King Annette: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
King Annette: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:606;Page:3445] 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister of Health) 
: 
 I have to tell Roger Sowry who made the last speech in this debate that absolutely no one mentions his name at any meeting that I have ever been at. In fact if it was mentioned people are likely to say “Roger who?”. I disabuse him of the fact that we all sit around worrying about little Roger. We do not. No one mentions him. He is a nonentity. However it is ironic to listen to Roger Sowry’s amendment to the amendment moved by his leader. The h-word immediately came to mind because the amendment that he moved was that we oppose the sale of Air New Zealand shares to Qantas. Was the National Party not the party that wanted to sell the whole airline to any foreign buyer who would buy it? I thought that was what it wanted. In fact I am absolutely certain. There is a little bit of the old h-word that has crept into that amendment. Do members not feel sorry for Bill English? He could not even get his amendment right. He had to send in the water boy to move another part to the amendment to the amendment. I do feel sorry for poor old Bill English—the bewildered look on his face the frightened eyes the shuffling of the feet. It really brings out the mother hen in me. Day in day out he is under attack—and that is just by members of his own party.  
Then we heard from the icon of the National Party Dame Thea Muldoon. She said: “We have to make the best of what we’ve got. It’s not as if there’s anyone else there.” Well the one thing I do know is that Dame Thea knows a pig’s ear when she sees one. Bill English is increasingly becoming a tragic figure. Perhaps he is Hamlet—“To be or not to be.” In Bill’s case it is a matter of “To be for or to be against that is the question.” He wonders every day whether he should stand the slings and arrows of Gerry Brownlee or take arms against him. He is still making up his mind. Or perhaps he is Richard III: “My kingdom for a horse.” he says “Or anything to get me out of where I am at.” Maybe he is King Lear betrayed by those who claim to love him. What about Othello? People can make their own list in regard to the tragic figure that Bill English has become.  
He has become tragic because he gets so many things wrong. As the  
New Zealand Herald  
stated this week he takes one step forward and two steps back. He must feel like going down to the bottom of the garden and eating worms. He has been told that what he has to have is profile profile profile. He has been told to get out there and get himself noticed. The trouble is that nobody recognises him. We went to the Tuatapere sports day as members heard yesterday in an excellent speech from Lianne Dalziel. Bill arrived in his sunhat which was missing only the corks hanging around the bottom of it. The problem with the sunhat was that no one could recognise him. In fact nobody knew he was at his own sports day in Tuatapere. I say to him that if he wants to be recognised he should get rid of that sunhat and get himself one of those loyal New Zealand ones with a brim on the front. Maybe then he might stand out and be identified as being the leader of the National Party. 
He decided at Christmas to have a go at a bit of publicity. He thought: “I was an old health Minister so maybe I could get the spurs on again—“ 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: What? 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: Yes he thought: “I’ll put my spurs on get back into the saddle and put out a statement on health.” The only trouble was he got it wrong yet again. He put out a statement saying that the new primary health organisations were going to provide 9-minute consultations. This is a man who prides himself on being a very successful Minister of Health. No one can remember what he did but he thinks he was very successful. He also prides himself on the fact that he has a wonderful relationship with the Pacific Island community. So in his endeavour to make a name for himself at Christmas he tried to use the Pacific people to make a splash. He said that the new primary health organisation in south Auckland a Pacific primary health organisation was to provide 9-minute consultations.  
Well first it backfired because he got it wrong. Second credible people like Dr Debbie Ryan and Dr Siro Fuatai said he had got it wrong. Third the facts proved he had got it wrong. Dr Fuatai who is the chair of one of the first primary health organisations in New Zealand said this about the new primary health organisation: that they had now started to make the sort of real difference to the lives in south Auckland that he would have liked to make years ago. If Bill English was such a friend of the Pacific people why did he not make an effort to reduce the cost of primary health-care for thousands of New Zealanders?  
Dr Fuatai said: “We now have access to extra resources in terms of staff and time and this has given us the stability to do the work for our people.” We are doing it not talking about it as Bill English is. Dr Fuatai went on to say: “The whole nature of patients’ consultation has changed. We spend longer with patients. People are now coming to us not because they are necessarily sick but to talk about how to prevent themselves becoming sick.” He said that the three practices were now seeing 20 percent more patients a day since they became a primary health organisation in July 2002. He said that one of the reasons people were coming was that consultation was free for children and $5 or nothing for people on low incomes.  
He said that reducing the price had helped people. We know that the cost of primary health-care is a barrier to people going to their local health professional and we have decided that we will make a major effort in the next 3 years to reduce the cost of primary health-care to New Zealanders. If John Key were to arrive in his local hospital to have his hip replaced he would have it done for free regardless of the fact that he is a millionaire. He would have his hip replacement done free in a public hospital. But if he were to go to his local doctor because he needed some health care he would pay top dollar but so would every New Zealander who earns over $19980. I do not know whether Mr Key could live on $19980 a year but that is the level of the community services card.  
And what has the National Party said? It has said that it would scrap our primary health-care strategy and keep the community services card. They will keep that card and keep access to doctors and nurses in New Zealand for the very very poor; whereas we say that every New Zealander should have access to affordable primary health-care to ensure that they keep themselves as well as possible.  
This is a major initiative by this Government. We have put in the money to provide for it. There has been no commitment by the National Party. In its health policy for the last election primary health-care was not even mentioned. It did not get even a line. It could not care a hoot about primary health-care. We do and the money has gone into it.  
I want to share with this House this graph with its very good colours. I say to Mr Key to look at the blue line. That represents the money the National Party put into health. The red part of the graph shows what Labour has put into health over the last 3 years. One dollar in every $5 now goes into health care in New Zealand. It has never been higher. In 1998-99 health as a percentage of Government expenditure was 18.3 percent. Today it is 21 percent. There has been no commitment by any Opposition party to put that amount of money into health.  
As I said we now have 21 percent of our total expenditure going to health. It was $6.5 billion in 1998-99 it is $8.8 billion this year and going up to $9.3 billion next year. That is a real commitment to health. Over this next 3 years we will see real improvements in primary health-care—the access to it the affordability of it for those who will be able and want to get primary health-care. We will see real action continuing on waiting lists in New Zealand. We will see real money being spent on mental health services. Since about 1996 the expenditure on mental health has almost doubled. We are in good shape in New Zealand by any international standards.