King Annette: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKing Annette: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee[Sitting date: 17 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18566. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai):I am very pleased for the people of Whakatāne that they have now got a new hospital. Some may recall that there was a march and a “hands around the hospital” event in 1999 because the then National Government looked to close it. I think it is really important that you do put your money where your mouth is when it comes to building hospitals. I would like to say that when in Government we rebuilt Kaitāia; that was to be closed. We rebuilt Thames; that was to be closed. We rebuilt the new Auckland Hospital and the new Wellington Regional Hospital. We did work on Waikato Hospital. We rebuilt the Wairarapa Hospital. The Wairau Hospital in Blenheim the Invercargill hospital the Dunstan Hospital the refurbishment of the Timaru Hospital the Christchurch Women’s Hospital Murchison Nelson—this was under a Labour Government. So when we get the great applause from members over there for their wonderful work it would be nice if sometimes they recognised that there was a lot of capital work that went on under Labour. Many of those hospitals were in threat of closure under a National Government.I want to talk about the Southern District Health Board. I am glad that the Minister of Health is in the chair because he has been incredibly evasive and elusive of late. He has not been to a single political forum in the last 18 months so it would be nice to actually have him in front of a real crowd where he could be questioned—like the doctors on Friday when he failed to turn up. But the people of Dunedin the people of the south have been I believe neglected by this Government. Six years on this is the worst hospital in terms of need of improvement in New Zealand. We hear about how big the geographic area is in the Bay of Plenty but the biggest geographic area trying to provide health services is the Otago-Southland area.All the Minister has answered with is: “Oh you didn’t do anything when you were Minister.” Well I have to say Minister you were told that this hospital was leaking. I asked you a question Minister about the leaking of this hospital and you gave me an answer claiming that there had been one leak in this hospital. I have the answer. It is to written question No. 1699. You said there had been one leak a one-off leak experienced in 2012 in this hospital. That was your knowledge Minister of this hospital. In fact there had been many leaks in this hospital. There were leaks in theatres—leaking into the electrical cords in the theatre. They said about this leak: “Urgent please come and fix it. Water is dripping through the light fittings in theatre 4. This is urgent. We are undergoing an operation.” There have been leaks dripping through the corridor windows. The Minister overlooked the fact that there had been numerous leaks in this hospital in the operating theatre on their sterile equipment. He said there had been one. When asked if he would help provide some money to fix the leaks he said no he did not intend to give them any money. He said: “I’ve given them $124 million since we became the Government.”So why should the people of Otago have to put up with theatres that are dripping and leaking and he will provide no assistance in terms of fixing them? In fact the district health board has estimated that the rebuild of this hospital is 7 years away—7 years. That will make it 13 years if National is still in Government.Then if that was not bad enough the district health board has such a poor IT system that it lost 3000 mammograms. Three thousand mammograms were lost as a result of IT failure in the Southern District Health Board. That is a travesty. So many women were worried about what had happened to them and there was a very very poor response from the board. I would have thought that the Minister would step in at that point and ask for the report on the IT failure to be released. That report has not been released to the public of Otago and like many things in that area it has been covered up. So I would like the Minister when he takes his call in his skite sheet to tell us about the colonoscopy problem down there and tell us the truth about the number of colonoscopies that have not been done in that region.