Salesa JennyHon JENNY SALESA (Associate Minister of Health): Thank you so much Mr Chair for this call on the annual review health appropriation. This debate is concerning for me for many reasons but one of them is mainly because of what we see at Counties Manukau District Health Board (DHB) Middlemore Hospital where thousands of our people from South Auckland are served.When we look at page 335 of the annual review it tells us that Counties Manukau serves a population of 546000 people and that they expect to serve an extra 70000 by the year 2025. We see that the total income for the DHB in 2016-17 was $1.78 billion. However the deficit was close to $13 million. We also see the DHB tells us that the demand for acute surgical services usually ceases during the summer months; however in the 2016-17 year it went up and it stayed up. One of the reasons why they tell us they think the surge hasn't actually come down is because of the population growth and because of the ageing population.Middlemore Hospital in my opinion is a damning indictment on the previous National-led Government's neglect and its underfunding of New Zealand's health system. Among other things we know now that Middlemore Hospital has not one not two but seven hospital buildings that have rot in their walls that are leaking that have asbestos through their walls and as you heard from the Minister of Health earlier on that have sewage leaking through their walls. We cannot have the previous Government tell us that they are so proud of so many millions that they have apparently handed over to this current coalition Government when we see the manifestation of so much underfunding in Middlemore Hospital. That is the result of underfunding. That is the result of not looking after the public health system.It is not the only DHB though that is experiencing underfunding. We know that when we look at Dunedin Hospital it is also going through a number of issues. They have asbestos there as well. We are looking at actually a new rebuild of Dunedin Hospital as well. Over at Dunedin when it rains heavily it leaks in the operating theatre in Dunedin Hospital.Hon Member: Do your job.Hon JENNY SALESA: We hear people from the other side saying Do your job." We have been here for a few months; the previous Government had been in Government for nine long years. These leaks this rot in the walls and the asbestos that we're dealing with didn't just happen over the last few months. We know now that we would need around about $14 billion—$14 billion—to deal with what is needed in terms of capital projects within the next 10 years in our DHBs. And yet the previous Government they put aside $600 million—$600 million they put aside—that they earmarked for capital costs. That was only for this year 2018. When we look at the other years how much did the previous Government put aside? Zero absolutely zero every year. We have around about 500000 people that do not visit their general practices because they cannot afford the cost of seeing their doctors. We know that under the previous Government we saw a 30 percent increase under the last Government in costs for visiting their GPs. So many of our people when they cannot afford to see their GPs they go to our emergency departments at hospitals. Thank you Mr Chair.Reports relevant to the Health Sector noted."