities. Then of course there was the Hon David Cunliffe the man who said “I’m running the show.” when the truth was that the show was wildly running out of control. 
The Labour Government’s legacy in health is one of vastly increased spending—from $6 billion to $12 billion—and no increase in productivity. It was a legacy of vast increase in bureaucracy. In fact just in the Ministry of Health alone a total of 1430.7 full-time equivalent staff were employed in June 2008 compared with a year earlier when the number was 1236. So that is 200 more staff in just a year. That is a recent example of how a bureaucracy just mushroomed under that Labour Government. 
Years earlier it was Annette King who told New Zealand that as the 21 district health boards were formed the Ministry of Health would be downsized. How wrong she was once again. Thank goodness we have a new National Government that is concentrating on front-line clinical services rather than on bureaucrats. 
There has been great concern about district health board deficits. The Labour Government said it would get the deficits down but what was the headline on 9 December 2008? It was “DHB deficit blowouts greet new Health Minister”. The outgoing Labour Government had predicted district health board deficits totalling $111 million but a 40 percent blowout in district health board deficits to over $150 million has been revealed by the Minister of Health Tony Ryall. Annette King is the very one who kept on saying that the Labour Government would control those deficits. The mismanagement of this system by Labour— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I regret to advise the member that his time has expired.