Coleman Jonathan: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeColeman Jonathan: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 28 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5410. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN (Minister of Health): Look it is great to take a call in this estimates debate as the Minister of Health. This has been a great Budget for health in New Zealand. There is $400 million of new money out of a total allocation across the Government of a billion dollars. I mean that is a record result of $15.9 billion in the vote and $1.7 billion across the next 4 years. But of course it is not as Labour would have it just all about the money. You would have noticed in Mrs King’s speech there that her main theme was that there will never be enough money. Well I can tell you that in health it never feels as if there is enough but the fact is that we are a Government that has focused on results in health. That is the key thing and if you look at the results you just cannot dispute them.We have been very targeted on the areas that we think make a real difference for New Zealanders. So there is an extra 50000 first specialist assessments per year an extra 45000 elective operations each year and an extra 5000 doctors and nurses in the system. You know these are real results. And if you look at the health target levels in terms of emergency departments people are getting in and out of our emergency departments within 6 hours. That is 95 percent of people. We are immunising—nearly 94 percent of children are fully immunised at 8 months. Just a couple of years ago that figure was 70-odd percent. We are doing very well on the advice for stopping smoking on heart and diabetes checks.And cancer—that has been a major success. So when Labour was in power 760 people a year went to Australia for cancer treatment.Hon Member: How many?Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: It was 760. Under us no one now goes to Australia. We have set very tight targets around that and we are delivering in terms of cancer treatment for New Zealanders. We achieved our first target which was around people being able to get their treatment started within 4 weeks of having all their lab tests and being ready. We achieved that. We are now aiming for the gold standard target of 62 days across the whole cancer pathway.So Annette King will tell you about some report that the Labour Party has had commissioned. She talks about cuts in health. That is completely untrue. There is more money than ever; there is more money going in each year. What we have done which Labour did not do is actually look at where the money needs to be spent. So we have new models of care. We need people being treated in primary care with an emphasis on prevention and early intervention. So that is where the money has to go. What happened when Labour was in power? It doubled the health budget but 2000 fewer people each year got an operation. It had those people going to Australia for cancer care. During Annette King’s time it actually delivered fewer first specialist assessments than ever.I do need to also take issue with some of the points that she made there. She was talking about responses to Official Information Act requests. Well actually the more people that Labour has working on those the more it generates and the more it sends to district health boards the more people we are having to employ to answer the requests and the longer they are going to take. But the real point is that it does make Mrs King sound a bit of a hypocrite because if you look back to 2007—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: —or it could make her sound a little bit like one.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: In 2007 it took her when she was replying to an Official Information Act request on the Electoral Finance Act 18 months to reply.Hon Member: What?Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: 18 months. I mean that is not just unethical and it is not just not playing by the rules; it must be illegal. So for Annette King to come here and argue that sort of thing just does not stack up. So there is a range of things she raised there. She was talking about bullying in the health sector and all these letters she claims she gets. Well what she should be worried about is bullying in the Labour Party because we know plenty of that is going on. Mr Chai Chuah is a very fine Director-General of Health. One thing I can tell you is that he may be many things but he is not a bully. He is doing a very good job of getting the health system into shape.You hear these outrageous claims from Mrs King on the radio each morning. I must say she is a popular figure around the Parliament but when you hear her on the radio—you know yesterday morning she was saying that I must be making stuff up—and you contrast that with this lovely woman here it is a bit like seeing your favourite aunt in court on burglary charges. It is hard to believe that someone like this has something like that in her. It is really quite outrageous. But today tabling that Infometrics—well she did not table the Infometrics—Hon Annette King: You’re telling porkies.Hon Dr JONATHAN COLEMAN: Mrs King talks about porkies. What I can tell you is she spends half her time trying to corrupt her officials and the other half making statisticsup. There you have it.