Scott Lynda: General Debate 
Scott Lynda: General Debate 
[Volume:624;Page:19253] 
Dr LYNDA SCOTT (National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 We can always tell when the Government is under pressure can we not? What did we hear from Mallard and Cullen today? We heard personal abuse. We hear personal abuse every time they come under pressure. Every time they have a hard question to answer do they answer it? No of course they do not. What they do is just personally abuse anybody in the firing line. That is what we heard from them today so we know that this Government is under pressure—serious pressure. 
We have seen the Government under pressure on education. It is spending huge amounts of money on low-level courses while special-education kids receive no improvement. I had two mums in my office the other day and both of them said that the schools were sending their children home. The children were not getting the education they deserved because there was no money. There was no money to pay for the carers needed in order to have their children at school full-time. We know that this Government is under pressure on law and order; Tony Ryall has seen to that. We know that it is under pressure on the issues of taxation and the economy. We know that families in New Zealand are hurting every time they go to the petrol station. 
We also know that the Government is under pressure on health. What is the Minister of Health doing? On 28 February she was told there was a problem with the flu vaccine. Members of Parliament were all booked for it actually but we were told we could not have it. Even I asked why— 
Simon Power 
: Simple question. 
Dr LYNDA SCOTT 
: It is a simple question. That woman Annette King has been the Minister of Health for 6 years. I will tell members why she did not ask the hard question: it is because that Minister does not do that. She has a deal: the Ministry of Health will protect her so long as she does not bother to ask any hard questions. When she was told there was a bit of a problem with the flu vaccine what did she do? 
Simon Power 
: Nothing. 
Dr LYNDA SCOTT 
: That is right—absolutely nothing. 
Simon Power 
: Sat on her hands for a week. 
Dr LYNDA SCOTT 
: She sat on her hands did not ask the hard questions about what was going on and did not tell anybody until she came under pressure to tell them. Why is that such a concern? Well the concern is that it is the Wellington strain of the flu that is causing the problem with regard to the vaccine. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Mallard flu. 
Dr LYNDA SCOTT 
: Mr Mallard’s flu. That is the one we actually do not have the correct potency for. The protection the vaccine provides against the other two strains is OK but that is the strain we do not have adequate protection against. That puts at risk 700000 New Zealanders. 
It is estimated that 400 people per year die of the flu but what did that Minister do? We know that influenza is a serious problem especially with the elderly. She can insult my colleague Dr Paul Hutchison as much as she likes but we know that he knows more about this issue than someone who was a dental therapist. I was a geriatrician and I know that aged care in this country is under crisis. Because aged care is under crisis people know that getting the flu in a rest home is an incredibly serious situation. It passes from patient to patient very quickly and the staff also get it. The aged-care sector is under crisis; it says it is 20 percent underfunded. If people living in rest homes get the flu we will have serious problems. There will be patients banked up in hospital beds and we will see deaths if people cannot get the correct immunisation. It is protection against the Wellington strain that developed last year—H3N2 which mutated around September last year—that has been added to the strains the flu vaccine protects against in the Southern Hemisphere. That strain actually mutated here and we saw quite a serious epidemic at the end of last year. If we do not have a vaccine that works against the H3N2 mutation we will have a nasty winter. 
The Minister says she is really glad that the ministry is out there trying to get more of the correct vaccine but we need to look at the role of Pharmac. For 7 years Glaxo Smith Kline was the supplier of the flu vaccine. This year the supplier was changed. Why was it changed? To save money. This year the supplier was changed and that decision has had these ramifications. We need to look at how Pharmac makes its decisions on sole supply for medication. It is fair enough to say we have always supported Pharmac. But it is time to reassess that policy.