Craig LizDr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you Mr Chair. I'm proud to be part of a Government that's rebuilding our health system because as we've heard tonight after nine long years of underfunding the health system we inherited was in a terrible state. What I want to start talking about tonight just to begin with is malnutrition because I think the closest parallel I can think of to the health system we inherited is somebody that's been facing chronic undernutrition over a very long period of time. What happens when somebody is facing that situation is that their fat reserves get burnt up first. And once they're completely depleted then the body starts to burn up muscle and basically a lot of those key functions start to drop off. And one of the most important ones that start to get impaired is the immune system and the ability to react to the challenges that get thrown at the body. So a lot of children with chronic malnutrition end up getting really bad infections.Just looking at what's been happening with our health system after nine long years of underfunding pretty much all those fat reserves are completely gone; they went ages ago. But what's happened is that the system we inherited had started to burn up its muscle and it basically couldn't respond to the challenges that were thrown its way. So when we inherited that system we inherited a whole range of DHBs that were in deficit but then over the next year or so as we had a bit of population increase and as the population was increasingly ageing a lot more of those DHBs have come into deficit. Basically those are the fundamentals of that under-investment and the impact that that's having on our system.The other thing that DHBs in their annual reviews were talking to us about was just the huge acute load in terms of what was coming in through A & E—just things like need for acute surgery but also a whole lot of ambulatory-sensitive hospital admissions. Those are those conditions where you could actually prevent a hospital admission if you had early access to primary care because again the previous Government hadn't been investing in the primary care system and so we were getting this problem where increasingly primary care was becoming unaffordable.The other thing that was happening was that a lot of DHBs to balance their books were putting off just basic maintenance and capital investment. So in the system we inherited in about 19 percent of DHBs their assets were in poor" or "very poor" condition. So we inherited a system where we were having hospitals that were having leaking mould raw sewage leaking through the walls of some of our major hospitals—things in an incredible state. And so the system we've inherited has meant that our health system hasn't been able to respond to some of the challenges that have been thrown at it.So what we're doing now is starting to rebuild that system and I think there are a number of things that we've been doing. The first of them sounds really boring but is actually crucially crucially important and that's what we're doing: putting $2.9 billion over the next five years into our DHBs just so they can keep up with that population growth and with those cost pressures. That's something that hadn't been happening over time and it's crucially important. But the other thing we're doing is investing significantly back into our health infrastructure—so $1.7 billion into our hospitals and facilities over the next two years and that's on top of the $750 million that we put in in Budget 2018. Some of that will be going to repairing some of those hospitals like Middlemore which has been facing all those difficulties. But we're also putting some of that money into rebuilding and building mental health facilities so that people can access the services they need in proper modern buildings. Some of the other things we're going to be doing in that space are just basically investing in that key infrastructure.The other thing we've done—and it was a big priority in Budget 2019—is take mental health seriously and that's why we're putting $1.9 billion into our mental health services. As a number of us have talked about some of that is going to go into front-line services in primary care so that people can come into their GP clinic and they can say "Look I've got these issues." and be able to be introduced to a mental health worker who can actually sit down and talk to them and work out what it is they need. And sometimes that mental health worker will just be able to see them for a couple of sessions and that'll be all that they do need but sometimes they will need to be referred off to services. We're also investing extra resources so those at risk of suicide can have the wraparound services that they need and we're also investing extra money into telephone-based counselling and internet support services as well so that people can access those services when and where they need them.So there's a huge amount of infrastructure investment. There's a huge amount of funding into our mental health services and then also just keeping up with cost pressures. So I'm proud to be part of that Government that's rebuilding our health system after nine years of underfunding. We're actually giving the system what it needs."