Little AndrewHon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): I thank again the member for his questions. I'll see if I can rattle through these. The comparators were nurses in the pay equity agreement. I'll say to the member that there were a number of comparators. I don't recall the precise detail but it included for example detectives in the police force. It included management accountants. It included a range of different occupations and professions some for senior nurses others for registered nurses who are not senior nurses and some for mental health nurses. So there was a range of comparators and in the nature of the exercise having worked out relevant comparators and the skills and responsibilities then you sort of quantify the difference. There's then a negotiation about how to make sense of that data and come up with the rates that were eventually agreed upon. To the member's next question about the D" investor confidence rating: as I understand it the reason for that is that the Ministry of Health has a demonstrated track record of shall I say being very cautious and deliberate in the implementation of its capital decisions. So I have to say in fairness to the ministry not assisted by a number of requirements placed on them by Treasury particularly for significant investments that's you know maybe reasonable from a public finance point of view—but the reality is and to the extent that people criticise the length of time it takes to get investment or capital investment decisions implemented in the health sector there doesn't seem to be an inordinate amount of time taken and there's a number of hurdles to get through. I'm confident that Health NZ once legislated for and in place will—in fact I know they are committed to exploring exactly why it is that there is this lengthy process and these lengthy delays and we're in a sense facing the consequences of that because projects that were priced two or three years ago now are facing material cost escalations just because of current circumstances. That is the price of delay. And we're going to have to look carefully at the implications of that.To the member's next question about the number of fulltime-equivalents and the health reforms what I would say to the member is that I expect there will be a shift of nature of roles. So we know across the 20 DHBs there's a significant chunk of what I would call corporate services roles necessary in any large organisation but the reality is when you consolidate an organisation you can strip out some of those roles. But my expectation is that what that will mean is that what is saved from those roles can then go into front-line health services. That's what we're trying to achieve here is to ensure that the dollar that we are spending on health is used to the best effect. And the more that we can see spent on front-line health services then the better for New Zealanders looking at and in some cases waiting for their healthcare and the better for the health system. To the member's next question about delay in the implementation of Care Capacity Demand Management (CCDM) I mean it's an interesting question because the reality is the commitments to CCDM were first made in 2007 and 2008 following a review in 2005 and 2006. It was the Government in office in 2009 that made the initial commitments set up the original pilots for CCDM and three DHBs including Taranaki District Health Board. It was a surprise to me—after the final deadline set for full implementation of 30 June last year that wasn't met—in the review that I commissioned for it to see in that review that Taranaki District Health Board who started in 2009 were classed as one of the laggards in terms of completing implementation. I would say that there simply was not enough political drive given to CCDM between 2009 and 2017. This Government recommitted in 2018 to see the programme through. We did that. We still didn't meet the deadline. We've done a review. We've got some good recommendations and commitment from nurse leaders and the nursing workforce to now see that fully and properly implemented. And then the final question the member asked in that tranche is the plan for waiting lists—very timely. There's been a bit of work—quite a bit of work actually—gone into that and I'm due to make some announcements tomorrow on the approach we will take to deal with those waiting lists. I can say to the member that if we did nothing else if we just relied on kind of past practice the projection is it would take us between three and five years to clear the current backlog. That's not acceptable and tomorrow I'll be announcing an approach we will take to deal with it."