Coleman JonathanHon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): Well actually I thought that last speaker Michael Wood was quite good. I think he is a great improvement on the current health spokesperson—not quite as good as Mrs King whom they are missing desperately but that was not a bad speech.There were some real problems with it though—some real problems with it. What I can tell him is that actually we have fully funded for population growth and inflation over the last 9 years and I can show the member the facts. And if he looks back through Hansard we have talked about that quite a lot in the House in the last few years. So to say that we have not is just incorrect. It is also incorrect to say that $1.7 billion has been cut from the health budget.But look if you look at the other speeches we have had just before the only thing I learnt from Julie Anne Genter's speech is that she is actually the Green Party health spokesperson.Paul Foster-Bell: Really?Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Yeah I was not aware of that—Hon Christopher Finlayson: No she's the finance spokesperson.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Well she said she was the health spokesperson. I do not think we have had a question from her. But anyway that was a useful piece of information.The other thing is Ria Bond. She also made a number of quite outlandish statements. She was saying that Kiwis cannot find a GP. Well what I can tell her is that if she would just like to ring up my office with the details of those people—in fact go and see Sarah Dowie the excellent MP for Invercargill. We will find those people a GP because district health boards have to give GP services to the populations they serve.And it is disappointing when you listen to the member for Mt Roskill and the person from Invercargill. They are raising these cases—I do not know if they are real cases or not; they probably are because they would not be misleading the Committee. But if there really are problems we can help with you know come and tell us about the lady with the hip replacement problem because I would be quite happy to make sure that she gets the services that she needs. But it is of course always very important to check the facts of the case.Just before I came down I was watching the news and on it tonight there was an item about the American late night comedian Jimmy Kimmel who told the story of his newborn son who needed heart surgery just within the last month. He was making a plea for healthcare that is free at the point of delivery to be made available to all citizens in the country in which he lives. And when you look at that story and you stand back and look at the big picture of the excellent healthcare system we have in New Zealand we are actually extremely lucky whoever is running the system. I get a bit disappointed when members lose sight of the reality of healthcare in New Zealand because we have an excellent system it is accessible to all New Zealanders—Carmel Sepuloni: We just have higher expectations on this side of the Chamber maybe.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: —it is free at the point of delivery. This member should just listen because this is actually an important point. Labour's health spokesperson wrote in the Critic magazine in Dunedin yesterday that access to high quality healthcare should be beyond politics and actually largely it is. Everyone in this House wants to see more access to more services for more New Zealanders and I am very proud that that is what this Government has delivered. We are delivering more operations. There are more appointments there are more doctors and nurses in the system and there is more money to fund it all.We have got a growing population—no question about that—and there is increasing demand and mental health has been mentioned. Well I can tell you that 8 years ago we were treating 96000 people a year; last year we treated 164000. That is a huge uptick in demand. What are the drivers of that? Well you know it is pretty complex. I mean it is societal pressures it is the age we are living in in terms of exposure to social media and you know the contradiction around greater awareness is that more people are seeking services. So we have got more demand and we are seeing more people but there is always more we can do.But it does disappoint me a bit when members talk about fewer beds because I do not think there would be any member in this Committee who would want to go back to the days of institutionalisation when we were locking up patients and not quite throwing away the key but people were spending years and years in these institutions.Hon Ruth Dyson: Like Ashley Peacock—like Ashley Peacock. You wouldn't help him.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: And look it would be completely disingenuous for people to claim that they want to go back to those days because the members over here who are squawking away—that member there she believes in the recovery model. She knows that the best place for patients to be treated as long as it is safe is in the community.So look in our health system there is always more we can do but there is a lot to celebrate and I would love to have those members' support.