Little AndrewHon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): Thank you Mr Chair. Just responding to Melissa Lee's second contribution and also to Simon Watts' second contribution. To Melissa Lee I don't wish to be repeating myself as she has done but the provisions are very clear in the bill about what is expected. All population groups must be taken account of and services must be available in a way that is culturally appropriate and safe. That will include where needed language services. I don't think the member was being dismissive of what Waitematā District Health Board (DHB) is doing. It's actually a very good service and I would like to see more of that in other places where that is an appropriate model to adopt that. But I think there is provision in the bill that both signals it and will allow it to happen. To Simon Watts' three points I think that he makes: first of all on the holiday pay issue and the liability that creates—and he will be aware of it because he probably was involved in trying to counter it at some point—that work has considerably progressed. I think one of the challenges and he may well know that we had is that different DHBs had different interpretations of the provisions in their respective collective agreements and how that was to apply. That's part of the problem. With a single employer we then have the recipe for a single consistent interpretation of contractual obligations. So the risk of that problem replicating is very low. And even if with a single organisation they did get the interpretation wrong and somebody went to the Employment Relations Authority or the Employment Court and got an interpretation that was different everybody will have suffered the same kind of misinterpretation by the employer and that can be rectified across the board as opposed to having to rectify 20 different approaches that have been taken with that. So I'm confident that actually we won't see a failure to address contingent liabilities that we know are there and upon which work is being done. I think the member also asked a question about the materiality threshold for those liabilities. Again I don't think it's for Parliament to start planning the financial systems for Health New Zealand. They will take appropriate professional advice including from chartered accountants who will give them advice on how to set those appropriate thresholds and delegations. I don't think the contingent liabilities will be lost. I don't think the Audit Office would allow it to happen. In terms of the example the member gives of the Auckland Regional Dental Service—mixed ownership of assets different DHBs land owned by the schools—the legislation makes clear about the transfer of assets including real assets so that will happen. There may be some conveyancing to be carried out but there's no question about who the owner will be or who the owner will transfer into where there needs to be a registration of that ownership interest. But otherwise contracts will transfer legislatively so the cost for that is minimal. I don't see a major challenge with that. Finally in terms of capability and capacity the member raises an interesting point. But I think it is important. You know this is the challenge that we've had. The boards have got to make sure their job is running health services and that we maintain health services in a way that means that they've got the capability and capacity to deliver those services. There's always going to be variability in the margins and there'll be times where there might be a larger number of vacancies than is desirable. You'd want as stable a workforce as possible. But it is for the board with management to make sure that challenges are met to make sure that the capacity is there to deliver and as that changes and as they forecast the future they're planning for that change. I think that's one of the shortcomings with the current system. We've relied on 20 different operators of health services to do that and they simply haven't done it been able to do it and we haven't had a ministry be able to drive them to do it. Health New Zealand with a single entity gives us a much better chance of getting on top of that in a much better way.