Wagner NickyHon NICKY WAGNER (National): Thank you very much Madam Chair. The Director-General of Health in his annual report 2017-18 acknowledges that New Zealand has achieved important health gains over recent years. We are living longer and we're living longer in good health but of course there's always challenges in health and they remain. After going through the Budget process and after looking at the Estimates I'm not sure that this Government is up to managing those health challenges.Now of course Vote Health is one of any Government's really large expenses—or as National believes a social investment. Under National the Government increased Vote Health substantially in every Budget but during this election Labour made the case that there was a huge deficit in health spending that they would invest $8 billion more in health if they became the Government. I actually wonder how many people voted because of that promise because of course they didn't put an extra $8 billion in health and at the Health Committee the Minister of Health had to admit that in percentage terms Labour's increase this year was less than National's last year—so much for election promises.There are other issues that really bother me about this Government's approach to health. Doing away with the health targets is a travesty and it was interesting to hear the member Liz Craig talking about health targets and the importance of health targets because there's absolutely no doubt that they have driven the health gains that the director-general has noted were achieved since 2007. The key thing about targets is that they focus on the things that are important to New Zealanders and on their health outcomes. The targets mean that everyone in the sector—everyone that works in the sector everyone that supports the sector—knows where to put the emphasis knows where to put their expertise and knows where to put their energy. The targets make health organisations health workers and district health boards (DHBs) accountable. That's the key issue—it makes them accountable. The regular publishing of DHB outcomes in the newspapers meant that every New Zealander knew how well the health system was working across the country but more importantly how their local DHB was performing. I think everyone in this House knows that monitoring and transparency of any system drives better results and that of course is what we want in health.There's other failures in the funding that bother me as well and again I note that the member Liz Craig was talking about cheaper GP visits—well weren't we promised $10-cheaper GP visits across the board? Yes? Again another election promise that's very easy to make—we know the reason for it—but has proved very difficult to deliver.And what about mental health? Just as with the $8 billion promise Labour campaigned that there was urgent need for more mental health funding and initiatives and we agreed but what happened? Since they've been in Government the $100 million that National put up ring-fenced for mental health and the 17 mental health initiatives that were on the table and committed to has disappeared and we've now got a mental health talkfest. Now I'm not necessarily against having an inquiry. This is an important area but don't make urgent mental health programmes wait while they talk.Then what about the $100 million for medicines for rare diseases? Up in a puff of smoke.Finally as if disabled people don't have life tough enough this Government has just cancelled $6.5 million worth of funding for cochlear implants. Now cochlear implants are brilliant devices that help deaf people hear and National—[Time expired]