Kedgley Sue: Budget Debate 
Kedgley Sue: Budget Debate 
[Volume:654;Page:4247] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 A few weeks ago employees at the Ministry of Health were being hailed as the stalwarts of our health system as they were paper-shuffling heroes who were keeping us safe from swine flu. But now those same employees are facing job cuts. I heard that officials have been given mere days to prepare plans for restructuring departments like the Ministry of Health so it is almost certain that we will have yet another round of job cuts in the ministry. While the officials who are giving the Government advice are being purged and cut the front lines of preventive health care are also being attacked. Well-functioning health prevention initiatives are being thrown into the bin with this Budget. 
Of course there are some things to praise in the Budget. We are pleased to see the increased funding going to those who work in hospices the increased funding for insulating homes and a small increase for aged care. But other parts of the Budget relating to health seem to be bizarre. Indeed I am left wondering whether the Minister of Health hired Lindsay Perigo as one of his secret purchase advisors—I think those advisors are getting around $2000 a day—to give him a few tips on how to sabotage preventive health because that is what this budget has done just as the Greens predicted it would weeks ago. This Budget has sabotaged initiatives in preventive health nutrition and obesity. It has effectively switched the whole focus of the ministry away from trying to tackle the root causes of ill health such as poor nutrition and obesity or from trying to prevent people from becoming ill in the first place. That is why I predict the Budget will be known as the Budget that purged very good nutrition obesity and preventive health programmes and literally expunged nutrition and obesity from the Ministry of Health’s priorities. 
For example the Government has axed the $16 million Mission-On programme. It was a package of initiatives that was aimed at improving the lifestyles of young New Zealanders by improving their nutrition and getting them more involved in physical activity which included a whole lot of positive initiatives aimed at improving nutrition within the school and early childhood environments. The Budget has also axed the regional coordinators of the Healthy Eating - Healthy Action programme who were working very effectively in schools and axed the budget of the nutritional social marketing campaign Feeding our Futures the Green Party’s $3 million a year nutrition fund that was set up to help schools with healthy eating and edible garden initiatives. Its funding has been reallocated into something called the Community Response Fund whatever that means. I have not been able to figure that out. Then there is a reduction in the Healthy Eating - Healthy Action budget and a vague reference in the Budget to the fact that the whole work programme for Healthy Eating - Healthy Action is being revised to reflect the Government’s priority areas of work. I take that as code for saying that funding will be switched away from healthy eating and focused instead on physical activity. The sector has been waiting for some great announcement about some new physical activity measures but it has not yet come. 
In the back of the Budget we have the statement of corporate intent from the Minister for the next 3 years. If one looks at the statement of corporate intent one finds that there is no mention of the word “nutrition”. There is only one very vague and oblique reference to obesity. These things have been expunged from the Ministry of Health and are no longer priorities for the ministry nor is there any funding for them. The Budget has also axed funding for the Obesity Action Coalition. This was probably about 0.0001 percent of the health budget. In fact I may have even left off a zero in that quick calculation. The funding was infinitesimally small in the grand scheme of things but the Obesity Action Coalition was doing great work in trying to improve nutrition and reduce obesity in New Zealand. Axing its funding seems to be a particularly petty political unfortunate and short-sighted decision. 
All of the decisions I have just referred to are purely political and astonishingly short-sighted. Presumably those decisions were made as a result of sustained lobbying from the food industry. I predict they will cost the nation dearly in terms of poor health and increased expenditure of the health budget because the reality is that poor nutrition is the leading cause of premature death and disease in New Zealand. It contributes to more than 8000 preventable deaths a year. If people do not believe that they need only to look at the Ministry of Health statistical chart I have here. It shows poor diet accounting for 8000 to 9000 preventable deaths. The Government is ignoring the single largest cause of preventable death and disease in New Zealand. The reality is that we are spending almost $1 billion a year on treating obesity and type 2 diabetes etc. but the Government is ignoring those problems. They are no longer its priority. We are in the midst of an obesity epidemic. A third of our children are obese. A lot of experts are saying that unless we get serious about the problem obesity-related illnesses will skyrocket and overwhelm our health system. But the Government is ignoring them. The Government is just sweeping this under the carpet presumably because of food industry lobbying. Until we reduce the numbers of people with preventable illnesses in our hospitals and the amount of resources being spent treating preventable illnesses the health system will remain in crisis. But instead of tackling the root causes of ill-health the Government is putting its head in the sand and is heading in exactly the opposite direction. It is rolling back public health initiatives removing nutrition and obesity as priorities for the Ministry of Health throwing out very important initiatives and saying it will leave it all to individuals instead. What a cop-out! 
The Government’s axing of nutrition and obesity initiatives from the Budget follows a consistent pattern that we have seen ever since this Government took office. In February this year out of the blue the Minister of Education axed the school food nutritional guidelines which the Ministry of Health had spent more than 4 years and about $4.5 million of taxpayers’ money developing. Papers obtained under the Official Information Act reveal that the Minister did this without seeking any advice from school principals or the Ministry of Health officials who had been working on the guidelines for many years. She did it without any justification for purely political reasons presumably to placate the food industry lobbyists. Although she sought no advice from officials about whether the guidelines were working she asked the Ministry of Education officials whether there were any risks to axing the guidelines and they said “Numerous studies have shown poor nutrition and health adversely affects educational achievement and Pacific and Maori students are especially vulnerable in this respect”. They went on to report that tuck shops are the primary source of lunch for around half of students and account for up to 30 percent of their diet. But the Minister ignored that advice and the growing body of research that shows that children who eat well are better able to concentrate and learn in class. 
Instead of investing in initiatives to improve the food our children eat the Minister of Education has spent $30 million on independent schools. Perhaps that will allow tennis courts at Christ’s College and other private schools to be upgraded to Olympic standards. Did the Minister not think that some of that money could have been spent on trying to get all Kiwi kids in New Zealand healthier perhaps with a nationwide investment in school gardens in primary schools? Imagine just $1 million going into setting up school gardens where kids could learn about planting harvesting and cooking vegetables. That would have been a visionary initiative.