Upston Louise: Reports — Inquiry into Improving Child Health Outcomes and Preventing Child Abuse with a Focus from Preconception Until Three Years of Age (Volumes 1 and 2)Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeUpston Louise: Reports — Inquiry into Improving Child Health Outcomes and Preventing Child Abuse with a Focus from Preconception Until Three Years of Age (Volumes 1 and 2)[Sitting date: 10 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15469. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): I am very pleased to be the final speaker on this debate on the Health Committee inquiry. As my colleagues from across the House have done I want to commend my National Party colleague Dr Paul Hutchison for leading this very significant piece of work. Like my parliamentary colleagues in the House today I do recognise that this will be a legacy piece of work. The Government will of course be officially responding but I think it is a very comprehensive piece of work that has looked at the most critical years of a child’s life. We in this House all know that every single baby and child of New Zealand is precious and we need to do whatever we can to protect them and make sure that they have the best opportunities as they grow up.I think one of the things that has been successful in the work we are doing in Government now is to continue and increase the investment in health overall. If you look at other countries with the economic conditions some have struggled to kind of keep up their investment. So I think it is important that we continue to do that and to make sure that that spending is focused on exactly the areas that count.My colleague Louisa Wall talked about the fact that many of our pregnancies are not planned. If we think about parenthood I consider it to be the most important job on the planet and so many of our young New Zealanders are not planning that particular role. So I think that children who are born into those families need more support than they get currently. This was a common theme that came up when I was a member of the Māori Affairs Committee in its work on the inquiry into the determinants of well-being for Māori children. There are a number of recommendations in the report that look at the whole concept of contraception and of education—about making sure that unwanted pregnancies can be prevented in the first place and that we support those with planned pregnancies.It was interesting that my colleague Louisa Wall referred to the recommendations in the report specifically around that early pregnancy intervention because that is what I also wanted to highlight from Counties Manukau. If you look at an example from New Zealand in Counties Manukau less than 16 percent of pregnancies had had an antenatal check before 8 weeks. If you look at the equivalent in Sweden it is 90 percent. So you are kind of getting a double hit because some of those women who are presenting in Counties Manukau will be of Pacific Island descent and unfortunately the statistic there is that 86 percent of those are overweight or obese. So before that baby is even born there are additional risks presenting from a health perspective for things like gestational diabetes which then presents a lifelong challenge. The more opportunity we have to intervene early the more we should look at that.The fantastic thing about those early antenatal checks is that through a range of different agencies and groups working with mums and families other potential risks are then able to be identified. With programmes like Whānau Ora and some of the other work that we are doing inter-agency we are able to make sure that the services are wrapped round that mum and family before baby arrives. I think that is one of the most important things we can do. It very much mirrors the work that Paula Bennett is doing in the vulnerable children space. It actually joins up with a lot of the Government’s work at the moment and looks more specifically at some of these areas. In that antenatal area for example getting more of our mums presenting earlier in their pregnancies is one very simple thing that this report highlights would make a significant difference.I am very clear and I want to quote the Prime Minister in closing this debate today when he said: “The basis of a country is not its Government but its families.” I thinkthat is a very true note. I want to close my address today by wishing every New Zealand child and family and my parliamentary colleagues the best of the season’s greetings.Motion agreed to.