Marcroft JennyJENNY MARCROFT (NZ First): Thank you Madam Speaker. It is a privilege to stand on behalf of New Zealand First to take my call on the Prime Minister's statement. In my previous life I was a broadcaster of almost 30 years—mid- to low-range alto voice. As a newsreader I feel that I am well qualified to make this statement: we have under this Government good news—good news to share with our country of all the ways that we have turned back the tide of desperation and that dark blue cloud that was shrouding the country under the leadership of the National Party. So good news for all in New Zealand.Let me start with the health of our nation. Under our Minister the Hon Dr David Clark and our Prime Minister we have taken a focus of ensuring that for cancer—which is one of the diseases which many New Zealanders and many families are affected by—there is a boost to funding for Pharmac so that these cancer drugs can be rolled out in a far more speedy and transparent way and that has happened. We now have a Cancer Control Agency which will deliver a new 10-year cancer action plan.We have heard some great news from Pharmac and Pfizer—the drug agency with Ibrance which is now available for free for those women who have received the news that they have breast cancer. And for all of those women whose lives have been touched and their family's lives have been touched—and there are those in this House myself included as I lost my mother from breast cancer—this is amazing news: to finally have Ibrance funded which will be life-extending for all of those. There are around 1100 New Zealand patients who will benefit from this and the funding starts in less than a month's time on 1 April.So the focus of this Government is people and the wellness of our society. Wiki Mulholland who came to the select committee—I'm a member of the Health Committee—she came along with her husband. They had been campaigning to get Pharmac to fund a wider range of drugs and they have said how rapt they are that Ibrance will now be funded from April. Previously people had to pay around $6000 for a month's supply of Ibrance; now it will be free. This is transformational and this is good news for all of those sufferers of breast cancer.Mental health has been a focus of this Government. We now have the Mental Health Commission back on track. We've had the first reading in the House. It is now in the select committee stage and we will re-establish the commission which will in fact be delivering on a coalition agreement between New Zealand First and Labour. We know that mental health and addiction issues are devastating not just individuals in our society but whole families and whole communities and so this is going to be crucial to transforming the support services that we need to wrap around these communities. So that is more good news as we have released $1.9 billion to look at preventing suicide and taking care of people's mental wellbeing as well. The Suicide Prevention Office has been opened. It was a pleasure for me to attend the opening alongside the Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and the Minister of Health Dr David Clark and also too a young All Black Nehe Milner-Skudder who was there at the opening who shared his stories of his own mental health journey. For the opening of that office $40 million was set aside but also too specifically set aside for our Māori and Pacific suicide prevention community fund was $12 million. So that is more good news as we focus on ensuring the mental wellbeing of all New Zealanders. Even into the regions—in the Waikato we had an announcement earlier of a mental health facility in Waikato to improve the outcome for those with mental health and addiction issues in that region and we're replacing the Henry Rongomau Bennett Centre which had fallen into a bit of neglect. That became almost no longer fit for purpose so we focus now on restoring that facility. There has been a 72 percent increase in people being seen by mental health and addiction services over the past nine years and so our focus surely is in the right place. Still staying in the health sector—because it's not just those who are ill; it's those who provide support to us—it's those first responders the paramedics. We are going to acknowledge the status that they should have to be recognised as registered health professionals under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act. So money was delivered to them—$38.2 million—last year to secure the future of our ambulance services as well as recognising their professional status. We care about the health and the wellbeing and that is great news. For those who feel that they have not received justice inside our criminal system we have set up—and this was another plan from the New Zealand First coalition agreement with Labour—the Criminal Cases Review Commission. It was a pleasure to attend the opening of that which is also to be set up in the regions—in the Waikato region. Mr Colin Carruthers QC will be leading that. He's the chief commissioner alongside his establishment advisory group because it's really important that we know that the courts have complete independence. They require rules to work effectively they require funding and of course they require the support of the Government so our coalition Government has committed to having a modern and effective justice system by putting the permanent Criminal Cases Review Commission in place. This commission is our commitment to an absolutely just and effective system for review. It will substantially improve our system for responding to all those miscarriages of justice and it will take away the burden on the applicants who couldn't afford to have their cases relooked at. They will now have the assistance for their voices to be heard. That is good news. Speaking of news the media: currently we know that we have a crisis in our media. In our broadcasting landscape there's a crisis of trust. There's also a crisis of the business model. The business model is broken and so this Government has set about to ensure our public media is futureproofed as the changing ecosystems around the world—this is a global issue to make sure that our public media is protected and futureproofed. So we are very pleased to be able to support a public media business case. That's a very practical step that we can take to ensure we have a strong media environment because of course having a strong media environment is crucial for a healthy democracy. This report will be due back in a few months' time and it will guide us as to what options are available what is the design of any kind of merger to form an elaborate or a larger New Zealand broadcasting industry what those designs are and what the costs are going to be and any likely time frames that it will take. So that is a practical and very pragmatic step and we're pleased to be part of ensuring that our media is futureproofed. But we also too would like to look to the future and in doing that we are able to ensure that we get some cars off the road because it's really important. With all the congestion from all those trucks let's get the transport on the rail. So we are reinvigorating KiwiRail through the Provincial Growth Fund. I went to the announcement on the North Auckland Line between Swanson and Whangārei actually. There will be significant benefits for the Northland economy as we get those trucks off the road and we are able to move all of that transport through the rail network. It will provide a lot of jobs as well in training up young people to work on the railway lines. They're very excited about that. That's more than a billion dollars to get New Zealand's rail system back on track so that rail actually can play its proper role in reducing that road congestion and the emissions of course will be reduced with having less cars on the road. Finally I'd just like to make a quick note on one of the taonga of our ngahere and that's the kauri tree. We have a significant problem with kauri dieback. It affects all of those forests in the upper North Island and we have prioritised biosecurity in ensuring we have research to help combat the kauri dieback disease. So this is a Government with great news—not just good news; great news. Therefore I support the Prime Minister's statement.