Coleman JonathanHon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): Well Mr Deputy Speaker I would just like to begin by wishing you all the best on a very significant personal milestone that I know you have passed today and I must that say that you are looking a picture of health and fitness as you complete your sixth decade. But you know I was very disappointed by that speech from the man from north Dunedin David Clark. That was a mix of gross exaggeration wild allegations very deeply hurtful personal attacks that he has made on me and much more seriously actually the bullying of an outstanding public servant Chai Chuah.But look I am very happy to be in here debating this every day until the election because we have just tied up Andrew Little and Jacinda Ardern for 15 minutes on an issue frankly that I can tell you what no one at the rugby on Saturday night in Rotorua would have ever heard about. No one in Rotorua has ever heard of the population-based funding formula—the people who were there at that rugby game. No one there would have known about Chai Chuah but what they do know is that at their district health board they are getting more services than ever before. I am quite happy if the Labour Party wants to continue to focus on beltway matters on technical errors—and yes it was an error that the Ministry of Health made—and on the minutiae rather than the big debates.I can tell you why Mr Clark has seized upon this. It is for two reasons. When we were in Opposition we spent months and months and months going around the sector really talking to people analysing the issues and producing an 80-page discussion document Better Sooner More Convenient which was our manifesto in health and which we subsequently delivered. What have we seen from Labour? We have seen nothing during its time in Opposition. There has been no work done. It has gone nowhere. It has not visited anywhere actually and I defy David Clark to state one conference he claims to have opened that I have not been at. He claims he is being asked to open conferences. Well actually I do not believe him.You know Labour did have a very good health spokesperson Mrs King and she was an excellent member of Parliament very cruelly treated by the callous Labour leadership. It has not helped Labour though. It is going backwards in the polls and it put in this man from north Dunedin who needs schooling in the vote. I can tell you that my best advice to him is to go and spend some time with Mrs King and learn about the health portfolio because unfortunately during the select committee hearing we had to spend quite a bit of time educating him on the difference between Vote Health and Crown core health. He did not know the difference. It was very disappointing.There are a few things I need to correct there. The Labour spokesperson has talked about a cut of $2.3 billion. That is a complete fiction. The Health vote has gone up by $5 billion. Labour members' argument is just that they say that it should have gone up by an extra $2.3 billion. Well actually we do not agree with them. There is plenty of money in health. There is a record allocation this year—$888 million—and more important than that out of the hundreds of services provided across the New Zealand health system you will struggle to find one that is not better than it was 9 years ago. We are doing more of everything. There are 50000 more operations per year. There are 150000 more specialist appointments. There are 6900—it is an incredible number—Hon David Bennett: How many?Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: —6900 more doctors and nurses across the system. So while Labour is happy to focus on beltway issues that frankly the voters of New Zealand just do not care about the National Government is about delivering the services that matter. There is a very important point here. The district health boards received $439 million—$1.6 billion over the next 4 years. Despite this technical spreadsheet error that remains unchanged. So it is very disingenuous for Labour to say that there have been cuts to the amount of money that the district health boards are getting. There have been only increases. Mr Clark went through a long list of district health boards and he said that Counties Manukau District Health Board was getting $6.6 million less. Well that is completely untrue. Do you know how much more it is getting than last year? It is $41 million more than last year. So it is completely disingenuous and a very good example of desperate politicking to try to count that as a cut.Then No. 2 he moved on to the Southern District Health Board. He said Oh you know they're getting $5.6 million less because of this error." Well that is completely disingenuous. It is actually getting $24 million more than last year. It is a huge increase. Then Mr Clark said that Capital and Coast—incidentally Labour left us with tens of millions of dollars of deficits to try to turn around; it was really going to hell in a handcart—was getting $3.7 million less. Well in actual fact it is getting $21 million more.So it is very misleading to try to paint a minor technical error as amounting to a cut because the DHBs are all getting more than last year—collectively $439 million more. What this minor technical error is all about is a fraction—about 0.3 of 1 percent—of the total vote. It is a fraction which was misallocated and now has been corrected but the crucial point is that DHBs were getting $439 million on Budget day and they are getting $439 million now.I am very happy for Mr Clark to talk about this every day in the House because I can tell you that televisions all over New Zealand will be being switched off and people will be saying like the person who came up to me on Saturday: "You know what I went to the local hospital and I got great care." I hear that all round the country. I have visited all our district health boards and I keep in touch with them regularly. I know what is going on in health. I was talking at the College of General Practitioners AGM in Auckland on Thursday night. I had spent that day up at Northland District Health Board. There is some excellent work going on out there.The thing with Labour is that it does not want to debate the real results. It does not want to debate what counts to people—things that this Government has delivered like free GP under-13 visits. Ninety-nine percent of the population—and Mrs King was actually very gracious in her acknowledgment of that. She knows good policy when she sees it. She knows when a Government is performing for the people of New Zealand and I tell you she is someone we can work with on health. Hon David Bennett: Why isn't she doing the job?Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Well Mrs King was stabbed in the back and they put in this guy from Dunedin North who does not even know the difference between Vote Health and core Crown health. Confidentially he does say to people—because he says it to people all round the Parliament—"Look I don't really understand the vote and I'm not really on top of my work."Dr David Clark: What a load of crap—what a load of crap.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Just on the basis of his immediate reaction calling it a load of "c" you know I am right. If I was not he would just be smiling and going: "Oh yeah whatever." But that has hit a raw nerve because Mr Clark—Dr David Clark: This from the guy who's just messed up the budget. This from the guy who has just messed up the budget and is apologising in Parliament in an urgent debate—the irony!Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: —who is continually interjecting here—I have hit the nail on the head. Now I have got to tell the man from—Mr North Dunedin here. Remember this is the man who wanted to ban Google from New Zealand. Remember when he said that? He said: "Oh if they don't front up to their tax responsibilities we're going to ban Google from New Zealand."—so he is going to be exercising a lot of power and taking on the multinationals. He says he is going to so-called "restore" $2.3 billion to the Budget. Well we have got a calculator there adding up the spending promises. Andrew Little will be out the back saying: "Oh well you know there's that person we put in as a health spokesperson and he's just promised another 2.3 bil." So we will be counting that up at Budget time; we will be holding these guys to account.But look talking about Budget time I did mention that $888 million and what a great allocation that is. That is producing all sorts of fantastic initiatives. You know $60 million in there roughly for double-crewing of ambulances. Labour complained about that for years but never did anything about it. That means that 100 percent of ambulances over the next 4 years across the country will be double-crewed. I can tell you that that is what people in New Zealand notice. They do not notice the beltway internal machinations of Wellington which the member for Dunedin North is so excited about. They notice that actually they are going to have two highly skilled people driving the ambulance that picks them or their relatives up should they experience some misfortune.They are also going to notice the $60 million that is going into Pharmac. You know that is going to benefit 33000 New Zealanders. We have raised the Pharmac budget to record levels over time. It has gone up well over $200 million over time. Last year 3 million of us got a funded medicine. It is just incredible the progress we have been making. We are able to fund Keytruda and life-saving life-preserving drugs. That is what matters to the people of New Zealand.I will tell you what else matters to them: the fact that they are now getting their operations when they need them. I was down at North Shore Hospital about 10 days ago opening the new $10 million clinical skills and research centre. People there are very happy.Dr David Clark: When I said you were out of touch I didn't expect you to give examples.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: I wish Mr Clark had been there actually because he needs to get out a bit. He needs to actually come to some of these health facilities. I would like to take him to some of these openings. I would like to show him what the staff are saying on the ground of the New Zealand health system and show him some of the fantastic facilities that we are building. I can tell you that North Shore Hospital—the hospital that my constituents go to—was a basket case when we came into Government. It is now not only the largest but one of the best-performing district health boards in the country. I can tell you with the right leadership you can turn these things around.But what would be very very dangerous for the health of New Zealanders would be if David Clark—who by his own admission does not understand the portfolio and constantly demonstrates an ability to focus on exactly the wrong thing—ever got his hands on the portfolio I would be writing to whoever was leading Labour and saying: "You've got to bring back Mrs King. This is urgent. This is dire." We need her back there if the alternative is that guy. Of course that is not going to happen.Of course one of the things when you are dealing with sport and health people do raise a number of issues with you around portfolio-related things. It is no secret we have brought sport back into alignment with health. We are looking to get greater alignment between the two portfolios. Actually I was out in Johnsonville yesterday. I wish Mr Clark could have been there with me to celebrate Green Prescription. We had a whole range of people there. I spoke to three or four members of the public there who are on Green Prescription. It is a great programme. They brought along some representatives. It is a great programme that is about creating innovative solutions for people with some of these really tough issues around being overweight and obesity and diabetes. It was universally lauded as a great programme—it came in 20 years ago under a National Government. It is just another example of a programme that really counts.Talking about sport and health and the relationship between the two I can tell you that if we were not doing so strongly in health and were not delivering for people do you really think that in the TV1 poll National would be at 49 percent? Here is another point about sport and health Mr Clark: if you want to know the difference between the British and Irish Lions and the Labour Party's polling it is that the Lions are getting better. So let us look forward to the test on Saturday. It is going to be a great one. I look forward to discussing this issue for hours and hours to come in the lead-up to the election because actually it is not something that makes any difference to the people out there. Meanwhile I will be out there every day talking about the achievements of this National Government and how if we earn the right to be the Government again we will continue to focus on those things that matter to New Zealanders—not the beltway stuff but the operations the doctors and the appointments. Kia ora."