Lees-Galloway Iain: General Debate 
Lees-Galloway Iain: General Debate 
[Volume:656;Page:5465] 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North) 
: 
 The Attorney-General is almost not even worth talking about. All he had to add to the general debate was to slag off people. But he did say one thing that is worth reflecting on—other than referring to John Key as the former Prime Minister; perhaps he knows something we do not know but I am sure that will all come out in the fullness of time—when he said to the Labour Party that we should get some new policies and ideas. Well quite frankly the Government needs to listen to the Attorney-General’s advice because the health sector has gone back to the 1990s. It has gone back to the time of Health Cuts Hurt and the 1990s policies we saw that ripped the guts out of our health system. 
Before the election we heard ad nauseam that we would have “Better sooner more convenient health care”. That is what National was going to deliver. It was going to deliver “more doctors and nurses and less bureaucrats”. Besides my personal abhorrence for the way National maligns the English language with some of its slogans—so much for literacy on the Government benches—those slogans have systematically been unpicked over the 9 months National has been in Government. They are broken promises. We will not see a “better sooner more convenient health system”—whatever a sooner health system is. We will see fewer health services which are understaffed and more expensive. That is what we are getting from Tony Ryall and the National Government in the health sector. 
Tony Ryall came up to my electorate of Palmerston North not so long ago. He swaggered in and read the Riot Act to the MidCentral District Health Board. He said: “Find $10 million worth of service cuts. I am telling you that you have no option no choice.” He sat down with the district health board and told it in no uncertain terms that that is what it must do. It must find $10 million worth of service cuts. Then he walked away. He went back to Wellington and he washed his hands. He got to the soap as fast as he could. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: He minced away! 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY 
: He might have minced away; I do not know. But he got as far out of Palmerston North as possible so that he could leave the onus of making those decisions on the district health board. He does not want to be anywhere near the tough decisions that the MidCentral District Health Board will have to make as a result of his strong-arming and his demands to it. 
I am yet to speak to one person at the district health board or to extract one answer from the Minister that suggests we will not see cuts to front-line services. To find $10 million worth of service cuts in their budget is a lot to ask. It cannot be found through administration and the much-maligned bureaucrats that the Government likes to go after. The cuts will come from front-line services. Doctors and nurses will lose their jobs as a result of the Minister of Health’s policy and his strong-arming of the district health board. But he just walks away. It is not his problem. The people of Palmerston North Horowhenua Manawatu and Rangitikei will get fewer health services. They will see their services cut but the Minister just walks away. 
It is happening not just in Palmerston North either. Just up the road the Whanganui District Health Board will be closing hospital wards on the weekend so that it can cut back on nursing salaries and nursing overtime. How will that affect elective surgery? How will that affect health services for Wanganui people when they cannot access health services on the weekend and when surgery that needs to be done cannot be carried out? The Taranaki District Health Board has not had its annual plan signed off but it has already signalled that the hospital is preparing for cutbacks. At the South Canterbury District Health Board the number of patients it will be able to see in its emergency department is being cut back by 5000 people a year. It has also looked at axing 200 elective operations per year because of the cut in Government funding. 
That sounds just bizarre to me because this Government has been quite clear in saying that it is looking to produce some good numbers. It has eschewed all public health aspects; it has taken the focus right off anything that is preventive anything that might actually have an effect on the health of our nation 20 years down the track. Why? It is so that it can produce some good numbers for the 2011 election. That is what it is all about. Yet it still cannot get that straight because we are seeing elective surgery being cut down in South Canterbury. 
Recently the Law Commission produced a fantastic issues paper on alcohol issues in New Zealand. Although that paper focused heavily on legislative aspects it also focused on health aspects. With cuts to mental health funding there is no way that can be implemented.