Reti ShaneDr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): Kia ora Mr Speaker. Kia kaha Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori. I want to speak today and I want to start off first of all by talking about what a mess this Government is making of measles. I want to outline exactly what sort of mess they're making. In fact let's talk about vaccinations as a whole and talk about this terrible year—2019—for vaccinations for this Labour - New Zealand First Government. Let's start with meningitis at the beginning of the year and bring ourselves to where we are now.So let's talk about January: the meningitis vaccination programme in Northland where we don't vaccinate 5- to 12-year-olds where schools fund-raise during a meningitis outbreak—an infectious outbreak—where schools fund-raise for their own meningitis vaccines. When did we start outsourcing public health to sausage sizzles and to schools? When did we start doing health lite" during an infectious disease outbreak? Note to self: a Labour - New Zealand First Government outsources public health.Then we move through to May. Now the flu immunisation vaccination programme is the biggest public vaccination programme in New Zealand. We vaccinate roughly one in every four New Zealanders. In December Pharmac goes out to its suppliers and this time they said "Look we need about 1.3 million vaccines." Their supplier came back saying "We can supply about 1.02 million." And nothing more was done until May when we ran out of vaccines. Mid-May to mid-June New Zealand ran out of influenza vaccines because the Government didn't do the maths the supplier didn't do the correct modelling and no one filled the gaps.Now I asked David Clark a range of questions around this about three or four weeks ago—many people will remember that—and his reply was so appalling that Grant Robertson had to stand up and ask the Speaker how he could edit the video later. You may recall that. It's online. Go and have a look at it. It was an appalling response which shows how much David Clark and this Government have taken their eye off vaccination.That brings us to where we are today—to measles; a tiny virus with very serious consequences. We know that a third of people with measles will have complications—pneumonia infected ears respiratory infections. We know that 10 percent will be hospitalised and tragically—tragically—one to two per 1000 infected will actually die and they'll die of encephalitis.So how did we get here? Well I think we got here in my view in two ways. First of all consumer complacency—it's been a long time since New Zealanders have seen polio. I don't know whether anyone here would know what diphtheria is. We actually vaccinate for it but it's been a long time since we've seen that as well. So undoubtedly consumer complacency but clinical complacency also—and by that I mean on 1 May last year when David Clark took away the health targets our professionals took their eyes off the ball just like central government did. People pay attention to what is recorded and what is monitored and we took away that lever when we took away health targets.So where are we in the current state? Well we've clearly got this outbreak in Auckland and on Monday I predicted that Northland would be the next cab off the rank. No surprise there; we're the next area adjacent to Auckland. It was going to be either us or the Waikato. Clearly it's us. I know that because as of last night another five cases were added to the 35 we've already had in Northland making it 40. Northland will be the next area with a meningitis outbreak.So what do we need in Northland? We need more vaccines. We know they're running out in Auckland. They're also marginal. When I call my colleagues around Northland there are marginal supplies there. What was the Government's response to measles supply? Well let's do a stocktake on Monday. Let's stop the distribution of all vaccines and let's do a nationwide stocktake. So again I checked with my colleagues: "Did you get a call from anyone asking how many vaccines you've got in your fridge?"—"No we didn't." So how good this stocktake is who knows?Then let's look at the consequences of the stocktake. So leading up to 4 o'clock last night the recommendations for measles were "children and everyone under the age of 50". That is if you were born after 1969 you needed that second vaccine. After the stocktake on Monday it became apparent that there were not enough measles vaccines in New Zealand and if you go on the ministry website right now you will see that guideline has changed to "under 30". What happened to the 30- to 50-year-olds overnight? A miracle must have happened! They're suddenly immune! We live in miraculous times—30- to 50-year-olds in New Zealand suddenly became immune to the measles virus overnight last night. No that's not what happened. What happened is that with the national stocktake David Clark and this Government were able to see that they are out of measles vaccines they haven't done the modelling correctly and consequently 30- to 50-year-olds now miss out. Not good enough.My last point: authorise the pharmacists to give the vaccine. They already give the flu vaccine. It's easy to do."