Ryall Tony: General Debate 
Ryall Tony: General Debate 
[Volume:644;Page:13520] 
Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay of Plenty) 
: 
 That was really a work-up was it not? That was really a work-up by Phil Goff. But let us just mention the one sentence he said that I think is completely apposite to the Government today. He said: “Blame anyone but yourself.” Here we have the headlines about Wellington Hospital: “Dysfunction mistrust morale at rock bottom” and “Hospital crises” and what does the Minister of Health limply say about who is responsible for this? He says: “Oh it’s all the board.” But he does not admit that the failed Minister of Health Annette King appointed half the board of the Capital and Coast District Health Board for the last 6 years. Her hand-picked flunkies have been running that hospital for over 6 years. They have been running it down into the ground and now we have report after report about how people are dying because of the way that the Government is administering the public hospital. 
Patient after patient is revealed in the paper today as having died because of a hospital that cannot provide decent services to the people of New Zealand. A man lost his life because he was sent home from the emergency department three times despite the fact that he had life-threatening pneumonia. What about the man who could not get an X-ray and subsequently died within hours? What about the people who died because of surgery delays at Wellington Hospital? There has been nothing from this Minister except some sort of pathetic comment about oysters and sand. That is all we got from him. 
Labour used to be the party that said it stood for the public health system and for ordinary New Zealanders getting a quality health system. How the hell do Labour members explain the front page of the Rotorua  
Daily Post 
 today which says that patients within days of having surgery had to scrub the toilets in the hospital during the weekend? How do they explain that? In Rotorua surgical patients disgusted with hygiene standards at Rotorua Hospital have resorted to cleaning the toilets themselves. 
Hon Bill English 
: It’s their fault. 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: Yes. Do members know whose fault it is? It is the patients’ fault for being there. That is what Government members say—it is the patients’ fault for being there. 
In a New Zealand public hospital the patients are resorting to cleaning the toilets because this Government wants to spend the money on 10000 bureaucrats. That is what this Government is doing to the public health system and not one of the Government members takes any accountability. Annette King repeatedly appointed her mates people completely bereft of any skill whatsoever to the board of Capital and Coast District Health Board and to district health boards around the country. Things have turned into a mess and there is no accountability from that woman for what she has done to the people of Wellington or for what she is now doing to the people of Rotorua. 
How can the Labour Party stand proud as the defender of the public health system when in Rotorua patients recovering from surgery 2 days earlier are finding scrubbing brushes and rubber gloves and are cleaning the toilets themselves? This is happening in a New Zealand public hospital under Labour. What do the patients say? I could not sum it up better myself. They say: “We can’t blame the nurses. Where is all the money going that Prime Minister Helen Clark says they are putting into hospitals?”. Well I will tell members where it is going. It is going into 10000 bureaucrats—there will be 10000 bureaucrats by the time of the election. 
This Government has employed two bureaucrats for every extra doctor in the health system. It has employed two health bureaucrats for every extra doctor working in our hospitals. That is the record of the Labour Party in the health system. With $5 billion extra spent on health there have been fewer people getting elective surgery emergency departments are turning patients away and now in Rotorua patients are being forced to clean the public hospital toilets themselves within days of having surgery. Within days of having surgery they are having to clean the hospital toilets themselves. And this Government wonders why disease is being passed around our hospitals and why we are closing hospital wards up and down the country to deal with methicillin-resistant  
Staphylococcus aureus 
. Labour is failing the public health system.