Henderson EmilyDr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): Kia ora e te Māngai o te Whare. Earlier Minister Little and Minister Verrall spoke about this Government's massive investment in rebuilding our health service. Let me provide a little case study. When you're from Whangārei and you visit other places you notice a few differences. The cars are definitely flasher there's fewer people wearing gumboots in the CBD and there's much less of a chance of people out on a winter's day in their fluffy onesies.Now our fashion choices aside—and your loss New Zealand—if a Whangaruvian takes a trip to another town's hospital we've also found there's far less chance of enjoying the indoor rain feature that we call a ceiling and much less chance of the added excitement of sewage joining the deluge as happened earlier this year. In fact less of a chance has generally summed up most chances in my home town. In Whangārei while some people do well just over 40 percent have an income of $50000 or less and one in three are in the most deprived quintile. Now that inevitably means our health statistics are even less flash than our vehicles. We have some of the greatest health needs in the country and meanwhile as I was hinting earlier one of the oldest and cruddiest hospitals in the country.As my youngest brother famously told my mum when he finished last in the Whangārei Primary School swimming sports Mum I came first at the wrong end." Whangārei Hospital the struggles of its excellent staff working in an Emergency Department half the size it needs to be in theatres where windows have been known to fall out during surgery is what years of under-investment in health services looks like and likewise it's just become a case study in how this Labour Government is securing the recovery of Whangārei and places like it across the country.Whangārei's hospital opened on Valentine's Day in 1900. The Minister of Health was invited but failed to turn up. It turned out that that was going to be prophetic. By the time the hospital was in its second century with its main buildings about 60 years old it was well-known that it needed a massive upgrade but still no one turned up. Admittedly we weren't alone in being ignored at this point. In their nine years of Government National put only $1 billion into hospital infrastructure. In two of those years including two years when the current National health spokesperson was the Whangārei electorate MP they didn't put in a single cent. But in 2021 this Government and this Minister of Health did turn up. On 7 May last year Minister Little turned up to open the cardio catheterisation lab that was part of this Government's $48 million budget in 2020 for urgent works on top of the $24 million we set aside in 2018 for our new paediatric facilities about 50 new in-patient beds and the endoscopy lab as well.Then this year came the best news of all. The Government confirmed that it is committed to fully funding the first and most major stage of the total rebuild of our hospital. A fit for purpose hospital will be a huge benefit to Whangārei and Northland's health. Only today the Northland DHB posted celebrating the impact of that cardio lab saying it has resulted in breakthrough improvements in wait times with 90 to 95 percent of our heart attack patients getting their treatment within 72 hours. That's 20 percent higher than the 70 percent Ministry of Health target. Finally Whangārei is coming first at the right end of a pool.An investment in our hospital isn't just about health outcomes. It will help secure our economic recovery by supplying ongoing work for our construction sector to the extent that where we once as a regional town feared contraction we are now looking at a boom. This is the health story we are seeing across New Zealand. In the last five years Labour has put almost $7 billion into rebuilding our health infrastructure and that's about seven times the $1 billion our predecessors put in over nine years. That is what I call and what Whangārei calls securing our recovery."