Roy Heather: General Debates 
Roy Heather: General Debates 
[Volume:610;Page:7918] 
HEATHER ROY (ACT NZ) 
: 
 The Minister of Education said he wanted a laugh. I have a laugh for him right here because if we do not laugh about what I have to say then we would weep. Last week the New Zealand taxpayer wined and dined up to 25 health bureaucrats and anti-tobacco activists not in New Zealand but in Helsinki Finland. This could best be described as “25 go smoking in Finland: thanks very much taxpayer”. While ex-servicemen on pensions are being told they will not be able to enjoy a beer and a smoke in their local Returned Services Association up to 25 anti-smoking bureaucrats and activists were having a great time in historic Helsinki on a taxpayer-funded anti-smoking junket. Information on the Web—[ 
Interruption 
]; if Ms Pettis ever took the time to look at it she might find these things out—about the 12th World Conference on Tobacco or Health held in Helsinki from 3 to 8 August names 25 New Zealanders attending and almost all are either Ministry of Health officials or from organisations funded by the ministry. The registration fee alone for these 25 people was $1180 each. I challenge the Minister of Health to say how precious Vote Health dollars are being spent. Did that money fund all those 25 people to go to this conference and represent New Zealand while everybody back here endures a bleak winter? Included among the people back here of course are people on hospital waiting lists which are growing. People are being bumped off hospital waiting lists and there are staff shortages in virtually all specialties. Small health providers are whittling away taxpayer-funded health dollars with little if any accountability. We know who these people are; there was also a list of them on the Web and it is very interesting to see where they all come from. We know that Chris Laurenson Nicola Holden and Louise Delaney are Ministry of Health officials and were presumably funded by the taxpayer to get to Helsinki—not to mention their accommodation. Shirley Ann Brown and Adela Hamilton of Northland Health— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Where has Deborah Coddington been for the last 6 months? 
HEATHER ROY 
: She paid for herself to go there thank you. People from the University of Otago went as did employees of Northland Health. They all work for publicly funded organisations. Some Maori health groups also sent people. There were people from the Quit Group the Smokefree Coalition and the Health Sponsorship Council. They are all representatives of organisations receiving taxpayer funding. It is very easy to spend somebody else’s money is it not? I had a quick ring around Air New Zealand offices to find out what the cheapest possible flights from New Zealand to Helsinki would have been last week. The cheapest possible flight was $3000 per person. So for 25 people that is $75000. 
Barbara Stewart 
: Was that business class? 
HEATHER ROY 
: No it was the economy fare. We do not know what class they flew. The registration fee for 25 people was $21840. In terms of accommodation—I do not know where they stayed—let us assume they stayed somewhere middle of the road. I suspect that is not the case but if we gave them US$100 per person per night that comes to NZ$25729 making a grand total of $122569. 
Phil Heatley 
: How many hip operations is that? 
HEATHER ROY 
: That is an awful lot of hip operations. Each person spent almost $5000 and that is with very conservative estimates for their flights and their accommodation. Why we ask—and I would like the Minister of Health to stand and answer this question at some stage—are we sending 25 people from New Zealand to find out that smoking is bad for people? Do we not already know that? It is interesting to note that China sent 20 delegates to this conference. China has 300 million smokers and it sent 20 people to find out how to combat smoking. New Zealand has about 750000 smokers. How many people did we send to find out that this is not a good idea? We sent 25 delegates at a cost of $122569. ACT says it would have been much better for this Labour Government this “tax and grab” authoritarian Government to have paid for only a couple of people to attend—although judging by the programme it is doubtful that anybody would have got anything out of it—and for those people to have reported back to their colleagues in New Zealand. Unless of course the Government thinks they are not capable of doing that.