Chadwick Steve: Financial Review Debate — Procedure In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Chadwick Steve: Financial Review Debate — Procedure In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:616;Page:11879] 
STEVE CHADWICK (Labour—Rotorua) 
: 
 It is wonderful to follow the Minister on her feet and “on our feet” is the slogan that we need when we look at the issues of obesity diabetes and co-morbidity. The issue is not just about the food that people eat. It is about activity and New Zealanders have become passive. But this Government is not passive. We are very proud to say that now 2.5 million New Zealanders—that is over half of New Zealanders—are involved in primary health organisations. What does that mean? It means that those people are getting health care and access to their doctor to the practice nurse or to someone working in the practice who gives them sound health advice upfront and they are getting it at a very low cost. In fact we have even rolled forward by 1 year the access to primary health services for the over-65s. We thought we would be rolling that programme out until 2010. However we brought it forward by 1 year and we now have over half of New Zealand enrolled in getting cheaper access to doctors’ visits which is absolutely fantastic. From July of last year under-18-year-olds could get cheap access to general practitioners and because of that we will solve some of the problems early rather than meeting the high end-cost of hospital care. 
I have just returned from a visit to Australia where we looked at the health systems there. I have to say that we beat ourselves up over the waiting times for surgery over sending patients to Australia for oncology care and over workforce shortages. We ain’t in half as much of a mess as Australia is with its Medicare process which was slam dunked in the House in Australia last week. It was said that Medicare was not providing the systemic solutions it needed to improve the health-care status of the people of Australia. Australia has federal funding of doctors and nurses in the primary-care sector and State funding of hospitals. No incentives are lined up to keep people healthy and well and out of the high-cost hospital end. Australia talked about oncology services. As long as we fund families to go with cancer patients it is a good thing that we are using the capacity of Australia and sending cancer patients there to get their care when they need it within the guidelines rather than having them languish in wait for radiation and oncology services in New Zealand. We have to stop beating ourselves up about the access to oncology services. 
Australia mentioned also that it has problems with its health workforce. It has huge problems over there and asked us how we were managing to get more general practitioners into New Zealand and how we manage our workforce issues here. We are managing them because after the failed market model we now have a workforce strategy for developing new people to come into the workforce. We have more doctors training in medical schools. We are training more radiation oncologists; we have doubled that number from 16 to 38. We have 40 more medical students in place. That was all targeted when we came into Government in 1999 because for 9 years nothing had been done. It had been believed the market would look after the workforce. Well the market did not look after it and we inherited a deficit there. I am simply amazed that the Opposition is not here in the Chamber to speak to this issue today as one of its supposedly key platform planks. The National Party is simply amazing! 
Another thing that Australia asked was how we had put an accident compensation system in place in New Zealand. Australia has to manage indemnity insurance with obstetricians having insurance policies and paying over $100000 a year just to manage medical risk. 
The Australians asked how we had ever set up an accident compensation service in New Zealand. They wished they had one. They were really interested in the work Ruth Dyson was doing with medical misadventure and medical injury being covered by accident compensation now. Why do we beat up on accident compensation all the time here? We are too narrow thinking. We have now a system in place. 
Sue Kedgley asked what we are doing about obesity. I will tell members what we are doing. We did a review of the Auckland District Health Board. It is saying that now it is not debt ridden and debt burdened it is starting to get on with tackling the health status of our Auckland community. That is most exciting. Initiatives are going on there with Sport and Recreation New Zealand with general practitioners with practice nurses and with the school curriculum. That is how we will solve the obesity issue. 
Report noted.