van Velden BrookeBROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you Madam Chair. I also wanted to touch on Pharmac today given that obviously we've had the final review finally released by the Minister of Health after he'd sat on it for over four months much to the disappointment of many patients in New Zealand. But I wanted to raise the issue of the fact that Pharmac is not very transparent—we know it's not. We know that they have been having terrible processes like the Pharmac review pointed to such as that the decision that was made around whether new drugs should or should not be funded was made by staff members and not by people who are experts in the field of medicine. There are a lot of processes going on within Pharmac that many New Zealanders would have issue with and I have been advocating strongly for a medicines strategy to be put into the health legislation here. But when it comes to Pharmac itself one aspect that I'd like to get a little bit more clarity on is his previous comments that he's considered the Pharmac review and deems that there's no need for any change and I just wonder how much insight the Minister really has and has he actually considered the report at all? I wrote a question to the Minister back in February asking How will the recommendations in the Pharmac review panel's final report if any be captured in this bill as it goes through Parliament?" The Minister said at the time "In view of the interim report I'm satisfied that the issues identified in that report will be adequately addressed." and I just wonder whether at any point since the interim report and the final report any more consideration has actually happened or is it simply the case that the Minister never really wanted to do this review? The Government were put into the situation where they needed to do it because the ACT Party asked for it on the campaign trail because of patients. He's hidden the report. He hasn't really actually read it in any great detail and therefore we have no changes in the legislation.But based on that I'd also like to raise an issue just on how Pharmac will operate with Health New Zealand and the Māori Health Authority because under the current system the district health boards and Pharmac have a memorandum of understanding and there are issues and areas that they overlap on. I'm just curious whether there has been any acknowledgment of how Pharmac will operate with Health New Zealand and the Māori Health Authority bearing in mind that the Pharmac review said that for the proper integration of Pharmac or closer integration into the new health system it was incredibly important that there was a medicines strategy that guided how Pharmac operates under Health New Zealand and the Māori Health Authority.So given that there is no medicines strategy the Minister doesn't want to put one in here and there appear to be not really any changes to Pharmac at all is the Minister aware of how Pharmac will operate with the Māori Health Authority and Health New Zealand to be more transparent and to have a better process for how we fund and allocate resources for new modern medicines because I think the people of New Zealand will be very interested in knowing how any of this and any new medicines strategy will work. Will we actually have a better process in place for new medicines access than we have in the current system or is it the case that actually things will really be just exactly the same as they are?"