Goodhew Jo: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoodhew Jo: General Debate[Sitting date: 30 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19672. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon JO GOODHEW (Associate Minister of Health):Yes we are here nearly at the end of the 50th Parliament—my goodness. It is a round number but by golly it has been a challenging 3 years for New Zealand a challenging 3 years for the people of my Rangitata electorate a challenging 3 years for the Government. But do you know what? We can unequivocally say that this Government on this side of the House has done the hard yards in order to protect New Zealand’s citizens from the sharpest edges of the recession.As we come to the end of this Parliament I want to acknowledge our Minister of Health the Hon Tony Ryall. He will join other colleagues today in giving his valedictory speech—Paul Hutchison Phil Heatley Eric Roy and Shane Ardern. But I want to pay a special tribute to the Hon Tony Ryall who has been the Minister of Health now for the last 6 years during challenging times. So despite the fact that we have had huge challenges to the Government revenue and finances—the global financial crisis and the sort of impact that the Christchurch earthquakes have had on New Zealand—there has been an average of an extra $500 million going into the health budget each year during his term as Minister.In addition to that we have seen the health dollars go further during that time. That has been an enormous achievement on the part of not just the Minister but the Ministry of Health and the practitioners working in the health sector across this country. I will give some examples in a few moments but it has really been a case of the Minister challenging the health sector to look at how it can do things better with the same amount of money or a little bit more. There is $15.6 billion being spent on health now. In the big scheme of things we had a slow-down of the amount of extra money going in there but it was no longer a case of chucking money at it and hoping that we would get outcomes. Instead it was about actually measuring what we were doing and having targets that health practitioners universally bought into and they delivered fantastically well. I want to use some examples of those health targets. In addition we have got 1500 more doctors and 3200 more nurses.How have we seen these outcomes measured in terms of things that really matter to the families of New Zealand? I can tell you that as we look around the country now we see measles affecting families of older New Zealanders in terms of late primary school and secondary school students. We know that it was shameful that back in 2007 only 67 percent of New Zealand’s children were fully immunised at age 2. We know that it is now 93 percent at 8 months. We know that that has been wholly because of practitioners getting in there and making sure that children are fully immunised. We also know that there is much less waiting for cancer treatment now. We know that New Zealanders are not going to Australia for their radiotherapy treatment and their chemotherapy treatment. We know that that is because we have looked to do things differently and to make sure that we are delivering to New Zealanders the health care they deserve.We also know that 94 percent of our emergency department patients are now seen within the 6-hour target. Why do we need a 6-hour target? Well hang it looked pretty ghastly when we had people on trolleys in corridors in the emergency departments for not hours at a time but days at a time. What a shame. What an absolutely shameful practice that was and that has stopped.Scott Simpson: Who was the health Minister then? Who was it?Hon JO GOODHEW: Well there was a variety of Ministers of Health to be fair. There was actually the Hon Annette King and the Hon David Cunliffe. Both had parts to play in that.So what else have we got happening? Well we actually now have a significant amount of money looking to address a very very difficult issue and that is rheumatic fever prevention—$65.3 million is in there. The previous Labour Government promised much and delivered nothing on this. It promised to address it but did not. It is a terribly difficult issue to address. Now we have thousands upon thousands of children dropping into sore throat clinics to be checked. They have much less likelihood now of developing rheumatic fever because they are getting the treatment they need by doing that.We have also prioritised detecting diabetes and cardiovascular disease early. In order to do that you cannot expect that patients will just rock up to the doctor and say “Oh I thought I might have a check for that.” That is rare. What we are doing is systematically requiring that those conditions are checked for in primary health care. When it comes time for this election what we will see is New Zealanders looking at our record our plans for the future and voting National.