Dyson Ruth: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Dyson Ruth: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:653;Page:2430] 
Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) 
: 
 I am pleased to have the opportunity to participate in this financial review of the Ministry of Health. Over the last 9 years Labour focused on investing in health across the entire spectrum of the portfolio from disease prevention to anti-obesity measures record low adult smoking rates increased screening for diseases increased immunisation rates decreased general practitioners’ fees decreased prescription charges increased elective surgery more nurses more doctors record pay increases for nurses and 33 new or upgraded hospitals from Kaitaia to Invercargill. I pay tribute to the three Ministers of Health during those 9 years: the Hon Annette King the Hon Peter Hodgson and the Hon David Cunliffe. 
At the time of the election campaign last year—well for most of it anyway not all of it and I will talk a bit more about that later—National campaigned on the slogan “better sooner more convenient health services”. That was the mantra; that was the Crosby/Textor line from the National Government—“better sooner more convenient health services”. But it is very difficult for any member of the public to be able to say now that that is what we are getting. It is very difficult for members of the public to relate what they heard consistently in that Crosby/Textor messaging—“better sooner more convenient health services”—to what they see when they look at what we actually have. 
Just today in the House for example I gave the Minister several examples of cuts to front-line services and of increased costs for accessing health services by ordinary New Zealanders who will be very very confused by the conflict between the message they heard before the election and what they are seeing now. For example I asked the Minister about his decision to allow MidCentral District Health Board to cancel its clinical services and mobile bus. How could that Minister justify the over 100-kilometre journey on a substandard road with no financial travel assistance available for the good people of Dannevirke? But the Minister had the audacity to say that that was in order to fund better services somewhere else. So the people in Dannevirke should hear that message: “You don’t count; there is nothing at all of interest to this Government in the fact that you will now be paying substantial amounts of money to travel on a substandard road often in very dangerous weather conditions when unwell already.” Obviously because of the nature of people’s visits—they are going to access health services—they are not making those visits when they are feeling 100 percent. But the Minister just said that that was all right because it meant that the Government could pay for something else. 
That response makes an absolute fallacy of the message we heard from the Minister before the election as does the fact that with the latest situation in relation to Capital and Coast District Health Board’s paediatric oncology services our children and families will once again be forced to travel away from Wellington to receive treatment. Rather than try to develop a sustainable response or look for a sustainable solution to the fact that in Wellington there were so few cases that that service would now be considered borderline in terms of providing the service and meeting health and safety measures the Minister suddenly said that it was all up to Capital and Coast District Health Board. He said that the district health board should be working for a solution and he washed his hands of it—as I am showing members now and as he did time after time in relation to health. He washed his hands of Ministerial responsibility. Suddenly the buck is to stop with the district health board. Well I want to tell the Minister that actually he is the one collecting the fat pay cheque. It is his bottom on the seat of a Crown car. He is the one with people working in his—Minister Ryall’s—office not district health board personnel. And it is with that Minister that the buck stops in regard to this vote. 
We have had numerous examples of direct cuts to front-line services. I raised another one in relation to health quite recently which was with regard to access to the mobile breast-screening unit. Previously it had been travelling the whole length of the West Coast including Buller. So the women from Punakaiki right through to Karamea who were eligible for breast screening just had to walk down the road. They just had to go down the road to get their breast screening—in fact in the very same way as staff in the Minister’s office can just walk out to the forecourt of Parliament and have breast screening in the mobile bus. But now women in Karamea in Waimangaroa in Granity and right through to Westport and all the towns in between and down to Punakaiki and Charleston have had that service threatened because BreastScreen South has built a new unit in Greymouth and it wants people to go there rather than to the mobile clinic. Well that makes sense in theory but how can the Minister justify his decision to allow the West Coast District Health Board to transfer the cost of travel on to those women in Karamea Seddonville Granity Fairdown Waimangaroa and right away through to Punakaiki? Why do those women have to bear the cost of the cuts? It is because that Minister has let the district health board do it. 
I had the local member of Parliament Chris Auchinvole running down the corridor after me flapping his arms and saying that he had fixed it: “I have now got a solution to this.” But I went and researched that and I say to the Minister and to the current member—the very single-term I think member of Parliament for West Coast - Tasman—that no solution has been found because BreastScreen South said to the women of Buller: “We will reinstate the mobile service. It will make one more visit to Buller so that women from Buller only have to go down the road for their breast screening. But we will not reinstate it permanently; we will have only one more trip north. And tell the women of Buller ‘Get used to travelling.’ ” That is a direct quote: “And tell the women of Buller ‘Get used to travelling.’ ” 
As I said in my introductory comments before the election we had a promise from National of better sooner and more convenient health services. But we have seen cuts to surgery lists on the West Coast. We have sent cuts to jobs in both the Taranaki District Health Board and the Tairawhiti District Health Board. We have seen cuts to home support services for the most vulnerable people in our community—disabled people and elderly at home in need of support—in South Canterbury and I understand in Southland as well. 
 We have lost the paediatric oncology team at Capital and Coast District Health Board. We lost then reinstated and are going to lose again the breast-screening bus on the West Coast. We have no guarantee of school nurse services in our 10 district health boards. The Minister announced a $10 million ambulance service injection which was one-third of the money that the Ambulance Services Association already had and even that pittance has not arrived yet. In fact 20 percent of the money that was committed by the previous Government for ambulance services—and not even that—has arrived. 
Today just to put the icing on the cake I exposed the fact that last week the Minister in another self-promoting move had announced that he had personally reviewed—I am sure while sitting at the bach in Tauranga—the travel service policy and now in a grand announcement said he was going to increase the funding. He said the increase would be the first one in 20 years but that comment is totally untrue. In 2005 the Labour-led Government reviewed the travel policy and increased that very fund by $36 million. The Minister was wrong in that statement. He was also wrong in his answers to a supplementary question in the House which he had to hastily adjust. It is very clear that he does not have his head around the facts of the portfolio. It is quite sad to be honest that he does not have his heart in or any passion for the portfolio. Everyone in the capital city village as it is knows that he did not want to be Minister of Health. We knew prior to the election that he wanted a different portfolio.