Watts SimonSIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): I rise on behalf of National as the MP for North Shore to speak on the urgent debate in regards to private information being released from the ransomware attack at Waikato District Health Board. I must say this is a national security incident and deserves the appropriate focus that we have simply not heard from that side of the House so far today. This is an attack on Kiwis—people who live in Hamilton in Cambridge in Thames and Tokoroa and Te Kūiti and in Taumarunui—and what this needs is a high degree of urgency and focus in order to deal with the issue. What we heard from before from Minister Little was basically a normalisation of this event happening—it's happening here and there around the world—and blaming the previous Government for inaction. Well I'm sorry Minister you've had four years in that role and have not delivered the solutions required to mitigate this risk. We are spending nearly half a billion dollars on restructuring costs of the reforms that you're implementing—$486 million—none of that is going in terms of the cyber-security improvements within our DHBs. You note around $385 million going into IT. I questioned you on 9 June at select committee in regards to that and the answer is that money is not all going into cyber-security. So I think you need to be up front with Kiwis out there. We need a comprehensive digital infrastructure programme and it is simply not good enough for some of our Ministers to stand up here and basically give a speech around updating your passwords and sort of a basic thing when we are dealing with organisations that are under significant pressure. This incident has shown us—and has had—a significant impact on our healthcare system. Emergency department staff elective surgery outpatient clinics diagnostics radiology were all significantly impacted by this incident and are still not back to normal levels. I've had conversations with staff who were working on the ground at that DHB. They are recording information on paper and they have noted that in some areas it may take up to two years for that information to be put back into the systems. That is simply not good enough in a country like New Zealand which should aspire to be one of the best in the world in this area.Our front-line healthcare staff are under immense pressure. We are hearing daily of the significant issues that our nursing staff across this country are having in regards to workload and dealing with the issues of health vacancies. At Waikato DHB alone there are 942 vacancies at that district health board. There are 453 vacancies for nurses. There are 159 vacancies for allied health. There are 180 back-office staff vacancies. There are 125 medical vacancies. There are 25 support vacancies. Those are vacancies that are distracting from the delivery of front-line healthcare services and this incident has only made that situation worse. The challenge and the issue that we are not talking about but needs to be spoken about is that all these issues will lead to adverse patient outcomes and patient events. That is going to be impacting our most vulnerable people within the communities that I talked about today. And they deserve a voice from this Parliament in terms of ensuring that this issue is dealt with. Not only are there issues within the healthcare system in the Waikato we are also seeing a health system across the board that is at breaking point. And again this Government has had four long years to start to put in place the mitigations in order to fix this issue but they have not done that as proven by this. The ambulance service here Wellington Free Ambulance—WorkSafe have put them on notice. Fatigue is a key issue. Within our aged-care sector their front-line registered nurses are being poached by district health boards because the workforce pot is not being increased. And lastly we're dealing with a vaccination roll-out that is putting more pressure on our workforce because we're trying to do a whole lot of things but we're not actually doing anything well. Lastly the costs of this incident are significant for this country not only disruption but also productivity. And as we all know those two factors sadly lead to adverse patient outcomes. And that is going to be the cost paid by all Kiwis as a result of this incident.